Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.
html
Figure 29: River mining, Grand Mountain Bar, California, circa 1856.
(Photograph courtesy of George Eastman House, Rochester, New
York)
Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

Dr. Randall Rohe
Dr. Randall Rohe is a Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.
He is the author of numerous articles on the history of mining and mining landscapes,
including "Gold Mining Landscapes of the West." Following is a copy of the paper he
presented at the Settler Communities in the West Symposium.
His article traces the effects on the western landscape of precious metal mining and
especially the effects of various forms of technology. Different types of mining and refining
methods have various remainsï¿½head frames at mine entrances, the cut-up landscape of
hydraulicking, and the torn-up stream beds from dredging are but three of many examples
of historic mining resources.
I am going to try, as best possible in the space allowed, to provide an overview of historic
mining in the American West between 1848 and 1942. My focus will be solely on gold and
silver mining which initiated settlement in much of the West and greatly influenced so much
of the region's subsequent development. Even with this focus, realize that much had to be
left out. The works cited in the end notes provide much more detail on the topics that are
discussed in this overview.
Most gold occurs in the form of lode or placer deposits. The term "placer" probably
originated from the Spanish plaza de oro, a place of gold, and simply meant a surface
working. Most placer deposits consist of gravels that contain gold that has been freed from
the rock by weathering and erosion. Lode deposits consist of gold and silver still contained
within the rock. Gold, which is chemically inert, retains its original form while being eroded,
transported, and deposited, and therefore readily forms placers. Silver, on the other hand,
which combines readily with most acids and forms soluble compounds, is not ordinarily
found in placer deposits. Placer mining remained the chief source of gold until 1873, when
lode mining surpassed it in importance. While lode mining began in California during
1 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Mining and Western Settlement Patterns file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html
1849-50, it contributed relatively little of the total gold output until 1860.1
In the American West both placer and lode gold occur primarily in areas that have been
subjected to tectonic activity (that is, mountain building). In areas where no geological
disturbance has taken place, so that the rocks still lie horizontal, such mineral deposits are
rare or inferior in value. Reflecting this, maps of gold and silver mining districts show that
most of them followed the mountain ranges, while few districts came into being in the
Columbia and Snake River Plateau and the Colorado Plateau. The four leading states, in
order of total gold output, are California, Colorado, South Dakota and Nevada.2
Like gold, silver occurred in the mountains rather than the level parts of the West because
the deposits originated during periods of earth movement, when ascending hot liquids
flowed into fissures and cracks in the earth's crust and formed "veins" that wind and twist
through the older rock as veins do through the human body. Sometimes the hot ore-bearing
solutions rising from below actually penetrated solid rock, perhaps aided by minute cracks,
dissolved it, and substituted new minerals for the original matter forming "replacement
deposits." The Comstock of Nevada, discovered in 1859, was the first major silver district in
the United States. Historically, Montana ranks first in silver production, followed by Utah,
Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. By far the most important silver-producing state
today is Idaho ï¿½mostly from the Coeur d'Alene districtï¿½ followed by Arizona, Utah,
Montana, and Colorado.3
MINING METHODS
The traditional methods of placer mining consisted of panning, rocking, tomming, and
sluicing. Generally, the pan or the batea (a wooden bowl) was used only for prospecting. It
was not used in actual mining operations except for working extremely rich deposits on a
small scale. In order to work placer deposits on a larger scale, other methods were
employed. The first was called a cradle/rocker because it resembled a baby's cradle.
Essentially, the rocker consisted of a wooden box mounted on rockers and open at its lower
end; riffles nailed across the bottom caught the gold.4
The long tom eventually evolved into the sluice which consisted of long, narrow, open
troughs, usually twelve feet long by one to two feet wide and ten inches high. Both ends of
the sluice were open, with one end a little wider to permit the addition of more sections. At
times sluices reached lengths of several thousand feet. Most historians believe former
Southern Appalachian miners introduced the sluice into California in 1850.5
River mining or river turning came into vogue in California during the 1850s. It consisted of
the use of dams, ditches, and flumes to divert streams from their natural beds. The miners
then worked the drained stream bed with pans, rockers, long tomes, or sluices. While not
peculiar to California, river mining probably reached its greatest development there. Even
early views of river mining show clearly the extensive nature of this mining technique (Figure
29). River mining required capital, planning, and coordinated labor, and generally joint stock
companies undertook such operations. The largest river mining operations occurred in
California during the 1880s and 1890s. The Golden Feather Channel Company's undertaking
on the Feather River in Butte County is characteristic of the large-scale river mining projects
attempted during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its operations included ten miles
of roads, three separate camps for up to three hundred miners, workshops, and a canal forty
2 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
feet wide and six thousand feet long.6
As the surface or recent placers neared exhaustion, prospecting moved to the gravel hills of
"tertiary gravels." The "tertiary gravels" were extensive gold bearing deposits laid down by
streams approximately fifty million years ago and subsequently buried by as much as fifteen
hundred feet of younger gravels and volcanic material. These "deep" or "buried gravels"
were first worked by driftingï¿½the excavation of auriferous gravel by shafts, tunnels,
galleries, and gangways, and extraction of the gold by one of the traditional methods, usually
sluicing. The early drifting operations consisted of shafts ten to thirty-five feet deep from
which extended drifts six to twenty-eight feet long. From such crude beginnings, drifting
evolved into a distinct branch of mining. Tunnels one thousand to two thousand feet long
became common and some approached three thousand feet. Some of the California drift
mines eventually reached lengths of over two miles and extended over a mile underground.
The relatively extensive tertiary gravels of California enabled drifting to reach an importance
rarely found on later mining frontiers. The Big Dipper Mine, Iowa Hill, California, which
produced $1.2 million in gold, is representative of the large scale drift mines of the 1870s
and 1880s.7
In the 1850s the development of hydraulicking afforded another means of working the "deep
diggings." Hydraulic mining utilized a jet of water issuing under high pressure from a nozzle
to excavate and wash the gravel through sluices that caught the gold and disposed of the
tailings. Hydraulicking enabled four or five men to do the work of fifty men using the
traditional methods. It was mass production applied to mining. Large scale, heavily
capitalized operations became common.8
One final major form of placer mining developed during the nineteenth century. Many of the
large rivers that drained the goldfields contained millions of yards of low grade auriferous
gravels. The means to mine them came in the 1890s with the advent of the gold dredge. A
dredge consisted of a flatbottom boat equipped with excavating and gold-washing
machinery. The most prominent feature of the dredge was the massive bow ladder or boom,
around which circled the endless bucket line which did the excavating. Some dredges
showed a profit with a recovery of gold of only nine cents a cubic yard. Further, a dredge
had the capability of working the entire unobstructed length of river channel.
In May 1895, before a large gathering of onlookers at Bannack, Montana, the Fielding L.
Graves, the first successful American connected-bucket dredge, slipped into the waters of
Grasshopper Creek, inaugurating "the Dawn of a New Era of Placer Mining Methods,"
according to a local newspaper editor. A hydroelectric generator, supplied from a water line,
powered the dredge. The Graves, equipped with five cubic feet buckets and a fifteen-foot
ladder, dug to a depth of twenty-five feet.9
By the turn of the century, it was clear that dredging would revolutionize placer mining. In
1900, twenty-seven gold dredges operated in the U.S. (sixteen in California, six in Idaho and
five in Montana), and produced more than $520,000. Dredging peaked in the teens. In 1914
almost eighty dredges operated in various parts of the West. Even the early dredges moved
eight hundred to fifteen hundred cubic yards of material daily. By 1912 dredges that handled
upwards of ten thousand cubic yards a day existed. The last dredges to operate in the West
were huge affairs that reached depths of seventy-five to one hundred feet.10
3 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Placer mining eventually led to the discovery and exploitation of hardrock or lode deposits.
The first California lode mine began operations near Mariposa in 1849. Lode mining
required tunnels, shafts, and other excavations to remove the gold and silver bearing ores.
The U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) counted over three thousand shafts, tunnels, pits, and
prospect holes in a recent survey of the Leadville district in Colorado. The actual extent of
the underground workings exceeds 250 miles. Until about 1875, the principal tools of the
lode miners were hand drills and black powder. Under such technology, mining advanced
about nine to ten feet a day. During the 1850s, the deepest shafts in the California lode mines
went down only about three hundred feet. Often a deposit was worked by a tunnel into a
hillside or even an open cut. The introduction of machine drills and dynamite, however,
made it possible for mining operations to proceed much faster.11
Unlike placer deposits, the ores removed by lode mining required considerable processing.
To accomplish this, the early miners used an arrastra, a circular depression half filled with
mineral-bearing rock, surrounded by a coping wall to hold in the ore. A supported center
pole had a bar that extended beyond the coping. The bar, which could be rotated about the
pole, was attached at one end to a horse or mule and to one or two large, heavy stones on
the other. As the animal circled the arrastra, it dragged the stones across the ore and ground
it up. Later, water power replaced horse and mule power, and in hundreds of mining
operations throughout the West the waterwheel became a common sight. Although a crude
means of ore processing, the arrastra had a great spatial and temporal use. It saw use in
mining districts from California to the Black Hills and from northern Idaho to southern
Arizona. As late as 1871, over 290 of them operated in California, Arizona, Nevada,
Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. Some were used even as late as the 1930s and '40s. As a
result, today the remains of arrastras are found throughout the West.12
Next came the stamp mill. Simple but effective, stamp mills crushed the rocks under heavy
iron pestles whose movement was controlled by a cam shaft. Though the noisy machines had
been used for centuries in Europe, in 1851 California miners made a notable improvement,
adding replaceable shoes and mounting them to rotate freely and thus wear out evenlyï¿½a
feature which gained world-wide acceptance. Employed all through the West, a few stamp
mills in various stages of decay dot the region's mining districts.
The first stamp mills consisted of a series of wood stampers, each covered with iron, that
fitted into iron boxes into which the gold quartz was placed. By utilizing cogs of cams, the
stampers fell into the boxes with a pile-driver action, ultimately crushing the ore to a fine
consistency. The larger the operation, the more stampers were required. Many later mills had
a hundred or more steampowered stamps.13
Mills varied widely according to local conditions, particularly the composition of the ores;
yet many features were common. Though silver refining was usually more complex than
gold, both metals often occurred in the same rocks and were treated similarly. The
machinery reduced the ore by successive stages, starting with the rock breaker, continuing
with the stamp mill, and passing on to the pans and settling devices. Among the many pieces
of equipment utilized were concentrating tables, pulverizing mutters and dies, and amalgam
retorts. Chemicals, including mercury, were also added at various stages.14
GOLD RUSH MIGRATIONS AND GOLDFIELD POPULATIONS
4 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Almost all of the American gold rushes began with the discovery of placer gold. Placer
deposits offered the possibility of quick and large returns with relatively simple mining
methods, and thereby stimulated extensive migrations. A huge and rapid influx of population
perhaps best characterizes the American gold rushes. The California gold rush amply
illustrates these characteristics. Within a few months of the discovery of gold in 1848, the
vanguard of the rush appeared. Less than ten thousand people migrated to the California
goldfields that year. The combined total for the rush of 1849-50, however, probably
approached 250,000. Whatever the exact dimensions of the California gold rush, it produced
a dramatic increase in population. California contained a population of perhaps fourteen
thousand Euro-Americans in 1848. From this figure, the population increased to more than
100,000 by January 1, 1850.15
Each gold rush, to a greater or lesser degree, possessed a cosmopolitan quality. Of the
American gold rushes, the California rush attained the greatest degree of ethnic diversity.
The discovery of gold in California attracted people from almost every part of the world.
According to the 1850 census, the foreign element, not including Spanish Californians,
accounted for some 24 percent of the population, a figure over twice as great as for the
