Omega Diggings / South Yuba
"No other mining process is so extravagantly wasteful."
F.W. Robinson. Report of the State Mineralogist 1882
Ditches, dams, diggings and tailings are commonplace in the Yuba and Bear River watersheds. On almost any hike or ride it's only a matter of time before you'll encounter features associated with hydraulic mining. Despite only 30 years as the dominant gold mining method the scars of hydraulicing, both visible and invisible remain part of our legacy. The footprint of hydraulic mining is massive not only in the geographical, geological and hydrological realms, but also in its innovations in technological and hydraulic engineering and in the creation of an elaborate body of laws pertaining to water and mineral rights in California.
In order to understand why the Yuba and Bear River basins were so well-positioned for hydraulic mining let me attempt a rudimentary explanation of some local geology. Approximately 60,000 years ago ancient auriferous (gold bearing) streams were flowing in this region. As the Sierra Nevada formed and rose in height streams began to flow in west and southwesterly directions. The continuous down-cutting of streams eventually exposed gravel deposits from the ancient streams that are as high as 1,000 feet above today's rivers and creeks. Gold miners, intent on finding “the source” of Yuba River gold, explored all of the gold-bearing tributaries but found instead “high gravels” or Tertiary gravels, at mid-slope between the major streams and the ridgetops. An example is the area around Banner Ridge, which was discovered in 1850.
Gravels near Red Dog / Greenhorn Creek / Bear River
Fortunately for the miners many of the gravel deposits were easily accessible because the lava flows that once covered the ancient rivers had long ago eroded away. Banner Lava Cap was so-named for the remnant lava flow "capping" the auriferous gravels of Banner Ridge. The hydraulic method was the ideal way to mine gravel deposits because the yield per cubic yard was so low that a great volume of gravel had to be "washed" in sluices for it to be profitable. And finally there was generally plenty of water available which was essential for hydraulicking. Of course a technology to transport water from the high mountain streams had to be developed, which the miners did, and in so-doing became a world recognized center of hydraulic engineering.
photographer unknown
The Northern Mines, in the watershed of the Feather and Sacramento Rivers had the highest concentrations of auriferous gravels – from north to south they were: the Slate Creek region (Plumas and Sierra counties), the San Juan Ridge (Nevada County), and the Quaker Hill, Red Dog, Gold Hill and Dutch Flat regions (Nevada and Placer counties).
DISCOVERY
In 1853 a new technique of mining was discovered on Deer Creek near Nevada City. It was called the hydraulic process and it was, by far the most efficient (and destructive) method of gold mining. Hydraulic mining is the application of a jet of water under great pressure, focused by a nozzle, to a bank of placer alluvium consisting of compacted gravels. The idea was to let water do the work – water was used for its mechanical force and it was far more efficient than many men digging with shovels. By using pressurized water miners saturated and cut the banks so that they were reduced to lava-like mud and stones, that slurry was then channeled to the sluicing area where the gold was recovered. The hydraulic process became enormously popular and it was used wherever possible.
Malakoff Diggings, 1870s
Photo by Carlton Watkins
Phillip May, author of Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California (1970) has extensively researched the topic and concludes that hydraulicking most likely first occurred on Buckeye Hill, east of Nevada City near Greenhorn Creek. Antoine Chabot, William Matteson and Eli Miller, a tinsmith, were partners on a Buckeye Hill claim in 1852. May maintains that it was Chabot and Miller who applied a nozzle to the hose thereby improving the aim of the water and increasing its velocity. Matteson introduced the process to his claim on American Hill in Nevada City in 1853, where it was more likely to be chronicled. Matteson is generally recognized as the discoverer of hydraulic mining but it appears to have been a collaborative invention, if it can even be called an invention. After all, the hose and nozzle were already in use by local firemen. The innovation was the application of an existing technology (pressurized water) to gravel banks in order to access the compacted auriferous gravel. Matteson’s Nevada City claim was on American Hill, near Buckeye Hill Ravine, just west of town. The origin of the hydraulic process wasn’t discussed in the press until 1857 when a story ran in Hutchings California Magazine, four years after its invention. This was more than ample time for the facts to be amended or distorted in the retelling.
