Dagwood
- 102
- 43
Sounds like you live on top of bedrock. The miners were using hydraulic cannons on old river deposits.
I haven't learned how to upload and post photos here yet so I'll just post this link for now for those willing to click outside links. It is a google link.
https://www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1530&bih=901&q=hydraulic mining gold rush&oq=hydraulic minin&gs_l=img.1.6.0l7.4333.9585.0.15208.15.10.0.5.5.0.148.1300.0j10.10.0....0...1ac.1.27.img..0.15.1342.rvrf8aJBIEQ
Miners diverted streams to power immense water cannons and they washed away all the gold bearing alluvial deposits to run through sluice boxes. The flats around Yuba City are all from these. The magnitude of the erosion was incredible. Old photos show people working these water cannons below immense cliffs with towering waterfalls, which were once streams flowing across a gentle landscape. I wish I could remember exactly, but along a highway heading up towards Sonora Pass? is a pullout on the right providing a view across the valley to a far ridge. A historic information display explains that the high but gentle ridge was the original land profile. It was the site of an early railroad line and so escaped being washed away into the sluice boxes by the hoards of miners. Looking at this and imagining all the surrounding land being at that same grade and elevation was a total mind twister.
They used mercury to glom onto and separate the panned/sluiced gold dust and gold within crushed ore, from the rock. A huge amount of mercury got washed downstream to contaminate sediments all the way to San Fransisco. A friend who grew up in Gold Country and spent time in the rivers diving for nuggets made a lot of money collecting and selling mercury. The liquid mercury is so heavy that he would move big rocks underwater and in the depression underneath find a big pool of mercury that had settled in there from the Gold Rush activities.
It's nice to converse with you again. When I saw that you were the den mother here I knew I'd found a good place.
I haven't learned how to upload and post photos here yet so I'll just post this link for now for those willing to click outside links. It is a google link.
https://www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1530&bih=901&q=hydraulic mining gold rush&oq=hydraulic minin&gs_l=img.1.6.0l7.4333.9585.0.15208.15.10.0.5.5.0.148.1300.0j10.10.0....0...1ac.1.27.img..0.15.1342.rvrf8aJBIEQ
Miners diverted streams to power immense water cannons and they washed away all the gold bearing alluvial deposits to run through sluice boxes. The flats around Yuba City are all from these. The magnitude of the erosion was incredible. Old photos show people working these water cannons below immense cliffs with towering waterfalls, which were once streams flowing across a gentle landscape. I wish I could remember exactly, but along a highway heading up towards Sonora Pass? is a pullout on the right providing a view across the valley to a far ridge. A historic information display explains that the high but gentle ridge was the original land profile. It was the site of an early railroad line and so escaped being washed away into the sluice boxes by the hoards of miners. Looking at this and imagining all the surrounding land being at that same grade and elevation was a total mind twister.
They used mercury to glom onto and separate the panned/sluiced gold dust and gold within crushed ore, from the rock. A huge amount of mercury got washed downstream to contaminate sediments all the way to San Fransisco. A friend who grew up in Gold Country and spent time in the rivers diving for nuggets made a lot of money collecting and selling mercury. The liquid mercury is so heavy that he would move big rocks underwater and in the depression underneath find a big pool of mercury that had settled in there from the Gold Rush activities.
It's nice to converse with you again. When I saw that you were the den mother here I knew I'd found a good place.