United States as a whole. Despite their ethnic diversity, native-born Americans dominated
most of the gold rushes.16
As might be expected, young males dominated the mining rushes to an extreme. Partial
records for 1849 indicate that males formed approximately 97 percent of the California rush
overland and more than 98 percent of the rush by sea. The majority of women who arrived
in 1849 resided outside the goldfields.The rush of 1850 saw a slight increase in the number
of female participants. That year females accounted for almost 7 percent of the rush by sea
and perhaps 5 percent of the overland rush. The census of 1850 for California placed the
female population at less than 8 percent; in mining counties the proportion fell below 2
percent. The census of 1852 revealed that females accounted for approximately 13 percent
of the population. In most of the mining counties, females accounted for 5 percent or less of
the population. In Grass Valley-Nevada City the sex ratio remained almost twice the national
average as late as 1870. The gold rushes to Colorado, Montana, Idaho and elsewhere also
were dominated by males.17
Besides being dominantly male, the participants of the gold rushes generally were below
middle age, "both because the venture had appealed originally to young men and because the
trip to California and the life in the mines were too trying to be endured by those who no
longer possessed the recuperative powers of youth." A contemporary observer thought that
perhaps two-thirds of those involved in the California rush between 1849 and 1851 averaged
between twenty and thirty-five years of age. According to the census of 1850, more than half
the white males ranged between twenty and thirty years old. The post-California rushes
displayed a similar age distribution. Over 50 percent of the total population of Colorado in
1860, for example, was between twenty and thirty years of age, 85 percent was between
twenty and forty years of age.18
Time after time, the placer deposits proved too limited for the large numbers brought by the
gold rushï¿½a fact reflected in the characteristic mobility displayed by a gold rush
population. One recent historian estimates that up to 80 percent of the maximum population
of a new mining district consisted of drifters. In a memorable simile, Hugh H. Bancroft
5 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
described the fluidity of the mining population of Idaho: "The miners of Idaho were like
quicksilver. A mass of them dropped in any locality, broke up into individual globules, and
ran off after any atom of gold in their vicinity. They stayed nowhere longer than the gold
attracted them." The mobility characteristic of mining resulted in large turnovers within the
population of any given mining settlement. Descriptions of an embryonic mining town
invariably contained phrases like men "coming in and going out every day" and "full of
transient people. " Of the population of Grass Valley-Nevada City, California in 1850, only
about five out of every hundred remained in 1856. The portion of the population devoted to
mining proved the most unstable. Of those engaged in mining in Nevada City-Grass Valley in
1850, only about 4 percent remained in 1856. The professional and artisan classes proved
less transient. Even among these groups, however, four out of five left between
1850-1856.19
The bulk of the miners in most placer regions were initially native-born Americans and
European immigrants, with Americans in the majority. The American dominance of the
goldfields often ended or considerably lessened at the end of the flush production period.
The exhaustion of the rich surface placers necessitated the employment of capital on a large
scale and corporate methods to work the deep diggings. Many of the original miners turned
to other occupations or moved to new mining regions. In area after area, men of foreign
birth replaced the original miners after the flush production period. Chinese usually
supplanted the original miners in the placer areas. The Chinese excelled in saving gold,
especially fine gold, under difficult conditions. They worked the deposits either abandoned
or considered worthless by white miners and added thousands of acres to the total area
worked by the traditional methods. As yields declined, almost every placer region received
its complement of Chinese, who became ubiquitous in the mining West.20
Before the California gold rush, Chinese migration to the U.S. was negligible. In the twenty
years, from 1820 to l840, only eleven Chinese immigrated to America, and from 1840-1850
but 335. Of the latter, three hundred arrived in California during 1849. In 1852 Chinese
immigration increased dramatically, to fifteen thousand to twenty thousand a year. In the
1850s and 60s the Chinese population of the United States was concentrated almost entirely
in California with approximately 80 percent of that in the goldfields. During their first decade
in the West, most Chinese worked in the mines, about 75 percent of them by the early
1860s. The Chinese, by the 1870s, had spread to almost every major placer area of the West.
The late 1860s and early 1870s, in fact, probably marked the near peak of Chinese mining. In
1870, mining employed less than a third of the Chinese population, but the Chinese
represented over 25 percent of all miners. In some individual states, the Chinese accounted
for one-half to almost two-thirds of all miners.21
Among the hardrock miners, there was a tendency for the foreign born to undertake the
manual labor and underground work, while Americans specialized in the operation of the
machinery and other complicated equipment. The most experienced miner in any deep mine
before the early 1860s was likely to have been a Mexican, who had previously worked in the
mines of northern Mexico. Starting in the mid 1860s, the Cornish and Irish made up the
majority of the miners in the most important lode districts. During the 1860s, mining in
Cornwall fell on hard times that became a severe depression during the 70s. At least a
quarter and perhaps a third of the mining population left Cornwall between 1871 and 1881.
Many of them migrated to the mining districts of the American West. With a long experience
in lode mining, the Cornish contributed much to the improvement of mining methods. The
6 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Cornish were adept at sinking shafts and drilling tunnels, at timbering and blasting, at rock
drilling, and mine drainage. "Wherever a pit was found, a cousin Jack would be there digging
away at the bottom of it." At least a tenth of the mining population of Nevada during the
1860s and 1870s was Cornish, with notable concentrations along the Comstock at Virginia
City, Gold Hill, and Silver City. Almost everywhere there was a lode mine, however, there
would be at least some Cornish. After the decline of the Comstock, the majority of the
Cornish there "sought new fields to conquer, scattering in all directions: Butte, Montana;
Leadville, Colorado; Tombstone, Arizona; Bodie, California." The peak of Cornish
participation in mining occurred during the late 1880s and early 1890s. Thereafter Southern
Europeans, especially Italians, or Eastern Europeans, such as the Poles, became
prominent.22
TRANSPORTATION AND SUPPLY
Great distances characteristically separated the goldfields from existing settlement. The rapid
development of the Western goldfields, therefore, depended on an equally rapid
development of transportation routes. While each rush brought about the use of different
routes, the development of those routes followed a similar pattern. The gold rushes brought
an accelerated use and fixed the location of many established routes. At other times, the
mining rushes developed alternatives and cutoffs to the existing routes. Many of those routes
survive to the present in one way or another. Portions of U.S. Highways 26, 30, 40, 50 and
other important roads, for example, traverse the general line of the California Trail.
Especially in the eastern plains, time and man have nearly obliterated all traces of the
overland routes to the goldfields. In other places, grass-grown ruts extend for miles. In some
areas, iron-rimmed wagon wheels left distinct cuts in solid rock.23
The significance of the gold rushes to the evolution of transportation probably best displays
itself in the establishment of routes within the goldfields. For the most part, the gold
discoveries occurred in largely unsettled areas devoid of all but the most primitive
transportation routes. The advent of mining, especially lode mining, however, caused the
rapid development and expansion of transportation. With lode mining the miners had to haul
ore down to the mills and supplies back to the mines and built narrow, crude roads along the
steep valleys. Many of the secondary roads and mining trails between the mines and the mills
and smelters of the mining towns have survived in some way.24
The rugged and steep slopes in many sections of the Colorado Rockies made the
transportation of the ore from the mines to the mills very difficult and expensive. A solution
used in a number of areas was the aerial tramway. With the end of mining, of course, the
tramways lost their usefulness and were abandoned. Often, however, the line of their routes
is still visible in the present landscape, especially where fills or cuts were required.
Sometimes, ruins of the tramway itself still survive.25
Pack trains provided the most universal immediate answer for the demand for supplies
created by the influx of population occasioned by mining. The high cost of this type of
transportation, however, soon induced the construction of roads to reduce freight costs. The
extension of wagon roads pushed packing depots farther into the goldfields. Eventually,
roads connected most of the main mining settlements with their supply bases. Pack trains,
thereafter, operated only where sparse population, rugged terrain or other factors excluded
profitable road construction.26
7 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
While geology restricted gold mining almost exclusively to the Trans-Mississippian West, its
influence transcended the goldfields and the West itself. The nature of mining prevented its
self-sufficiency. As a result, mining acted as a stimulus and support for other economic
activities, including transportation, trade, agriculture, lumbering, and manufacturing. Mining
supplied the urban centers, markets, and capital necessary for the development and
expansion of transportation to and within the mining regions, and resulted in the
development of outfitting and supply towns and attendant transportation routes.
The development of supply points during the California gold rush illustrates the basic
principles that repeat themselves over and over throughout the mining West during the
nineteenth century. The majority of goods from the Atlantic seaboardï¿½the principal source
of supplies for Californiaï¿½reached the state via ocean steamers or sailing vessels. From the
start, San Francisco assumed the role of leading port and major supply center for the
California goldfields. San Francisco merchants eventually shipped much of these goods via
steam or sail up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers into the Central Valley. Here
numerous points aspired to become secondary supply centers. Eventually, of all the
aspirants, Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville became the principal interior distributing
centers for the mines. From Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville, pack trains and wagons
hauled supplies to the larger mining towns serving as trans-shipment points. The "heads of
whoa navigation" or sub-depots were usually the larger and strategically located mining
towns like Auburn. From the sub-depots, pack trains carried the supplies to the various
mining camps of the surrounding districts.27
The growth of supply centers in the rest of the West approximated that of California. In the
1860s, for example, important gold discoveries occurred in Idaho and northeastern Oregon.
These goldfields naturally looked to Portland for supplies. Although it remained subordinate
to San Francisco as a port, Portland developed into an important distributing point.
Ocean-going steamers and sailing vessels either carried goods from San Francisco to
Portland, or to a lesser degree directly to Portland. From Portland, river steamers
transported the supplies up the Columbia and Snake Rivers into the interior of the
Northwest. At various upriver points, a number of towns developed as trans-shipment
points. These included The Dalles, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Wallula on the Columbia and
Lewiston on the Snake. From these points, wagons or pack trains carried the goods to
larger, strategically located mining towns like Idaho City, and then from there to the outlying
mining settlements.28
With time, railroads played an increasing role in supplying the mining areas. The extension of
railroads into and through the West especially facilitated the development of lode mining. It
made it much easier to transport heavy mining and milling equipment, coal and other fuels,
timber and lumber, and other supplies to the mining districts, and to bring out the ore or
bullion. Prices for all commodities, including labor, began to decline. Often the end of mining
precipitated a significant decline in the traffic on the railroads that served the mining regions.
Sometimes, in fact, it was enough to eventually cause the abandonment of the line.29
URBANIZATION
Unlike previous frontiers, the mining frontier was a decidedly urban one. There were several
types of mining communities. The most common was the camp: a straggling settlement that
might vary in size from a few houses to a small town. More impressive was the mining town,
8 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
a larger settlement with a somewhat less ephemeral existence, and some pretensions to
substantiality. Mining settlements associated with the traditional methods in California
usually had a population of less than five hundred, commonly less than one hundred.30
Settlements associated with river mining proved particularly transitory. In 1858, the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin described one such scene:
Upon a single stream within a distance of a few miles, during the busy season
in the fall, four or five thousand miners may be employed. Canvas towns, with
stores, express office, and drinking and eating saloons, spring up like magic,
and are noisy and populous. But the first winter rain destroys the whole busy
picture. The flumes, wheels and tools, or as much of them as is possible, are
hastily broken up, taken out of the river . . . and shortly afterwards sold at
auction . . . The miners pack up their things and hasten to their winter claims.
31
Settlements brought into existence by