DAMS/WATER CONVEYANCE/DISTRIBUTION
In California precipitation is seasonal, occurring in the winter and mostly stored in the form of snowpack. Hydraulic mining required water year-round and plenty of it. To provide that water companies consolidated and built bigger reservoirs and higher capacity ditch systems. In the diggings water was used as a direct power source.
To the mine owner, once the muddy gravel exited the sluice system the mining process was over. The problem of accumulated tailings or mine waste on site made it difficult to continue mining so it too was pushed into adjoining creeks or to a drain tunnel. This nasty torrent of mud and gravel eventually made its way downstream where it caused unprecedented environmental degradation.
As hydraulic mining grew so did the water companies and the scope of their operations. Water companies built storage dams, both large and small, beginning in the 1850s. Typically small owner-operated mines went into debt by purchasing water. Most of them eventually forfeited their mines to the water companies who ultimately owned both the mines and the infrastructure that provided them with water. Water was transported in ditches and flumes sometimes over long distances: North Bloomfield Company's main ditch was 55 miles long, the Milton Ditch was 63 miles, the Eureka Lake Company's ditch was 34 miles, Blue Tent Company's was 33 miles long and the South Yuba Canal was 123 miles long. Before long the major companies constructed high-capacity reservoirs to redistribute water to various mining operations. Their success attracted investors from San Francisco, New York and England.
Tertiary gravels were easily recognized because they had the same rounded gravel, cobbles, boulders and gold as today's live streams. But the gravels were difficult to access because they were compacted into the soil structure with tons of “overburden” consisting of soil, vegetation, trees, and low-yield upper gravels to remove.
Kennebec Mine /Birchville/ Middle Yuba
Photo by Lawrence & Houseworth 1860s
Photo by Lawrence & Houseworth 1860s
PIPING
Water cannons, generically called "monitors", were used to mine gravel banks and the process was called piping. They had nozzles, available in different sizes, and had sophisticated features resulting from endless experimentation. Manufacturers gave them manly names like Globe Monitor, Hydraulic Chief, Hoskins Dictator, Little Giant and Hydraulic Giant.
In a well-financed operation two, and sometimes more, monitors were used on a particular bank. One of them was used to saturate the bank while the other undercut the same area. Another option to bring down the gravels was to construct tunnels at the bottom of a bank and load them with explosives.
SLUICING
The sluice was essential – this is where the gold was recovered by gravity separation. A sluice box is essentially a long, slightly inclined, rectangular trough through which a rapid stream of water and auriferous gravel flows. The bottom is provided with slat, block or rock riffles. Because of the great weight of gold gravity causes the gold to sink and collect in the spaces between the riffles. In hydraulic mining, sluice boxes were fitted together to extend for hundreds of feet and in some cases, like on Greenhorn Creek, a tributary of the Bear River, they were miles long.
Quicksilver, or mercury (Hg), was routinely added to sluices to amalgamate with the finer particles of gold. Miners tried to recover what mercury they could to save on costs but they lost an estimated 10 million pounds to placer mining statewide and 80% to 90% of that was in the Sierra Nevada. Hydraulic mines lost an average. of 10% to 30 % of the mercury that they used. To this day mercury is systemic in the Yuba and Bear River basins. It is largely inert and poses no immediate danger but in reservoirs it can bioaccumulate in fish. Scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have determined that "... the South Yuba, Deer Creek and Bear River watersheds have elevated concentrations of bioavailable mercury (2000)."
Drain tunnels were unique to the Northern Mines – they were expensive but they served two purposes. They were designed to transport tailings away so that work could continue unimpeded (in its heyday North Bloomfield operated around the clock) and the tunnel provided another opportunity to sluice the tailings.
Tailings in the Greenhorn Creek Drainage / Bear River
MINE WASTE,TAILINGS, DEBRIS or SLICKENS
After sluicing, the tailings, mostly a slurry of mud and gravel, was dumped into nearby ravines and sent downstream. Thus ended the involvement and concern of the hydraulic mine owners.
