- 10/13/06 Due to new Earthcache requirements to log as a find
has changed.
- Email me the text of the sign at the posted coordinates.
- In the text of this cache page you will find a reference to the
distance that the monitor (when in action) can be dangerous. Look
down the barrel of the monitor to estimate the direction and walk
that distance using what you can (like a gps or paces) in the
direction that the monitor at the posted cordinates is pointed.
Email me what is there.
- Also a posted picture of anything in the area would be greatly
appreciated.
Diggins State Historical Park Parking fee required if you
are going to stay awhile. Please take some time and visit the
trails and the museum, it is a great history lesson and awesome
views.
This hole in the earth is 7,000 feet long- over a mile- 3,000
feet wide and as much as 600 feet deep at its peak. The Diggins
isn't like a quarry that resembles a massive hole in the ground,
instead the Diggins is a mountain washed away. And it took only a
few years to create this devastation. Now 130 years later,
vegetation has barely reclaimed the scar.
The diggins then... Gold was discovered in nearby creeks during
1851 by three miners escaping the congestion of Nevada City. When
their supplies ran low, a member of their party headed down into
Nevada City. After picking up supplies, he then visited his
favorite saloon but paid for a round of drinks with bits of gold,
thus piquing interest of the saloon's patrons. The man refused to
reveal the gold's source and no amount of prying worked the secret
from him. So he was secretly followed back to the discovery, now
present day North Bloomfield.
The area was soon overrun and any trace of gold evaporated. The
prospectors muttered the word 'humbug', and left- in turn naming
the stream Humbug Creek. For several years the area was quiet but
farmers settling the area continued to find flakes of gold. Soon
new claims were staked, and by 1857 the town of Humbug sprang up
and soon grew to 1700 residents including an ample Chinese
population. The town became the center of all area mines, including
the nearby Malakoff Mine which was producing a steady stream of
gold. Not feeling Humbug was a fitting title, the name of the town
was changed to the more pleasant sounding North Bloomfield.
The gold in Humbug Creek dried up again and many of the miners
left selling their claims to one man, Julius Poquillon, who's land
grew to some 1500 acres by 1865. Yet there was a great deal of gold
left. But unlike Coloma, it couldn't be simply plucked from the
ground. Nor was it held in quartz where it could be hard rock mined
like the nearby Empire Mine. It was stuck in layers of sediment in
the form of a low-grade fine dust. The gold here in the San Juan
Ridge was buried in "deep gravels" that were once ancient
riverbeds. Julius struck a deal with some investors in San
Francisco and created the Malakoff Diggins Mining and Gravel
Company. The name originated from French miners to commemorate the
capture of the Russian Fort Malakoff, near Sebastopol, in Europe's
Crimean War.
Julius employed a new form of mining discovered in 1852 called
Hydraulic Mining credited to Antoine Chabot who had used a simple
hose to wash loose gravel from his claim at Buckeye Hill. The
method was soon refined and by 1876, the operation was in full
swing employing the entire town to support the mining. Seven
massive monitors washed away the hillside day and night. The
monitors resembled a long cannon or modern-day fire hose
nozzle.
The seven monitors needed large amounts of water and army of 300
Chinese laborers worked on a grand scale to create reservoirs,
ditches, channels, diverting streams and rivers from all over
higher elevations. The water would be pulled by gravity down the
mountain through these channels at ever increasing speed. As it
flowed, the channel gradually became smaller and the pressure
increased. The water was fed through penstocks or hoses and shot
out of massive monitors, some as long as 10 feet in length. The
monitors articulated and could be directed at the hillsides as
powerful streams of water simply washed the hillside away. The
force of water was so great, it was said a 50 pound weight dropped
into the stream would be thrown hundreds of feet. It was recorded
that animals and people, struck by the force of the stream were
killed even at a distance of 200 feet away from the monitor.
The water and sediments were all collected into sluices. A sort
of man-made wooden channel. In the sluice, the gold particles were
heavier than the sludge and separated from the sediments. The waste
product was simply dumped into Humbug Creek. The creek however,
soon couldn't handle the volume. Hamilton Smith engineered one the
most impressive mining feats of the day- a drainage tunnel to reach
the South Yuba River. The tunnel was carved from solid bedrock and
was 8000 feet long. After 30 months of men working day and night to
complete the tunnel, water flowed through it into the South Yuba
River in later 1874. The tunnel enabled a feverish pace to reach
more gold. At its peak, the mine operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week producing 50,000 tons of gravel- per day.
The result though was tailings. The volume of the tailings grew
into millions of tons of cubic yards of dirt, mud, and fine silt.
This silt settled into river bottoms and created massive floods as
the mining continued. In Marysville on the Central Valley floor,
the city flooded after the river bottom rose higher than the town.
The city of Sacramento flooded while the silt traveled down the
American River all the way to San Francisco Bay bungling shipping
in the Carquinez Straight. All this in less than ten years.
Numerous legal challenges ensued as both sides went head to
head.
Unlike most other area mines, Malakoff Diggins didn't come to a
close because the gold ran out, instead in 1884 the constant legal
battle ended when a federal judge granted a permanent injunction
against this practice of depositing the tailings into the Yuba
River. In effect, this method of hydraulic mining became illegal.
By 1884, over four million dollars in gold was pulled from
forty-one million yards of earth. By the turn of the century,
hydraulic mining wasn't profitable and the mine closed up shop.
Malakoff Diggins was the richest and largest hydraulic mining
operation in the known world at that time. Yet as far as anyone can
tell, there's still tons of gold left at Malakoff Diggins.