the exploitation of deep gravels
typically proved larger and more
stable; populations of several thousand
were not unusual.
The exploitation of gold and silver

gave life to thousands of settlements
throughout the West. The California
town pictured in Figure 30 was laid
out along a winding pack mule trail in
1848. It went through a series of
Figure 30: Placerville, California, 1850. Not long namesï¿½Dry Diggings, Old Dry
after the date of this photograph, Borthwick Diggings, Ravine City, and Hangtown.
described Placerville as one long straggling street of After six years of growth and a
clapboard houses and log cabins. Unlike many early population of some two thousand,
mining towns, it survives to the present. (Photograph Hangtown gained incorporation as
courtesy of the Wells Fargo Bank History Room) Placerville. Not long after the date of
this photo, Borthwick described
Placerville as one long straggling street
of clapboard houses and log cabinsï¿½a street that was in many places knee-deep in mud
with debris strewn everywhereï¿½the result of mining operations. Typically, early
photographs and sketches of mining towns indicate a scarcity of timber. Often, in fact, they
show only a few scattered trees with no undergrowth and little or no dense growth nearby.
The streams on which the town stood became the gutters for their garbage and sewage. A
classic photo of Central City, Colorado, shows outhouses built on stilts over Clear Creek.
Pollution became so bad in Telluride, Colorado, that the city council hired men to remove
dead animals, garbage, and other refuse from the San Miguel River.32
Mining settlements widely separated in time and space bore a remarkable resemblance.
Mining town after mining town evolved similarlyï¿½a morphological development that
differed noticeably from most Eastern towns. The typical mining town began with its
commercial area closely built up, along streets specially laid out for its development. Many
mining towns, in fact, first consisted of little more than a compact business district on a
single street. Early Deadwood, South Dakota, for instance, reportedly contained "two
9 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
business houses in every twenty foot front" (Figure 31). As with most mining towns, the
business district of Deadwood extended along its main street and contained a multiplicity of
establishments, seemingly a far greater number than warranted by its population. Behind the
principal streets and the business district stood the majority of the residences. The miners,
however, often built their residences apart from the main part of town, scattered along the
ravines and hills for convenient access to their claims.33
Corresponding with the rapid appearance of towns came an acceleration of the whole
process of settlement. Businessmen, tradesmen, and other typical inhabitants of established
settlement appeared almost simultaneously with the miners. Within a relatively short time
came schools, churches, theaters, and other trademarks of civilization. Early descriptions of
Deadwood clearly display the acceleration of the settlement process on the mining frontier.
In the span of five months, Deadwood evolved from a pine forest to a city of over three
thousand people, stretching for more than a mile. It contained "nearly 200 business houses, a
municipal government, mayor, board of alderman, police and all the other officers necessary
for the administration of justice."34
Victorian-style architecture dominated the mining towns. Styles that evolved over many
years in the East all appeared within a relatively short time in the mining settlements,
creating an eclectic mixture. New styles from the East as well as earlier styles from older
mining areas influenced the architectural development of a mining settlement. The mining
towns were, in effect, architectural melting pots in which the major styles overlapped, fused,
and were sometimes combined.35
The mining frontier itself produced

