California has well earned her name
of “Golden State,” for from her rich mines
gold to the value of thirteen hundred millions has
been taken. Yet every year she adds seventeen
millions more to the world’s stock of gold.
No country has produced more of this precious yellow
metal that men work and fight and die for. The
“gold belt” of the state still holds great
wealth for miners to find in years to come.
Long, long ago people knew that gold
was here, for in 1510 a Spanish novel speaks of “that
island of California where a great abundance of gold
and precious stones is found.” In 1841 the
Indians near San Fernando Mission washed out gold
from the river-sands, and other mines were found not
far from Los Angeles.
But James W. Marshall was the man
who started the great excitement of ’48 and
’49 by finding small pieces of gold at a place
now called Coloma, on the American River. Marshall,
who was born in New Jersey, came to this state in
1847, and being a builder wished to put up houses,
sawmills, and flour-mills. Finding that lumber
was very dear, he decided to build a sawmill to exit
up the great trees on the river-bank. He had
no money, but John A. Sutter, knowing a mill was needed
there, gave Marshall enough to start with.
So the mill was built, and when it
was ready to run Marshall found that the mill-race,
or ditch for carrying the water to his mill-wheel,
was not deep enough. He turned a strong current
of water into it, and this ran all night. Then
it was shut off, and next day the ditch showed where
the stream had washed it deeper and had left a heap
of sand and gravel at the end of it. Here Marshall
saw some shining little stones, and picking them up
he laid one on a rock and hammered it with another
till he saw how quickly it changed its shape.
He was sure that these bright, heavy, easily hammered
pebbles were gold, but the men working about the mill
would not believe it. So he went to Sutter, who
lived near at a place called Sutter’s Fort, because
his stores, house, and other buildings were built
around a hollow square with high walls outside to
keep off the Indians. Sutter weighed the little
yellow lumps and said they certainly were gold.
The flood-gates between the mill-race and the river were
opened again, and water ran through the ditch, washing more gold in sight.
Sutter picked up enough of this to make a ring and had these words marked on it:
“The first gold found in California, January,
1848.”
Both Sutter and Marshall tried to
keep what they had found a secret, but that was impossible,
and soon people were flocking to the gold-fields.
Then began a wild excitement known as the “gold-fever,”
and men left their stores and houses, gave up business,
and left crops ungathered in a wild chase after nuggets
of gold.
By December of 1848, thousands of
miners were washing for gold all along the foot-hills
from the Tuolumne River to the Feather, a distance
of 150 miles. A hundred thousand men came to California
during 1849, these Argonauts, or gold-hunters, taking
ship or steamer for the long trip from New York by
the Isthmus of Panama. Some went round Cape Horn,
or else made a weary journey overland across the plains.
“To the land of gold” was their motto,
and these pioneers endured every hardship to reach
this “Golden State.”
Then the miners, with pick, shovel,
and pan for washing out gold from the gravel it was
found in, started out “prospecting” for
“pay-dirt.” The gold-diggings were
usually along the rivers, and this surface, or “placer,”
mining was done by shovelling the “pay-dirt”
into a pan or a wooden box called a cradle, and rocking
or shaking this box from side to side while pouring
water over the earth. The heavy gold, either
in fine scales or dust, or in lumps called nuggets,
dropped to the bottom, while the loose earth ran out
in a muddy stream. The rich sand left in pan
or cradle was carefully washed again and again till
only precious, shining gold remained.
So rich were some of the sand bars
along the American and Feather rivers that the first
miners made a thousand dollars a day even by this
careless way of washing gold where much of it was lost.
Then again for days or weeks the miner found nothing
at all. He would wander up and down the canons
and gulches, prospecting for another claim, and dreaming
day and night of finding a stream with golden sands,
or of picking up rich nuggets. If he found good
“diggings” he would build a rough shanty
under the pines, and dig and wash till the gold-bearing
sand or gravel gave out again. Sometimes he had
a partner and a donkey, or burro, to carry tools and
pack supplies. More often the Argonaut cooked
his own bacon and slapjacks and simmered his beans
over a lonely camp-fire, and slept wrapped in a blanket
under the trees. If he had much gold, he would
go to the nearest town, buy food enough for another
prospecting tramp, and often spend all the rest of
his money in foolish waste.
