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Page: of 12
4 THE FRENCH LEAD AND ITS COLONY
Grass Valley had a colony of French nationals during the
_. @arly years of quartz mining. The French quarter, if such it
= could be called, was in the south part of town and is marked by
= the city street, French Avenue. The colony was composed of
: adventuring and achieving men who had the faculty of leaving
some token of their nationality wherever they drove their stakes.
French Lake in the High Sierra marked the first large water
storage development of Nevada County. French Corral, a town
of the lower San Juan Ridge, was one of the first settlements of
‘ that region, Few the mining enterprises of the initial decades
which did not link such names as Chavanne, Fricot, LeCog,
Clephar, Lamarque, Loribaux, Lorseau, Morateur, Pellatjer,
and other nmes of the French, One imposing figure was known
as the "Emperor."
It was at Lafayette Hill, then a placer mining location, that
the first meetings of miners to declare laws and rules for
=. Mining were held. With the discovery of quartz a lode location
= was staked there under the name of the French Lead, At the inamong the small group of notably producing mines of the disO : trict and its name is retained in the Empire-Star consolidation,
; The original incline shaft of the Lafayette Hill mine is kept
open and in repair and therein reposes one of the massive and
ve amazing Cornish pumps which for more than a half century were
» ly inseparable from quartz mining. At one period it was semi' abandoned as "worked out" and lay in that condition for a decade.
‘west, The total submergence is computed at 10,500 feet.
qwuser Fourteery By Edn
Nor’.
sank the present vertical shaft known as the Central at a point
a quarter of a mile north of the Lafayette Hill and connected
the workings by a deep bore. This bold venture of the first decade ©
of the present century made available large ore bodies which
have maintained the North Star in the heavy producing class
up to this time.
The vertical shaft has a depth of more than three thousand
feet and the traffic of it is by means of an iron cage not unlike
the elevator of any high building. As with all mine skips, it is
lowered and raised by means of a steel cable, called the rope,
which runs through a sheave at the top of a high altitude headframe to wind and unwind upon a huge drum.
But that long cable measures only a part of the depth of
the workings of the North Star. Incline shaft extensions and
winzes go to deep levels to constitute the North Star, the deepest mine of the Northern Mines and among the deepest in the
submergence is computed at 10,500 feet,
The consolidation effected by the Newmont Mining Company
~The restrictions imposed by World War II, both official
and economic, left deep scars upon the Nevada County quartz
mining industry and the peace has so far restored only in part
the mass. operations and large production which made this segment of the Northern Mines the undisputed Gold Capital of California. ee
Chapter X
THE CHARLIE PETERS BOOK
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