Bill - I came across an 1871 edition of "Mines, Mills and Furnaces of the Pacific States and Territories" by Rossiter W. Raymond, Ph.D, Vice Pres. of the Am. Inst. of Mining Engineers and editor of the "Engineering and Mining Journal". It has been interesting to me to read as it has provided terminology and uses the same language that I am hearing today. It will be fun to take what I have read in this book as knowledge of terms while watching the TV program tonight..thanks for letting us know about it!
I will copy out some of the paragraphs so that, if interested, you can read. Otherwise, just skip the whole rest of this message. <gg>
The first paragraph was just part of a forward and general mining description of process in hard-rock mining:
"In hard rock (mining) they (all miners) do best with 'single' drills, of small steel. The use of the small single drill is becoming quite general in our mines and is found, where circumstances are favorable, to effect a large saving of cost. One objection to it is, that it is likely to involve underhand stoping, since the single-handed drill cannot conveniently be used in upward holes; and underhand stoping is expensive in mines where the 'deads' are packed away in the stopes, and where much timbering is required to support the hanging wall. Generally, where small drills are used, the quicker explosives, such as rifle-powder, dynamite, Hercules powder, (a mixture of notro-glycerine and common powder,), etc. are best."
The book is organized by counties. The Brush Creek mine is in Sierra County.
"Quartz mining operations have been (in Sierra County), on the whole, satisfactory. An important change in proprietorship ought to be noticed in this connection, as showing the tendency of foreign capital to invest large amounts of money in mining property already developed and paying dividends rather than in new enterprises." (This is where Brush Creek mines have such an advantage with so much infrastructure in place.)
"The total amount of quartz raised in the county during the year ending June 1, 1870, was 40,600 tons, which yielded $438,000. One hundred and ninety men were employed in the mines and mills throughout the year and $135,244 was paid to them in wages. The following are the most prominent mines and their yield for the time indicated above: Alaska, $30,000; Gold Bluff, $37,322; Independence, $75,000; Sierra Buttes, $200,000; Brush Creek, $95,000."
"Grass Valley, situated in a basin surrounded by hills two or three hundred feet in height, in which are found the quartz ledges which have given this locality a world-wide fame, was noted in early times for its rich placers. These diggings were the results of two causes, the decomposition of the surface quartz and the dispersion of an ancient channel which debouched in the basin near the northern limits of the present town."
"Dr. Henry DeGroot, of the San Francisco Commercial Herald, who visited this region in the fall of 1870, speaks of its resources as follows: "There are many claims still unopened, affording opportunities for the profitable investment of millions of dollars in this divide;...the San Francisco capitalists can, any day, after having taken his breakfast, ride with the utmost comfort and at small cost into the very heart of this district, in time to take his supper. In making this brief and pleasant journey he will pass over such treasures of gold lying just a little beneath his feet, as he would never see upon bank counters, or in the capacious vaults of the Mint. It fills one with amazement....ten thousand men could find remunerative employment here for years, without exhausting these deposits, which could be so easily reached, and could hardly fail to prove immensely profitable.'"
"Deep placer mining....is usually covered several hundred feet deep with volcanic debris, and is about half a mile wide and 50' deep..... The portion that pays for working is usually about 3-4 hundred feet wide and from one to three feet deep, lying on and near the bedrock. The principal method has been to work through tunnels, shafts and inclines. When raised to the surface, the gold is easily washed out of the gravel through sluice-boxes....miners are receiving small returns for working portions of the deposit that were once considered worthless, and for working over again portions that paid very large returns for working before....At present the North Fork Mining Company...own over a mile of mining ground, and have a tunnel in progress that will strike the deposit at about 3,000 feet from the place of beginning.....The width of the deposit and the regular yield gives a permanence to the work being done in these towns and at present will probably take ten years to work through the deposit."
"Smith's Flat....lies to the south of Downieville, Sierra County, about eight miles. The place was named in honor of the discoverer of the diggings, who, following a ravine up the mountaide side from Kanaka Creek, and taking a fortune out as he went, reached a bench formation situated halfway from creek to summit, and opened on the southerly edge of one of the richest placer deposits ever worked in California. This was in 1850-51;...no vestige of the camp remains but the town of Alleghany (exists there). (Working the placer mines) was expensive, difficult and necessarily far from thorough or exhaustive; yet the yield of gold was enormous. From the (various claims) were taken (the sum total of) $190,000 in the space of a month. In October, 1870, the owners of the 'New York' claim discovered a very rich deposit of gravel which had been passed under by the original tunnel when on its course to the channel. The weekly yield from this deposit...was 104 ounces from the gravel got out by four men at the pick....Its extent has not yet been determined but enough has been prospected to denote that there is a very large body of it."