little that was new architecturally.
Various Eastern architectural styles,
occasionally modified to fit local
conditions, characterized most mining
communities. In Colorado,
consideration for climate notably
altered the Eastern styles. One
observer noted that the heavy snow
loads required increased roof pitches
and bracing, and the mountain climate
made porches largely ornamental and
caused a reduction in their size. The
difficulty of constructing basements
resulted in their elimination. The often
small residential lots resulting from
the rugged terrain necessitated the
crowding of homes together. Homes
were often only two or three feet
apart, eliminating the use of side
windows. Otherwise, the basic floor
plans that served middle-class
Midwesterners also found common
acceptance in the mature mining Figure 31: Wall Street, Deadwood, Dakota Territory,
Fall 1877. (Photograph by F. Jay Haynes, courtesy of
towns.36 the Haynes Foundation Collection, Montana
10 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Historical Society, Helena, Montana, #H-119)

As the mining settlements grew, the
architecture reflected their growth and change. First, substantial wood-frame buildings
became common and later brick and stone gained increasingly widespread use. Helena,
Montana was founded on 30 October 1864, and by March 1865, it contained a population of
one thousand. A photo of Bridge Street in 1865 clearly displays the typical architecture of an
early mining town (Figure 32). In the upper right-hand corner, note the low log cabins that
served as residences. The business establishments, too, were largely of logsï¿½though larger
and with frame false fronts. A contemporary observer described Helena in 1865 as consisting
of a narrow street between double files of straggling log cabins. Four years later, the same
observer noted, "Low log-cabins with their dirt-roofs have been replaced by substantial
stone buildings and frame structures, the streets have been graded and supplied with plank
walks."37
Wherever they settled, the Chinese grouped together in Chinese camps or Chinatowns. The
Chinese generally set up camps characterized by small tents and brush houses near their
claims, generally on the banks of a stream. The manuscript census of 1850 showed a
conspicuous lack of large Chinese camps in the mining areas of California. Later, in groups
of a hundred or more, the Chinese banded together in short-lived villages throughout the
mining region or occupied camps deserted by white miners. The structures of Chinese
mining camps consisted of everything from rock shelters to dugouts to log cabins to canvas
tents. Whatever the structure, they functioned largely as residential units for an almost
exclusively male population. Their use by the Chinese is easy to identify today by the
occurrences of Chinese ceramics, earthenware, opium tins and pipes, etc. Further, while the
Chinese camps have physically disappeared, another aspect of Chinese settlement often
survivedï¿½place names such as China Camp, China Diggings, Chinese Camp, and China
Bar.38
While the Chinese founded a few exclusively Chinese towns like the Lava Beds, Hong Kong,
and Peking Point, their larger settlements usually took the form of an enclave (Chinatown)
within a larger white mining community. Some towns restricted the Chinese by ordinance to
a certain section of town; other camps achieved the same result by accepted practice. This
segregation was not completely forced. It provided a means for the Chinese to retain their
culture and social institutions. During the early years, nearly all the inhabitants of mining
town Chinatowns were young males; very few, except for a handful of merchants and
professionals claimed any personal wealth or real estate. Chinese families and children were
rare. Most of the few women were apparently prostitutes. Basically, the population of
Chinatown mirrored the population of the larger town of which it was a part. Typically the
Chinese leased buildings in the cheapest and roughest blocks, and there, surrounded by white
saloons and brothels, they established their own stores, stables, blacksmith shops, laundries,
hotels, pawn shops, and other structures.39
11 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
The majority of the Chinese quarters