The center of the hydraulic mining industry was the Yuba's three major forks and the upper reaches of the Bear River. In the 1860s Nevada was the leading mining county in the state with many of its most productive hydraulic mines found on San Juan Ridge, between the Middle and South Forks of the Yuba. A contemporary Civil Engineer reported, “so great has been the quantity of ground washed away, that many of the ravines are covered with a depth of twenty feet and upwards of tailings from the sluices.”
In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed and by 1865 patented mine ground was made available. New laws granted water companies legal right-of-way and a formal survey by the Government Land Office was in process. When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, 10,000 Chinese laborers went looking for work. Many of these men transferred their construction and blasting skills to hydraulic mining endeavors.
Towns developed near all these operations, and hundreds of miners and businesses became dependent on their wages for survival. The mining industry was the source of local employment and was usually allowed to proceed with their plans regardless of consequences. In the mid-1870s the settlements of Moores Flat and Columbia Hill on San Juan Ridge were moved, despite protestations, because they were on mining ground. Moores Flat even had to move the town's cemetery.
The key to success in hydraulic mining was the control and application of huge volumes of water. Thus, by the 1870s and 1880s, ''ditch" or water companies consolidated to create large corporate entities whose stock traded on the San Francisco exchange. The largest companies included the Milton Mining Company, the North Bloomfield Mining Company, the Eureka Lake and Yuba Canal Company, the South Yuba Canal Company, and the Bear River and Auburn Water Company. By the 1880s hydraulic engineers and mine managers like Hamilton Smith, of the North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company and Alvinza Hayward of the South Yuba Canal Company were considered the best in the world and were greatly admired. Unless you lived downstream.
Tailings on the Lower Yuba near Smartsville, 1860s
Photo by Lawrence & Houseworth
DOWNSTREAM
On their way downstream the tailings changed stream geomorphology, caused immense siltation, created large gravel bars, raised water levels, buried mining claims and distributed mercury. At the same time activities ancillary to gold mining like lumbering, ranching and market hunting amplified the environmental havoc.
Once downstream, in the flatlands, accumulations of mud and gravel from the upstream mines spread out covering valuable agricultural lands, hampering river navigation and causing flooding. The gold mining culture of the foothills had little compassion for the valley people. The farmers were advised to adapt to an unfortunate consequence of doing necessary business. There was an arrogance about people of the gold regions. Wasn't it mining, not agriculture, that created California – after all, the state motto is "Eureka?"
Meanwhile the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 thereby opening a national market for California agricultural products and generating far more capital than gold mining. By the late 1870s the controversy was raging. Some farmers were ambivalent because they too profited from the prosperity that gold mining brought. But the situation only worsened and could no longer be overlooked.
Meanwhile the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 thereby opening a national market for California agricultural products and generating far more capital than gold mining. By the late 1870s the controversy was raging. Some farmers were ambivalent because they too profited from the prosperity that gold mining brought. But the situation only worsened and could no longer be overlooked.
DOWNSTREAM TROUBLES
As the upstream hydraulic mines were prospering farmers in the Sacramento Valley were continually dealing with high water and extreme siltation. Effects of the mining debris on Sacramento Valley farming was noticeable about 1860. In that year Bavarian Eduard Vischer was visiting the mines and was impressed by the hydraulic mining process but in Marysville he saw the downside of mining. He described the tailings in the Yuba and Feather Rivers as "... a reddish, thick, opaque mush. Whosoever observes these mountain region waste waters heavily laden with mud will no longer be surprised at being able to recognize the Sacramento River by the color of its water far into the Bay."
The big flood of 1862 inundated farms and flooded municipalities in the valley and left a sediment on the lower Bear River about two feet thick which caused great alarm. This was one in a series of episodes caused by the voluminous discharge of tailings from the hydraulic mines in the mountains. Then Marysville was flooded in 1875 causing an uproar.
G .F. Keller 1881
Charles Nordhoff published California for Health, Pleasure, and Residence for Travelers and Settlers in 1873. It was an extremely popular guidebook that persuaded many to settle in California. He had this to say about the Yuba River near Smartsville,"This was once, I am told by old residents, a swift and clear mountain torrent; it is now a turbid and not rapid stream, whose bed has been raised by the washings of the miners not less than fifty feet above its level in 1849. It once contained trout, but now I imagine a catfish would die in it.”