(Throughout this passage of text is the reference to the 'Blue Lead', the gravel vein which seems to carry this ore.) "A tunnel was projected that should be low enough to afford sure drainage for all the ground it was designed to work, and, indeed, low enough to drain the starting-point of the Blue Tunnel, the course of which it followed for 900 feet, at which point it deviated to the east sufficiently to leave 20 feet between them. In December, 1870, this tunnel was near 2,000 feet into the mountain, and was close in the vicity of a large body of unworked gravel of the Blue Lead. It is a key to the entire mountain, and there are strong probabilities that it will soon develop into a rich paying claim."
"East Grass Valley is also an extensive deposit of gold-bearing gravel. The Town Talk mine, on the south bank of Wolf Creek, has proved a success, although it is scarcely touched. The lead is there of washed gold. The Independence ground, adjoining the Town Talk, is no less valuable. Buena Vista slide, and the hills by the slide, are shown to be rich in gold. In this extensive gravel region prospectors are busy, and Grass Valley will undoubtedly soon be noted for its gravel mines, as it has been for years past for the successful working of quartz."
"The quartz mines of the county have again been exceedingly prosperous, and, with the exception of the great fire at the Empire mine in September, which swept the company's milling and hoisting works of of existence, nothing has occured to hinder steady prosperity."
"Few gold quartz veins in the world have yielded the precious metal as regularly and abundantly, year by year, as the Eureka of Grass Valley. The adjoining claim has been acquired by the Eureka company, 3,700 feet on the lode. The works are located a short distance, hardly a mile, from the town of Grass Valley, and overlook the village, which is one of the most delightfully situated places in California (this being written by Dr. Raymond who is more capable of pages and pages of dry facts and numbers). The veins at Grass Valley may be classed, according to their strike, into two systems-those running east and west, and those with a northwesterly and southeasterly strike. The Eureka belongs to the first class. It has, like all the veins of the system, a steep dip, the first 300 feet in depth, inclining 78 degrees south, while the portion so far opened below this point varies from 65 degrees to 70 degrees. The main shaft is very large 6' x 18' inside the timbers, and is divided into four compartments - two for hoisting, one for sinking ahead, and one for pumping. The nine-inch pumps are built in three sections, the first reaching down to the second level, 260'; the second from here to the the fourth level, 460' in depth, and the third to the sixth level, 255' lower....The thickness of the vein in the portions now accessible varies from 3 to 7 feet, and can be safely put down as 4 feet on average. I should mention this peculiarlity of this vein, which contributes largely towards cheapening and facilitating the work of extracting the ore. This is the distinct arrangement of two streaks of quartz-one along the foot-wall, and one on the hanging-wall--which are very frequently separated by a horse of from a few inches to 6 feet (that's what is says a 'horse') in thickness. This horse is so interwoven with with many small quartz-stringers, which are generally so rich in suphurets that the whole horse must go through the stamps. On the hanging-wall is a distinct selvage, and thrown down along the hanging-wall is a single blast. In a few localities both layers of quartz come together in the middle of the vein without having the horse in between. In these cases there is a line of quartz crystals visible, which fill the narrow cavity sometimes left. The whole vein shows very good evidence of the manner in which it has been formed. So-called 'banded-quartz' preponderates throughout the vein, and it is always found the richest in free gold and sulphurets. The vein is worked throughout by overhead stoping, shutes, 30 feet apart, being left open during subsequent filling-in of the stopes throughout the mine."
"The Eureka mill is a large structure running a crusher and thirty stamps, which reduce 66 tons of ore per day. The amalgamation process in use is the well-known blanket process."
One of the records remaining from this period is from the Eureka mine and is the annual report by the mine superintendent, William Watt. "We have driven 747 feet of drifts, and sunk 89 feet of winze (Now I know how to spell 'winze' <g>), and 86 feet of main shaft. We have also retimbered 100 feet of the main shaft, run 22 feet of a cross-cut and cut cistern plat 12 x 12 by 12 feet below the bottom of the sixth level. The extreme length of the six-level drifts is 228 feet, and the fifth-level drifts, 1,167 feet and we are extending same. We have hoisted 19,962 tons of quartz and crushed 20,562 tons in 306.5 days, averaging a little over 67 tons per day with 30 days for repairs, two of which were holidays."
Anyway...I am enjoying reading this and getting more of a familiarity with widths and depths, time, number of men, etc.
I wonder if the 'horse' being spoken of here is similar to Lionel's description of the deli sandwich with the 'meat' being found in Brush Creek a full eight feet thick!?
The Placer, Sierra and Nevada county descriptions contain all of the names that I saw; the Yuba River, Rattlesnake Bar (where it says a piece of gold quartz was found by a miner which weighed 106 lbs. and of which 97 lbs were almost pure gold), Placerville, Grass Valley, Nevada City, the Rough and Ready Mine, The Kate Hays Flat, Wolf Creek, Downieville, Alleghany, Auburn.
Now I am going to look at Aiko's site (come.to/BCMD) and study maps.
I am still hooked!
Charger |