display a similar pattern: rows of
attached, narrow, one and
one-and-a-half story structures with
forty-five degree-pitch roofs. The
siding is often of vertical boards and
the roof is usually covered with
wood shingles or shakes. Some
two-story buildings might have a
rail-enclosed balcony across the
front elevation. In contrast to the
often similar Euro-American
Figure 32: This view of Bridge Street, Helena,
structures, few of them have false
Montana, displays the typical architecture of an early
fronts or large windows. Usually a
mining town. (Photograph courtesy of the Montana
few of the larger structures were of
Historical Society)
brick or adobe. Reflecting the
cultural and physical environment of the American West, the structures typically bore little
resemblance to those of South China. The Chinese showed great resourcefulness and
ingenuity in their adaptive re-use of Euro-American structures and in their employment of
available construction materials. Though subtle, the camps and Chinatowns did show the
culture of their inhabitants' homeland in some ways, including the use of geomancy
(feng-shui) and rammed earth (hang-t'u) construction.40
The impermanence and instability of the mining frontier is well known. The discovery of
gold or silver brought a rush of people, and towns and cities appeared almost overnight.
They often disappeared almost as quickly when the mines were exhausted. The West is full
of ghost towns of the mining era. As early as 1869, one observer described half the mining
towns of California as wholly deserted and the rest, with few exceptions, showed evidence
of decay. Between 1848 and 1860, some five hundred mining settlements, mostly placer,
developed in California. With time, more than 50 percent of these settlements completely
disappeared. Of the rest, most survive in name only. Only a small proportion remain viable
communities. Even those towns with enough importance to gain the status of a county seat
often proved short-lived. The thirteen counties of the California goldfields had a total of
thirty-two different county seats. Only twelve of these communities lasted long enough as
towns to become incorporated.41
Outside California, the pattern repeated itself over and over. Marysville, founded in the mid
1870s, was one of the great gold-producing centers in Montana. Just the major mine
produced fifty million dollars. In the 1880s and 90s Marysville had a population of between
two thousand and three thousand. The town contained several streets and a substantial
business district with stone and brick buildings. Marysville even had its own newspaper. By
the early 1900s, however, the town had lost most of its population. Today, a number of
buildings still stand and a small population remains but, for all intents and purposes,
Marysville is a ghost town.42
An even better example is Rawhide, Nevada. The discovery of silver here in 1906 brought a
rush of eight thousand to ten thousand people. Total production was over a million and a
half dollars. In 1908, a fire destroyed thirty-seven buildings and caused one-half to
12 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
three-quarters of a million dollars' worth of damage. The town was never completely rebuilt
and after the fire it quickly declined. Today, nothing remains but a few foundations and the
outlines of its once-busy streets.43
While many mining towns, especially the camps, physically passed out of existence, place
names, an important component of mining settlement, frequently survived. Often colorful
adjectives affixed to the somewhat distinctive terms of camp, diggings, ravine, bar, flat, run,
slide, and gulch resulted in an unusual heritage of "names on the land." In California, for
instance, the list includes Angels Camp, Poker Flat, Seven-up Ravine, Ten Cent Gulch, and
Whiskey Diggings. Without the distinct nomenclature, but equally colorful are Bogus
Thunder, Rough and Ready, Timbuctoo, You Bet, Port Wine, Fiddletown, Red Dog,
Yankee Jim's and Hardscrabble.44
MINING LANDSCAPES
Today, landscapes are probably the most obvious legacies of mining. The traditional
methods left the least perceivable imprint on the land. These small-scale operations
excavated only a few feet and accounted for the removal of relatively small amounts of
surface material. Panning removed one-half to one cubic yard of material per day, rocking
one to two cubic yards per day, tomming three to four cubic yards per day, and sluicing
seven to eight cubic yards per day. The bulk of the material extracted in the traditional
mining operations eventually ended up only a short distance away, often only a few feet.45
The small-scale nature of the traditional operations and their widely scattered locations often
make recognition of their landscapes difficult. Characteristically, however, such areas have a
shallow hummocky appearance. Small, round piles of rock and gravel are usually scattered
about and short, shallow trenches or cuts characteristically mark the adjacent hillsides. The
traditional methods achieved widespread employment throughout the West. Yet, today,
areas displaying the effects of these methods occupy a relatively limited area. As the initial
forms of mining in most areas, subsequent mining often eradicated all traces of traditional
methods. Other times, later cultural activities destroyed all evidence of these mining
operations. Vegetation often obscures these areas and makes it difficult to ascertain the
extent of former mining. Today, the best examples of areas worked by the minor methods
occur along the upper ends of the smaller streams and along adjacent side ravines and
gulches.46
Of the hand methods, sluicing resulted in the greatest changes to the landscape. Low parallel
lines of gravels and cobble often mark areas worked by sluicing and noticeable trenches line
the adjacent hillsides. In some areas, in fact, sluicing stripped the soil to bedrock. The finer
debris from sluicing often accumulated in circular or elongated rises up to five feet high and
three or more feet long. The former location of sluices is often marked by lines of large
rocks thrown out of them by the miners, with the larger ones marking the head of the sluice.
Occasionally the location where the concentrates were panned out is obvious as a slight rise.
Today, many of the areas mined by sluicing in the last century still lack a complete
vegetation cover. Most of these areas, however, contain notable evidence of revegetation.
While the traditional methods typically had a limited and imperceptible impact on the land,
their use in an area is sometimes revealed by place names. Rocker Gulch near Idaho City,
Idaho, for example, was named for the miner's rocker or cradled. 47
13 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Characteristically, the traditional methods served to work the gravels removed by drifting.
As a result, the surface evidence of drifting approximates those of the traditional methods.
Drift landscapes occur scattered throughout the West. Drifting, however, reached its
greatest development in the tertiary gravels of California and here the greatest evidence
survives today. Table Mountain alone contained a total of forty thousand feet of tunnels.
Drift mines literally pockmark some localities. The Jackass Hill and Campo Seco-Stent
region contain hundreds of "coyote holes." Outside California, drifting largely took place on
a small scale in recent gravels. However, it still left noticeable evidence. In the Clear Creek
district of Colorado, for instance, nearly every wide section in the valley of South Clear
Creek south of Idaho Springs for some seven miles contains evidence of drift mining.48
As a result of hydraulicking, both the area of land affected and the degree of alteration
changed dramatically. Even early hydraulicking removed upwards of fifty to one-hundred
cubic yards of material daily. The total amount of material excavated by hydraulic mining
just in the Sierra Nevada of California was eight times that removed in the construction of
the Panama Canal. Not surprisingly, hydraulic mining created huge amounts of tailings which
were piled nearby or dumped into adjacent streams and resulted in extensive aggradation.
Graphs of low-water records of the Yuba River at Marysville and the Sacramento River at
Sacramento for 1849-1913 reveal the general trend of the deposition of mining debris.
Figures show that during these years the bed of the Yuba rose about 0.33 foot per year and
the Sacramento 0.25 foot per year. The streets of Marysville, once twenty to twenty-five
feet above the bed of the Yuba, by 1879 were below it and the town experienced some
devastating floods when levees intended to confine the mining debris gave way.49
Throughout much of the American West, the vegetation of many river valleys remained
largely unchanged until the advent of mining. Placer mining, however, typically was
concentrated in these valleys and resulted in very noticeable changes. These changes began
with the first mining operations. The small-scale forms of mining generally employed during
the initial period of mining characteristically resulted in the alteration of relatively small
areas. As the scale of mining increased, a corresponding increase occurred in the area of
vegetation altered. Many contemporary photographs indicate the almost wholesale
destruction of vegetation that accompanied hydraulic mining.50
Compared to the traditional methods, the revegetation of areas where hydraulicking

constituted the chief form of mining took notably longer. Hydraulic mining removed soil to
greater depths, commonly to bedrock, over large areas, and left steep slopes.
Characteristically, revegetation occurred most rapidly in the bottom of the pits left by
hydraulicking. In California, most hydraulic mining ended in the middle 1880s. By the turn of
the century, vegetation in some of these pits already almost equalled the adjacent forest
which remained untouched. The bottom of some hydraulic mines, like the Le Du, near North
Bloomfield, California, however, remain only slightly revegetated to the present. The Le Du
mine operated from 1857 to 1915. Revegetation occurs least quickly on the slopes of the
hydraulic pits. Hydraulicking often produced nearly vertical slopes that greatly impeded any
revegetation. Subsequent erosion usually reduced these slopes, but some even to this day
contain little or no vegetation. Others, however, show evidence of revegetation less than
fifty years after mining ceased. The Gold Hill Mine near Idaho City, Idaho, operated
between the 1860s and 1930s. Within fifty years after the end of mining, vegetation covered
much of the floor of the hydraulic pit of the Gold Hill Mine. Even the steep slopes of the pit
14 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
showed evidence of re-vegetation.51
Large-scale hydraulicking left huge amphitheater-like pits in the side of hills. Some reached
such proportions that they resembled small canyons. The Malakoff Diggings of California so
impressed a German visitor in the 1880s that he described it as a "barren amphitheater, so
vast that it could contain a whole settlement and so deep that a high church steeple could
hardly reach to the ledge." At the Malakoff Diggings, hydraulic mining removed an
estimated 41,000,000 cubic yards of material and left a canyon over a mile long and up to
350 feet deep. The mine utilized three nozzles and 30,500,000 gallons of water, twice as
much as the entire city of San Francisco. It had over 150 miles of ditches, dams, and
associated reservoirs to supply its gigantic operations. This impressive legacy of hydraulic
mining is now a California State Park. Dozens of similar mines operated in California during
the height of hydraulic mining.52
Commonly, hydraulicking left broad valleys and adjacent hill slopes furrowed in every
direction by cuts, often to bedrock. Sometimes only thin partitions of ground separate the
numerous cuts. Other times only "curious monuments of gravel and rock dot the scene."
Hydraulic mining so altered some river valleys that a reconstruction of their original
appearance seems impossible. Hydraulic mining commonly cut the land into an intricate
pattern of gullies, ravines, and gravel monuments. Such areas like those near Breckenridge,
Colorado, or Tyler, California resemble a badlands.53
Often hydraulicking completely removed the soil and left exposed large areas of bedrock. At
Columbia, California, it exposed areas of bedrock and left pillars of limestone, some of
which are ten feet high and produced landscapes so different from the original "as to be
unrecognizable to the miner of 49-50." A landscape that almost resembled a badlands with
"many great masses of white limestone in bizarre shapes . . . the earth, torn up everywhere,
resembles a battlefield of the antediluvian giants and monsters." Hydraulic mining often cut
hill slopes back into almost vertical cliffs. They are often seventy-five to one hundred feet
high and sometimes extend for several miles. Those found in the Boise Basin of Idaho are
especially impressive. Narrow cuts often mark the entire length of such cliffs. Some cuts
consist of only short, narrow gashes. Others lead into wide, open amphitheaters surrounded
by high banks. Large boulders removed from the sluices and stacked in the course of mining
typically litter the surrounding surface.54
The significant changes in the land surface represented but a portion of the total impact of
mining on the environment. Its effect on hydrology proved equally if not more important. All
forms of placer mining required water, and diversion of water for mining purposes occurred
early in the development of most Western mining districts. Initially, short inexpensive ditches
that conveyed water to a limited area proved adequate. Hydraulic mining, however, required
huge amounts of water and an extensive system of water facilities developed to meet this
demand. Huge reservoirs and thousands of miles of canals, ditches, and flumes were built to
supply water for the hydraulic mines. By 1882, California alone contained a total of six
thousand miles of main ditches, another one thousand miles of subsidiary lines, and an
unknown length of small distributors.55
Whenever possible, the mining ditches consisted of unlined earth cuts. Invariably, however,
especially the larger ditches often contained several miles lined with timber or rock. Often,
too, the terrain required the construction of flumes or the excavation of canals through
15 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
bedrock. Frequently, remnants of dams and considerable portions of old mining ditches still
exist. Many of the reservoirs created for hydraulic mining, too, remain a part of the
landscape. After the end of mining, some mining ditches found use for other purposes. Some
two score of the water systems constructed in California during the mining eraï¿½rebuilt,
improved, and adopted ï¿½became part of the Pacific Gas and Electric System. Still others
were used for irrigation and domestic water supply. Unlike natural water courses, the mining
ditches and canals parallel the contour lines on a topographic map, and make their
identification easy.56
Perhaps of all the mining landscapes, the most striking and distinctive resulted from dredging
(Figure 33). After saving the gold, the dredge redeposited the coarse gravel in the form of a
ridge ten, twenty, thirty or more feet high over the finer gravel, clay, and sand.
Characteristically these rows consist of gravel and boulders one-and-one-half feet in
diameter and larger. Superficially, dredge tailings often appear similar in rock content and
form. Sometimes, however, the gravel surface consists only of a cap a few feet thick
overlaying clay and sand. An elevator or stacker at the rear of the dredge disposed of the
large rocks and cobbles in the more or less conical pile. As the dredge moved along the
valley its pond moved with it and filled the valley behind it with tailings. The silts discharged
off the stern from the gold-saving equipment settled first to the bottom of the pond. The
cobbles and gravels dropped by the stacker then covered this layer of silt.57
The recency of most dredging operations and the resulting lack of or limited vegetation
makes these areas easily discernable. Dredge tailings cover large portions of many river
valleys. The dissected terrain of alternating valleys and ridges make dredged areas easily
recognizable. The width, height, and steepness of the tailings vary somewhat with the
characteristics and thickness of the gravel deposits and the type of dredge. The large floating
dredges reached depths of seventy-five to eighty feet and sometimes more, and left tailings in
the form of large orderly rows of gravel. The lines of tailings characteristically exhibit a
serrated pattern produced by the irregular forward movement of the dredge.58
Of the placer methods, perhaps dredging most altered riverine vegetation. Dredging
removed all vegetation, completely overturned the soil, and left in its place large parallel
rows of gravel with steep slopes. The additional factor of time (the recency of most dredging
operations) has resulted in the almost complete absence of vegetation in some dredge areas.
Characteristically, vegetation first reappears in the low areas between the parallel rows of
gravel. Vegetation especially appears quickly around the margins of the ubiquitous dredge
ponds. These ponds are in various stages of fill. Once filled, vegetation quickly covers them.
In some cases the revegetation between the gravel ridges almost completely masks the
tailings from ground level.59
Dredging completely destroyed the original stream courses and caused the channel to shift
and often divide into multiple channels. After dredging, once broad, flat valleys consisted of
a series of nearly parallel ridges and valleys. An excellent example is an area along the Yuba
River near Hammonton, California. Dredging began in the Hammonton or Yuba River
district in 1903. Here the Yuba Consolidated Goldfields Company perfected large-scale
bucket-line dredging into one of the most efficient methods for mining placer gold. The
district was dredged almost continuously from 1903 to 1968. These operations moved more
than a billion cubic yards of gravel and produced almost five million ounces of gold. On an
1895 map, the area is shown as an essentially flat floodplain. Dredging, however, produced a
16 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
series of steep, more or less parallel gravel ridges up to fifty feet and more in a height.
Dredging resulted in the formation of many lakes and ponds. Floating dredges required the
construction of ponds to enable their operation. Within the rough dissected terrain created
by dredging, water often collected between the ridges to form the other small lakes and
ponds. Sediment practically fills some of the lakes and ponds created by earlier dredging.60
Today, dredge areas are scattered throughout the West. Especially notable dredge
landscapes, covering as much as twenty-five square miles, extend along the Feather, Yuba,
American, and Tuolumne Rivers in California. In the Folsom district on the American River,
dredging left over one billion cubic yards of tailings that cover an area ten miles long and up
to seven miles wide. The immensity of such areas is best displayed on aerial photos.61
Often dredged areas contain remains