In 1876, James Keyes, representing the farmers of the Bear River Valley, filed for a perpetual injunction against the Little York Gold and Water Company and 18 other hydraulic mining companies on the upper Bear River. Among them were the mines of Quaker Hill, Buckeye Hill and Hunts Hill. A. A. Sargent of the Sargent & Jacobs mines on Quaker Hill and Hunts Hill scoffed and said that “stopping hydraulic mining would throw half of the people in the mountains out of work and bankrupt all government in the area.”
If you want to see an accumulation of tailings on the Yuba River once it reaches the valley floor I suggest driving State Highway 20 to the Yuba River crossing at Parks Bar. Immediately downstream are tailings consisting of fine sand and gravel estimated at one to three miles wide covering an area of about 25 square miles. Now imagine this gravel in motion, much more muddy and replenished annually.
SAWYER DECISION 1884
In the late 1870s the annual value of the dry farmed wheat crop alone had reached $40,000,000, more than double that of the dwindling gold output. According to geographer David Larsen, "The trend was clear and irreversible the pivot of prosperity had shifted permanently toward the fields."
FIRST ENVIRONMENTAL LAW?
Obviously, by outlawing the dumping of tailings there was improved water quality and fish habitat and there would be less toxins inadvertently released but this particular environmental remediation was incidental to the intent of the law. Except in a very general way there were no environmental considerations addressed in the 24 volumes of testimony that were collected for Woodruff vs. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company. This law was not created out of respect for Gaia, or any consideration whatsoever for stream ecology. Simply put, the issue was business interests in the Sacramento Valley (agriculture) were losing income to the wasteful procedures of a powerful upslope industry (hydraulic mining). Specifically agricultural lands were being covered with choking mud, towns were periodically flooded and steamboat operations were hampered by the decreased navigability of the rivers. I can't see how the Sawyer Decision exhibits environmental activism but it does represent the beginning of regulations in the public interest. The Sawyer Decision effectively limits the ideology of laissez-faire, which legitimized the single-minded pursuit of wealth at all costs. This alone is a very big step in the direction of conservation and sustainability.
CAMINETTI ACT 1893
The Sawyer Decision did not ban hydraulic mining, it banned the dumping of mine waste into the watercourses. The Caminetti Act sought to resume hydraulic mining by creating upstream debris dams to impound mine waste or tailings. It was attempted, but somewhat half-heartedly, because the early dams were brush and cribbing dams that were lucky to last a season. Among other places, there were dams built on Scotchman's Creek, Willow Creek and Horse Valley Creek followed by more substantial concrete dams at Daguerre Point (1906), Bullards Bar (1924) and Englebright (1941).
Debris Dam at Malakoff Diggings / Humbug Creek / South Yuba, n.d.
Photographer unknown
The Caminetti Act also created a Debris Commission consisting of three officers from the Army Corps of Engineers. They set up a permitting process and fee schedule that further discouraged the resumption of hydraulic mining. In 1909, 33 applications for permits were received and 16 were granted.
LEGACY
We have a legacy of diggings, or mining excavations– monuments, really – to our industrial past. Because of hydraulic mining we've also inherited a watershed-wide dispersal of mercury (below 6,000') with well-documented toxic effects. It pains me to remind you not to eat the fish from reservoirs.
An elaborate system of dams and ditches is part our legacy. Some of them have been adapted, and new one's built, for hydroelectricity and irrigation. It seems to me that that more of them can be used as trails and be incorporated into the watershed's transportation, recreation, and public health (fitness) system.
I continually marvel at the amount of devastation and degradation caused by hydraulic mining. The basic ingredient was human ingenuity powered by the simple principle of gravity and aided by picks and shovels to dam and manipulate water. The addition of quicksilver to sluices enhanced the mining process but contaminated the ecosystem. It seemed like progress at the time and the whole community supported it, but there were unseen consequences.
Siltation at the Mouth of the South Yuba at Point Defiance