Sometimes a company of miners would
build a dam across a river or stream, and turn it
from its course, so they could dig out and wash the
rich gravel in the river-bed. A flume, or ditch,
would often carry all the water to a lower part of
the river, leaving the bed of the upper stream dry
for miles. In this kind of mining the “pay-dirt”
was shovelled into long wooden boxes called sluices,
and a constant stream of water kept the gravel and
earth moving on out to a dumping-place. The gold
dropped down or settled into riffles, or spaces between
bars placed across the bottom of the sluices, and
once a week the water was turned off and a “clean-up”
made of the gold.
It was not long before the rivers,
creeks, and gulches had all been worked over and most
of the gold taken out. The miners knew that this
loose gold had been washed out of the hills by the
rains and storms of countless years. So some
one thought of using a heavy stream of water to break
down the foot-hills themselves and to carry the gold-bearing
gravel to sluice boxes. This is called hydraulic
mining and is the cheapest way of handling earth,
as water does all the work and very little shovelling
is needed. But since a strong water-power is
necessary, a large reservoir and miles of ditches or
wooden flumes must be built, so the first expense
is large. The water usually comes from higher
up in the mountains, and is forced under great pressure
through iron pipes, the nozzle or “giant”
being directed at the hillside, which has already
been shattered by heavy blasts of powder. The
water tears thousands of tons of earth and gravel apart,
and the muddy stream flows through sluices, where
the gold is left. In this kind of mining a great
quantity of debris, or “tailings,” must
be disposed of.
For years this debris was washed into
the rivers or on farming lands, filling up and ruining
both, and leading to endless quarrels between farmers
and miners. But at last the courts stopped hydraulic
mining except in northern counties, where debris went
into the Klamath River, upon which no boats could
run and near which was little farming. But all
the mines in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river-basins
were idle till, in 1893, Congress appointed a Debris
Commission. These mining engineers issue licenses
to work the mines when satisfied that the debris will
be kept out of the rivers. There are in the state
many hundred thousand acres of gold-bearing gravel
lands yet untouched, that could be worked by hydraulic
mining.
In drift-mining the rich gravel is
covered by hard lava rock thrown up by some old volcanic
outburst. Tunnels are driven by blasting with
dynamite, or by drilling under the rock to reach the
gravel which usually lies in the buried channel of
an old river. The long drifts, or tunnels, needed
are very expensive and only mine owners with capital
can work these claims.
Richest of all are the quartz mines,
where beautiful white rock, rich with sparkling gold,
is found in veins, or “lodes,” cropping
out of hillsides or dipping down under the earth.
The great “Mother-lode” of our state runs
like an underground wall across Amador, Calaveras,
Tuolumne, and Mariposa counties and has been traced
for eighty miles.
Some poor miner usually finds a ledge
of quartz-rock and digs down the way the ledge goes.
He puts up a windlass, worked by hand, over the well-like
hole he has dug out, and hoists the ore out in buckets.
But he soon finds, as the hole or shaft goes deeper,
that he must timber the sides to keep them from caving
in, that he must have an engine to raise the ore and
a mill to crush the hard rock. So he sells out
to a company of men, who put in costly machinery,
deepen the shaft, and by heavy expenditure get large
returns.
The quartz ledges dip and turn, so
tunnels and cross-cuts are run to follow the golden
vein, and all these are timbered with heavy wooden
supports to keep the earth and rock from falling in
on the men. The miners work in day and night
gangs, using dynamite to break up the hard rock, and
sending ore up in great iron buckets, or in cars if
the tunnel ends in daylight, on the hillside.
Sometimes the miners strike water, and that must be
pumped out to keep the mine from being flooded.
The ore is crushed by heavy stamps,
or hammers, and then mixed with water and quicksilver.
This curious metal, quicksilver, or mercury, is fond
of gold and hunts out every little bit, the two metals
mixing together and making what is called an amalgam.
This is heated in an iron vessel, and the quicksilver
goes off in steam or vapor, leaving the gold free.
The quicksilver, being valuable, is saved and used
again, while the gold, now called bullion, is sent
to the mint to be coined into bright twenties, or
tens, or five-dollar pieces.
Some of the gold in the crushed ore
will not mix with the quicksilver, and this is treated
to a bath of cyanide, a peculiar acid that melts the
gold as water does a lump of sugar. So all of
value is saved, and the worthless “tailings”
go to the dump. Even the black sands on the ocean
beach have gold in them. In the desert also there
is gold, which is “dry-washed” by putting
the sand into a machine and with a strong blast of
air blowing away all but the heavy scales of gold.
Though the Argonauts of ’49
found much wealth in yellow gold, our “Golden
State,” on hillsides, in river-beds, or deep
down in hidden quartz ledges, still holds great fortunes
waiting to be found.