of mining equipment. The
dismantling and removing of a
dredge after the completion of
mining often proved costly. As a
result, many mining companies
simply stripped the dredge of its
machinery and abandoned its hull
and other structures. Even some
remains of the Fielding Graves, the
first successful gold dredge in the
U.S., still survive along Grasshopper
Creek just downstream from the
ghost town of Bannack, Montana. Figure 33: Gold dredging landscape near Idaho City,
Throughout the West, remains of Idaho. Perhaps the most obvious and distinctive of all
many dredges, in various stages of the landscapes produced by ruining is that which
decay, still exist. In almost every resulted from dredging. (Photograph by Randall
major placer area of the West, in Robe)
fact, some trace of the dredge
remains and in a few places a complete dredge survives. The one at Bonanza, Idaho, looks
like it's still in usable shape.62
Mining used great quantities of lumber for construction purposes. The lode mines required
great amounts of timber to support the miles of tunnels, shafts, edits, and passageways. The
Territorial Enterprise in 1862 noted "an immense pile of timbers" for this purpose at the
Ophir Mine. "The pile at present contains about 4,000 sticks, about 12 inches square, each
stick containing some 250 feet, board measures. Two thousand more of these timbers will
soon be brought over from Washoe Valley, which will give in board measure about
1,500,000 feet." This paper claimed that the Ophir Mine alone contained more timber within
its subterranean depths than all the buildings in Virginia City.63
Besides lumber for mine props, railway ties, mine buildings and the like, lode mining
consumed quantities of timber to fuel mining machinery, stamp mills, and smelters. Oak,
juniper, pinyon, and mountain mahogany were commonly utilized as fuel or manufactured
into charcoal. In many parts of the West, the needs of mining soon exhausted the local
supplies of fuel wood. On the Comstock of Nevada, for example, the supply of wood seldom
met the demand. The pinyon and juniper of the nearby ravines and hills were removed in an
17 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
ever-expanding circle. To satisfy the Comstock's demand for wood, gigantic drives of
lumber and cordwood up to four miles or more long took place on the Carson River each
spring. More than 150,000 cords of wood were floated down the Carson in a typical season.
It has been estimated that over a thirty-year period, the Comstock lode consumed eight
hundred million feet of lumber ï¿½enough to build fifty thousand ranch-type houses, each
with two baths and a double garage.64
Unlike the Comstock, the fuel resources of central Nevada consisted largely of local supplies
of pinyon and juniper. Smelting a ton of ore required from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels
of charcoal. The mills at Eureka consumed as much as 1.25 million bushels of charcoal a
year. From four thousand to five thousand acres of woodland had to be cut annually to
supply the Eureka mills this much charcoal. By 1874, the surrounding mountain slopes were
denuded of pinyon and juniper for a radius of twenty miles. Operations north of the
pinyon-juniper distribution in the Great Basin had to resort to drastic measures to obtain
energy. In the Tuscarora district, for example, quite a trade developed in gathering
sagebrush to run the furnaces and hoists, and the surrounding area was soon denuded of
sage. The fast-burning sagebrush produced a long hot flame which built steam faster than
other available types of fuel. A stamp mill or hoisting works powered by sagebrush smoked
like a miniature Vesuvius and covered the surrounding area with ashes.65
In some mining districts, wood was burned under the boilers of the steam engines at virtually
every step in mining the ore and processing it into gold or silver. Nearly every photograph of
the mines of some districts shows large stacks of cordwood near the pumping plant and
hoisting works. Bahre and Hutchinson estimate that in the period 1879-1886, the stamp mills
of the Tombstone district consumed nearly fifty thousand cords of fuel wood.66
Lode mines, scattered over the bedrock hills, ridges and mountain slopes, usually cover less
than five acres. Since lode mining occurred underground, there is often little surface
evidence. The tunnels, edits, shafts, etc., are still evident, though many are caved in and
partially filled with debris and/or water. Less conspicuous are the many small, shallow
prospect holes which are often obscured by vegetation. Sometimes associated features, like
tramways, tanks, or narrow-gauge railroads or their ruins, survive. Generally few of the mine
buildings and little surface equipment remains. Usually they have been purposely removed or
have suffered the ravages of time and man. Occasionally, headworks, tipples, loading chutes,
etc., have survived. Commonly, they consist of a wooden framework covered with sheets of
corrugated iron. Rarely, some rusting mining machinery or other surface equipment still
stands.
Undoubtedly, the most characteristic feature of lode landscapes is the waste pile or mine
dump at or near the mine. These brown yellow dumps at or below the mine entrance are very
conspicuous. Parts of the West are literally dotted with piles of tailings. They range in size
from a few cubic yards to the immense tailings pile at Carson Hill, California, which contains
some three million tons of mining waste. If consolidated, the waste and low grade ore dumps
in Leadville, Colorado, would cover at least two square miles; the mill tailings and slag
heaps would cover yet another square mile.67
Mine dumps are composed mostly of clay, finely comminuted metallic minerals, and siliceous
fragments of various sizes and shapes. They are generally coherent, as indicated by a
tendency to stand in nearly vertical surfaces where they have been eroded and they are
18 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
resistant to wasting. While the dumps appear to be quite porous, the clay retards percolation
and the substrate is moist. Within a few years after mining ceases, a thin soil, apparently
composed mostly of substances washed and blown onto the dump, begins to form on the
upper surface. Conditions become favorable to plant growth and many dumps, which appear
from a distance to be sterile mounds, are gradually being revegetated.68
Unlike placer deposits, the ores removed by lode mining required considerable processing.
To accomplish this, mills and smelters were built. The mills and smelters built during the
peak of the mining era were large complex structures. Huge stamps crushed the ore into a
fine paste which was then chemically treated in large vats to separate out the gold and silver.
Some of these mills cost as much as twenty-five thousand dollars and covered twenty acres
of land. Often much remains of these mills and they form a prominent part of today's
landscape. Other times only the concrete foundations survive.
The mills and smelters meant air pollution. A traveler to the Gilpin district, Colorado, noted
the "sulphurous fumes and huge piles of wasting pyrites" and "villainous vapors from the
Boston & Colorado Smelting Works. " "For good quarter of a mile, if not more, this
entertainment was forced upon all, men and beasts, and as a natural consequence the camp
gained a reputation for cough-compelling odors that it has always since retained, and
probably always will, unless Prof. Hill of the smelting works kindly consents to move away
into some more easily ventilated locality." A few years later Charles Haney wrote that the
smoke from the furnaces of Hill's Argo works darkened the sky in that direction at all times
and drifted with the wind like "a mist of clouds moving alone." Haney, in fact, claimed that
"about all the clouds we have here [come] from that smoke."69
The mills and smelters of the lode mining towns filled the air with "sulphurous fumes," "coal
dust and darkness," "cough-compelling" odors, and "villainous vapors." The mountain
environment with its narrow canyons, thin air, and temperature inversions exacerbated such
air pollution. Eureka, Nevada, gained a well-deserved reputation for the poor quality of its
air. "We could smell Eureka before we got here. Anybody can smell it a couple of miles off,
unless anybody has defect in his olfactory perceptions or has his nostrils plugged up." "Black
clouds of dense smoke from the furnaces, heavily laden and heavily scented with the fumes
of lead, arsenic and other volatile elements of the ores, " constantly filled the air and covered
the town with soot, scale, and black dust, so that it resembled a manufacturing town in the
Pennsylvania coal regions. The problem became so bad that elongated stacks were run up
the canyon walls and then vertically to vent the fumes.70
Equally polluted was any stream adjacent to a mill or smelter or their waste piles. The
processes used to reduce the gold and silver ores induced toxic substances into the streams.
Long after the mills ceased operations the leaching of chemicals from the waste piles
continuedï¿½some to this day, and streams that have the appearance of crystal clear
mountain streams hold little aquatic life. Abandoned and inactive mines, as well as mill
tailings, deliver heavy metals and other forms of pollution to nearly thirteen hundred miles of
Colorado streams. One of the worst examples of that source of pollution is California Gulch
near Leadville, Colorado, which spills into the Arkansas River. Wastes from hundreds of old
mines drain into California Gulch through the Yak Tunnel. The wastes include dissolved
metals that are extremely poisonous to trout. The gulch delivers the metals into the
Arkansas. For one and a half miles below the confluence of the gulch and the Arkansas, the
river is virtually dead. A recent survey by the California State Water Resources Control
19 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
Board concluded that as many as 180 deserted minesï¿½spread across more than half the
counties in the stateï¿½could be polluting water supplies with acid waste and toxic metals.71
After milling, the concentrates were smelted to recover the metals in metallic form. Waste
from the smelters also accumulated in enormous dumps known as slag. It generally is very
fine-grained, black, and extremely heavy. During the later periods of lode mining, the milling
of huge volumes of low grade ore created large amounts of tailings and slimes that had to be
disposed of. At first, the tailings were simply dumped into nearby streams. Eventually,
however, this practice became illegal. As a result, the mills constructed "tailing ponds" to
hold the debris. These ponds, in varying stages of fill, are still obvious in many parts of the
West.
The manner of dumping waste from the mines increased the possibility of flood in some
areas by altering the channel and floodplain. In June 1884, a flood on South Clear Creek,
Colorado, eroded parts of the Equator and Marshall dumps. The sediment lodged
temporarily in the channel downstream from Silverdale and caused the flooding of parts of
Georgetown. Subsequently, a short tunnel was cut through the outcrop south of the
Marshall tunnel to divert Leavenworth Creek away from the Marshall dump and prevent a
reoccurrence. Leavenworth Creek still flows through this tunnel for a short distance.72
Eventually a problem for all lode mines was water. This was especially true on the Comstock
of Nevada where water was encountered at depths of only fifty feet. Pumps and drainage
tunnels only partly solved the problem. As a result, Adolph Sutro began construction of a
tunnel nearly four miles long to solve the drainage problem permanently. In 1865 the
legislature granted him a fifty-year franchise to construct the tunnel, wide enough for a
double railroad track and more than three miles long. Sutro estimated the cost of
