Mining Camps of Placer County


Book Description

Everything in Placer County history leads to gold, from its name--the Spanish term for gold-bearing gravel--to the mining camps that sprouted overnight in its rugged river canyons. Ecstatic cries of "Gold on the American River!" in 1848 launched the largest voluntary migration in the history of the world. As claims "panned out," thousands of miners swarmed like locusts between the rough-and-tumble mining camps, from the crest of the Sierra Nevada to the Sacramento Valley. Some camps disappeared along with the easy placer gold; others found new methods to extract gold deposited deep in quartz veins or underground and developed into stable towns that still stand. Sometimes washing whole hillsides into rivers, hydraulic mining was outlawed in the 1880s, but the colorful characters and tall tales of the Gold Rush live on.




Mining Camps


Book Description




Calaveras Gold


Book Description

California’s Calaveras County—made famous by Mark Twain and his celebrated Jumping Frog—is the focus of this comprehensive study of Mother Lode mining. Most histories of the California Mother Lode have focused on the mines around the American and Yuba Rivers. However, the “Southern Mines”—those centered around Calaveras County in the central Sierra—were also important in the development of California’s mineral wealth. Calaveras Gold offers a detailed and meticulously researched history of mining and its economic impact in this region from the first discoveries in the 1840s until the present. Mining in Calaveras County covered the full spectrum of technology from the earliest placer efforts through drift and hydraulic mining to advanced hard-rock industrial mining. Subsidiary industries such as agriculture, transportation, lumbering, and water supply, as well as a complex social and political structure, developed around the mines. The authors examine the roles of race, gender, and class in this frontier society; the generation and distribution of capital; and the impact of the mines on the development of political and cultural institutions. They also look at the impact of mining on the Native American population, the realities of day-to-day life in the mining camps, the development of agriculture and commerce, the occurrence of crime and violence, and the cosmopolitan nature of the population. Calaveras County mining continued well into the twentieth century, and the authors examine the ways that mining practices changed as the ores were depleted and how the communities evolved from mining camps into permanent towns with new economic foundations and directions. Mining is no longer the basis of Calaveras’s economy, but memories of the great days of the Mother Lode still attract tourists who bring a new form of wealth to the region.




Finding Gold in Colorado - Prospector's Edition


Book Description

Travel guide book inspired by the gold prospecting origin of Colorado. Includes touring information on all the major towns founded as gold mining camps as well as summaries of each town's origin story. Includes reviews and recommendations on historic districts to visit, mines to tour, driving tours of ghost towns and places to gold pan. Includes information on 16 historic districts, 31 museums, 18 mines, 186 gold panning sites across the state of Colorado. Thoroughly researched to confirm public access to the panning sites (no private property or areas subject to mining claim has been included - unlike other books.)Written by a long-time Colorado resident and gold prospector. Based on years of research and field work.Get your share of the gold by prospecting for it in historic, urban, and remote locations across the gold districts of Colorado.




Placer Gold Deposits of Nevada (Classic Reprint)


Book Description

Excerpt from Placer Gold Deposits of Nevada Following the discovery of placers at Gold Canyon, placer discoveries in Nevada were broadly in three periods: the 1860's to 1880's, when many small deposits throughout the State were discovered and sporadically worked and several large placers were discovered and extensively worked; the short period between 1906 and 1910, when very rich placers were dis covered at Lynn, Battle Mountain, Manhattan, and Round Mountain; the early 1930's, when economic conditions created by the depression caused a renewed interest in placer mining, and many individuals sought, and a few discovered, new placer areas throughout the State. The location of the placers described in this report is shown on plate 1. Very little factual information can be found about the early periods of placer mining in Nevada. For many placers, the only reports available are hearsay estimates of production and speculations about the extent of the placer ground based on remnants of placer pits, shafts, and other workings. Many of the placers said to have had a high production between 1860 and 1890 were worked by Chinese miners who came to Nevada dur ing the building of the railroads and stayed on to work at mining and other activities. The Chinese were reputed to be secretive with their earnings from the placers and did not ship the gold to the mint by Wells Fargo or other shippers. They worked the gravels very thoroughly in areas where American miners did not wish to expend great labor to win the gold. The placers in the Sierra and Spring Valley districts, Pershing County, were worked by Chinese miners; they have a very high estimated production before 1900 and a comparatively low known production since that time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Gold


Book Description

"This is a very readable account of gold mining in California from the earliest days to the present and of its economic, social, cultural, and literary consequences. It should provide many evenings of enjoyable and informative reading."—Paul C. Bateman, U.S. Geological Survey, retired "Mary Hill's first-rate narrative is a remarkable synthesis. She skillfully weaves together the geology, history, and romance of the gold story in a lively and informative style. Anyone interested in California history, especially the Gold Rush, will relish this book."—Martin Ridge, Huntington Library




Mining California


Book Description

An environmental History of California during the Gold Rush Between 1849 and 1874 almost $1 billion in gold was mined in California. With little available capital or labor, here's how: high-pressure water cannons washed hillsides into sluices that used mercury to trap gold but let the soil wash away; eventually more than three times the amount of earth moved to make way for the Panama Canal entered California's rivers, leaving behind twenty tons of mercury every mile—rivers overflowed their banks and valleys were flooded, the land poisoned. In the rush to wealth, the same chain of foreseeable consequences reduced California's forests and grasslands. Not since William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis has a historian so skillfully applied John Muir's insight—"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe"—to the telling of the history of the American West. Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its finest.




Placer Gold Deposits of New Mexico


Book Description

A Reprint of the Original US Geological Survey Bulletin 1348. This publication is a catalog of locations, geology, and production from the placer districts of New Mexico. Over 40 New Mexico Placer locations covered in this publication.




The History of the Gold Discoveries of the Northern Mine's [sic] of California's Mother Lode Gold Belt as Told by the Newspapers and Miners, 1848-1875


Book Description

This book is the chronological history of the gold rush and gold discoveries from 1848 through 1875, as viewed and reported by the newspapers and miners, on what was called the Northern Mines area of California's Mother Lode Gold Belt. The Northern Mines was that area north of the Cosumnes River, which included Placerville on northward. It included the region containing the South, Middle and North forks of the American River, the Bear River, the South, Middle and North forks of the Yuba River, and the South, Middle and North forks of the Feather River, plus all the other branches and tributaries that ran into the named forks and rivers. This book contains as many newspaper articles that could be found relating to the gold rush days. In using the newspaper articles from the golden era as printed, with their dates, this reveals just when the "New Diggings" as they were called, were found; where they were being made; how rich some of the diggings were; what type of diggings they were; the names of some of the prospectors who found some of the diggings or who were at the diggings and what they were taking out. There are tales of how some of the diggings were found and why some of them received the names they did. The overall purpose of this book is to give a full picture of exactly what was happening to as many different named diggings, locations, camps, and towns that came up in the Northern Mines area, and to give an account of events over at least a certain length of time, exactly as it was reported. To determine from just where each newspaper article within this book comes from, each of the newspaper articles used has first, the date on which it appeared in the newspaper, followed in parentheses by the name of the newspaper from which that particular article was obtained from.