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The Other California Gold: Trinity County Placer Mining, 1848-1962

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The Other California Gold: Trinity County Placer Mining, 1848-1962 Technical Service Center U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Denver, Colorado Prepared by Jim Bailey, Ph.D. Historian Project Tracking No: 07-NCAO-211 August 2008 Table of Contents Purpose of this Historic Context Statement .............................................................. 1 Historic Source Materials and Research: An Overview ........................................... 3 Introduction: Trinity County Placer Gold ................................................................. 6 Physical Setting and Geology ................................................................................... 8 Trinity Placer Gold I: Pick, Pan, Rocker, and Wheel .............................................. 10 Trinity Placer Gold II: By Any Hydraulic Means Necessary .................................. 21 Trinity Placer Gold III: “The Golden Fleet” ............................................................. 41 Conclusion and Significance: Trinity County Placer Gold Mining, 1848-1962 ....... 61 Evaluation, Design, and Research, National Register Criteria and Eligibility ......... 65 Integrity and Criteria of Eligibility ........................................................................... 70 Research Design and Questions ................................................................................ 76 Glossary of Placer Mining Terms ............................................................................. 79 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 83 i Figure 1: Regional location of the Trinity River Restoration Project ...................... 90 Figure 2: 500 year flood plain delineated along the Trinity River near Lewiston .................................................................................................... 91 Figure 3: 500 year flood plain delineated along the Trinity River near Douglas City ............................................................................................. 92 Figure 4: 500 year flood plain delineated along the Trinity River near Helena ...... 93 Table 1: Monetary Value, Mineral Production, Trinity County, 1880-1962 ........... 95 Table 2: Trinity County’s Percentage of California Gold Production, 1880-1932 ............................................................................................ 97 Table 3: Placer Mining Claims Within Area of Potential Effect (APE) Map of APE, Mine Claims by Number ............................................................... 99 Table 4: APE Sites Recorded During Trinity River Restoration Projects ................ 103 ii Photo on front cover: Estabrook Dredge on the Trinity River above Old Trinity Center. Plate 1: A panner played a key role at a test site determining color of ore; Typical miner – Minersville area ................................................................ 11 Plate 2: A typical miners tunnel, 1906 Coffee Creek .............................................. 12 Plate 3: Downtown Lewiston and old Lewiston Bridge, 1916 ................................ 16 Plate 4: Hydraulic mining at Canyon Creek near Junction City .............................. 23 Plate 5: Siphon to bring water to a hydraulic mine in Trinity County ..................... 30 Plate 6: Tail end of a wooden mining flume ............................................................ 31 Plate 7: Hydraulic mining in the Lewiston Area, Scenes 1 ..................................... 39 Plate 8: Hydraulic mining in the Lewiston Area, Scenes 2 ..................................... 40 Plate 9: Poker Bar dredge, one of the early types of dredges .................................. 42 Plate 10: Payne and Wade Dredge, the first dredge at Trinity Center ..................... 43 Plate 11: A keystone drill prospecting near Trinity Center 1915-1920; A keystone drill prospecting for gold near Trinity Center ........................ 47 Plate 12: Trinity (Mary Smith) Dredge near Lewiston ............................................ 50 Plate 13: Lewiston (Valdor) Dredge at Junction City .............................................. 51 Plate 14: Pacific Gold Dredge hull near Spring Town, 1915; Pacific Gold Dredge at Coffee Creek ........................................................ 52 Plate 15: Weaver Dredging Company drag-line dredge on Weaver Creek, 1937-1940 ................................................................................................. 57 1937-1941 Plate 16: Tailings piles at the mouth of Oregon Gulch near Junction City ............. 71 Plate 17: Drag-line dredge abandoned at Hayfork ................................................... 72 iii Purpose of this Historic Context Statement The nineteenth century California Gold Rush is well documented in the American historic record, with the Sierra Nevada mines getting the bulk of attention from historians of all specialties: social, political, cultural, economic, environmental, technological, mining, and gender, to name a few. On the other hand, the state’s isolated northwestern counties get little attention as to their contributions to California’s gold economy. Counties like Siskiyou and Trinity had their own mineral extraction-fueled economies similar to the Sierra Nevada gold-producing counties. But there are two major differences that work against these counties: isolation from the Sierra mainstream and the rest of California, and their smaller relative scale of production, as measured in the monetary worth of gold (and other minerals) extracted in comparison to the rest of the state. Like the Sierra’s historic mining landscapes, California’s northwestern counties still retain evidence of wealth-seeking and mineral extraction activities, especially in the form of placer gold mines (see glossary). In Trinity County (Figure 1), the remains of this placer gold mining activity are visually present along the Trinity River’s banks, bars, and major tributaries in the form of mine tailings and debris piles, and in the altered physical landscapes of large and small industrial hydraulic gold mining ventures. The remnants of one of the Earth’s largest and most productive placer gold mines, LaGrange, is located a few miles west of the county seat of Weaverville. The research and interpretive focus of this historic context statement is placer gold mining within Trinity County, specifically, mining activity that took place along a forty- mile stretch of the Trinity River from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Lewiston Dam to the town of Helena (Figures 2-4). This study area also includes major tributary confluences, such as Oregon Gulch, the debris-filled drainage that led to LaGrange Mine. It is here that the placer mine-pocked riparian landscape is undergoing a series of restoration activities that have been identified by a comprehensive federal plan to implement recovery of the Trinity River and its anadromous fish and wildlife populations. This plan is executed through the Trinity River Restoration Program 1 (TRRP) and includes direct in-channel actions, continued watershed restoration activities, replacement of bridges and other structures within the floodplain, and a rigorous program to monitor and improve alluvial restoration activities. TRRP does not strive to recreate pre-dam conditions. The goal is to create a smaller, dynamic alluvial channel exhibiting all the characteristics of the pre-dam river, but at a smaller scale. The historic remnants of placer gold mining activities along the study area still exist, mostly in the form of debris and tailing piles left behind by gold dredges, as well as infrastructural relics of industrial hydraulic mining operations of all sizes. Commercial gravel mining operations have leveled many of these tailing piles and the TRRP plans for riparian improvements include leveling more historic tailings and debris piles for gravel and fill. This document is designed to serve two purposes. First, it will provide the historic context needed to evaluate the remains of Trinity River placer mining activity for historic significance under National Register of Historic Places (National Register) guidelines and criteria. Second, using these guidelines and criteria, it will provide the necessary framework and context to help the Bureau of Reclamation any historic mining properties and sites identified in the future for potential National Register eligibility. The framework for placer mining will not only be applicable to mining properties in Trinity County, but also to such properties throughout California. A few notes about the historic context statement are in order. First are monetary worth numbers connected with county and state gold production discussed in the text and listed in Tables 1 and 2. All numbers reflect the price of gold at the time of extraction, which varied between $20 and $35 per fine ounce. Second, although this historic context statement focuses on placer gold mining as opposed to lode mining (see glossary), the monetary numbers reported to the state do not differentiate between lode and placer production; this is an unavoidable research and interpretive limitation. Lastly, California’s counties did not officially report their gold production numbers to the state mineralogist’s office until 1880, so any Trinity County gold production numbers from the first thirty-two years of the period of significance (1848-1962) must be considered approximate based on reliable local sources. 2 Historic Source Materials and Research: An Overview
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