construction at three million dollars and set about raising the money, which he finally
obtained from British sources. The Sutro Tunnel was to not only provide drainage and
ventilation but also make the transportation of the ore to the mills easier. The tunnel, one of
the great engineering feats of the nineteenth century, took seven years and over two million
dollars to construct. It was completed too late, however, for by that time the Comstock
mines were failing. In 1879 Sutro resigned as superintendent of the Sutro Tunnel Company
and within a year disposed of his stockï¿½ before its value collapsed. Similar tunnels were
constructed throughout the West. Many of them, including the Sutro Tunnel, are still in
existence.73
CONCLUSION
The history of mining in the West is one of changing technology, and each successive
improvement brought with it a greater destruction of the land. Despite the increasing
destructive effects of mining, most concern that was expressed was economic in nature.
Generally, mining was vehemently opposed only when it conflicted with other economic
uses. For the most part, it was not until the twentieth century that a concern for the
environment itself was expressed and often it was limited in extent and effect.
Each distinct type of mining exhibited that distinctiveness in its alteration of the natural
landscape, and each method produced its own unique landscape. At the same time, the
inherent characteristics of each method limited the landscape it produced to certain localities.
The simple methods displayed a rather broad geographic range, while the large-scale, more
complex forms proved rather restrictive. The latter, however, exerted a greater and more
20 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
permanent impact on the land.
Certainly, few other economic activities have had such a tremendous impact on the land as
mining. In the process of altering the natural landscape, mining created a distinct cultural
one. While time often brought the deterioration of this cultural landscape, seldom did it
completely eliminate all traces. As the initial phase of occupance in much of the West,
mining initiated patterns that continue to the present and left many elements that remain part
of the cultural landscape of today.
History tells us that each improvement in mining technology brought with it a greater impact
on the land. It is, therefore, not surprising that many environmentalists and conservationists
view with great alarm the recent development of a high-tech, large-scale gold-mining
technique known as heap leaching. At the same time, they have called for the repeal or
modification of the General Mining Law of 1872, which guarantees the right to establish
mineral claims on Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land where there is a
reasonable chance the claim will pay. Furthermore, the 1872 law provides for the outright
sale of public lands if minerals that can be mined at a profit are discovered. The
long-established price on these patented land is $2.50 an acre for placer mines, and $5.00 an
acre for lode mines. The abuses of the law are legendary.74
The peak of gold and silver mining in the West is long past. Despite the passage of time, the
imprint of mining remains visible in the present landscape. It is difficult to travel through
most parts of the West without seeing evidence of the mining era. From abandoned mines to
deserted towns, the West is full of reminders of this period. Among the most prominent of
these remnants are the various landscapes created by mining.
ENDNOTES
1. Randall Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining In the American West: An Environmental
History," NCGE/GPN Slide Set (Lincoln: Great Plains National, 1990), 1-2.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 2.
4. Randall Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion of Traditional Placer Mining in the West," Material
Culture 18 (Fall 1986): 128-131.
5. Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 134-138.
6. Ibid., 140; and California State Mining Bureau, Eleventh Annual Report of State
Mineralogist (San Francisco, 1893), 440-441.
7. Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 146-147, 149; and William B. Clarke, Gold Districts Of
California, California Division of Mines and Geology, Bulletin No. 193 (San Francisco,
1970), 67.
8. Randall Rohe, "Hydraulicking in the American West: The Development and Diffusion of a
Mining Technique," Montana, The Magazine of Western History 35 (Spring 1985): 19; and
Randall Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes of the West," California Geology 37 (October
1984): 225, 227.
21 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
9. Randall E. Rohe, "Gold Dredging in the American West: Origin and Diffusion, "The
Pacific Historian 28 (Summer 1984): 5-6; and Clark Spence, The Conrey Placer Mining
Company (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1989), 7.
10. Rohe, "Gold Dredging," 8-9; and Spence, 10-12; and Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes,"
228.
11. Rodman, Paul, California Gold, The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 132; and Spence, 5.
12. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 11; and Roger E. Kelly and Marsha C. G. Kelly,
"Arrastras: Unique Western Historic Milling Sites," Historical Archaeology 17 (1983): 87,
90.
13. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 11; Paul, California Gold, 133-137.
14. See the diagram in William Carter, Ghost Towns in the West (Menlo Park: Lane
Magazine and Book Company, 1971), 126-127; and for more detail see Rodman Paul,
Mining Frontiers of the Far West 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1963), 32-33, 65-67, 98-104, 119-120, 122-124.
15. Randall Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Populations in the American West
1848-1888," The Geographical Bulletin 28 (May 1986): 5-6.
16. Ibid., 12.
17. Ibid., 10-12; and Ralph Mann, After the Gold Rush: Society In Grass Valley and Nevada
City, California, 1849-1870 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 224.
18. Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Populations," 12.
19. Ibid., 9-10; and Randall Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western
Mining Town," Material Culture 16 (Fall 1984): 112.
20. Randall Rohe, "After the Gold Rush: Chinese Mining in the Far West, 1850-1890,"
Montana, The Magazine of Western History 32 (Autumn 1982): 2.
21. Ibid., 4, 6, 18.
22. Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Population," 20-22.
23. George R. Stewart, The California Trail (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 320; and
Thomas Morley, "The Independence Road to Fort Laramie: By Aerial Photographs," Plains
Anthropologist 6 (1961): 242-251.
24. Randall Rohe, "Feeding The Mines: The Development of Supply Centers for the
Goldfields," Annals of Wyoming 57 (Spring 1985): 52.
25. Duane A. Smith, Colorado Mining (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1977), 56-57, 60, 133.
22 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
26. Rohe, "Feeding The Mines," 56.
27. Ibid., 40-41.
28. Ibid., 42-51.
29. Paul, Mining Frontiers, 125.
30. Paul, California Gold, 72; and William Robert Kenny, "History of the Sonora Mining
Region of California 1848-1860" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1955), 377-378.
31. San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 4 January 1858.
32. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," 103; and
Randall Rohe, "The Interplay of Environment and Mining in the Far West," in The
Mountainous West: Explorations in Historical Geography, ed. Lary Dilsaver and William
Wyckoff (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming); and Rohe, "Man and the
Land: Mining's Impact In The Far West," Arizona and the West 28 (Winter 1986): 302-304.
33. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," 108-110.
34. Ibid., 102.
35. Ibid., 104, 107.
36. Ibid., 107.
37. Ibid., 104, 105, 107.
38. Randall Rohe, "Chinese Camps and Chinatowns: Chinese Mining Settlements in the Far
West," unpublished manuscript (1993), no pagination.
39. Ibid.
40. Randall Rohe, "Chinese in the Goldfields of the West 1848-1900," unpublished paper
presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council for Geographic Education,
Hershey, PA, 10-14 October, 1989, 15.
41. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," 41.
42. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining in the West," 13.
43. Carter, Ghost Towns, 96-97; and A. H. Koschmann and M.H. Bergendahl, "Principal
Gold-Producing Districts of the United States," U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper
610 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), 191; and Stanley W.
Paher, Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1970), 456-461.
44. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining," 114-115.
45. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe "Man and the Land," 314-315.
46. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 315.
23 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
47. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 151.
48. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 151-152.
49. Randall Rohe, "Man as a Geomorphic Agent: Hydraulic Mining in the American West,"
The Pacific Historian 27 (Spring 1983): 10-11; and Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 227.
50. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 301-303.
51. Ibid., 308-309; and Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 7.
52. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 316-318; Dutch Flat Forum, 19 July 1877; and Robert L.
Kelley, "Forgotten Giant: The Hydraulic Gold Mining Industry in California," Pacific
Historical Review 23 (November 1954): 349.
53. Rohe, "Man As a Geomorphic Agent," 7.
54. Ibid., 6-7.
55. Ibid., 8.
56. Ibid., 8; and Frederick Hall, "Hydroelectric Power Systems of California and Their
Extensions into Oregon and Nevada, " U.S. Geological Survey Water Supply Paper, No.
493, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1923), 28-29, 117, 206, 208-209, 214-215,
220, 286, 307; and Charles M. Coleman, P. G. and E. of California: The Centennial Story
of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, 1852-1952 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952), 101,
405-406, 438; and W. B. Lardner and M. J. Brock, History of Placer and Nevada Counties,
California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1924), 162, 180, 282.
57. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 228; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 320-321.
58. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes, " 228.
59. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 9; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 309.
60. Clark, 62-63; and U.S. Geological Survey, Browns Valley California Quadrangle
(1:24,000), 1949.
61. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 228.
62. Ibid., 228-229.
63. Rohe, "Man and the Land", 305.
64. Ibid., 305-307
65. Ibid., 307.
66. Ibid., 307-308.
67. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 229; and Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 10; and
Rohe, "Man and the Land," 323-324.
24 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM
68. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 324.
69. Ibid., 336-337.
70. Rohe, "The Interplay of Environment and Mining."
71. Robe, "Man and the Land," 337; Denver Post, 28 May 1989, p. 12A; and Milwaukee
Journal, 18 April 1993, p. 14.
72. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 337.
73. T. H. Watkins, Gold and Silver In the West (Palo Alto: American West Publishing
Company, 1971), 72-73; and Paul, Mining Frontiers, 81-83.
74. See George Laycock, "Going For The Gold," Audubon (July 1989), 70-80.
Next Page
25 of 25 9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Descrição original:

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

feet wide and six thousand feet long.6

GOLD RUSH MIGRATIONS AND GOLDFIELD POPULATIONS

TRANSPORTATION AND SUPPLY

Settlements brought into existence by

The exploitation of gold and silver

The mining frontier itself produced

Historical Society, Helena, Montana, #H-119)

The majority of the Chinese quarters

Compared to the traditional methods, the revegetation of areas where hydraulicking

showed evidence of re-vegetation.51

Often dredged areas contain remains

permanent impact on the land.

5. Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 134-138.

16. Ibid., 12.

18. Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Populations," 12.

21. Ibid., 4, 6, 18.

22. Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Population," 20-22.

26. Rohe, "Feeding The Mines," 56.

27. Ibid., 40-41.

28. Ibid., 42-51.

29. Paul, Mining Frontiers, 125.

31. San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 4 January 1858.

34. Ibid., 102.

35. Ibid., 104, 107.

36. Ibid., 107.

37. Ibid., 104, 105, 107.

42. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining in the West," 13.

50. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 301-303.

51. Ibid., 308-309; and Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 7.

53. Rohe, "Man As a Geomorphic Agent," 7.

54. Ibid., 6-7.

58. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes, " 228.

61. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 228.

62. Ibid., 228-229.

63. Rohe, "Man and the Land", 305.

64. Ibid., 305-307

65. Ibid., 307.

66. Ibid., 307-308.

68. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 324.

69. Ibid., 336-337.

70. Rohe, "The Interplay of Environment and Mining."

72. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 337.

Você também pode gostar