The California gold rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood in the Compromise of 1850. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation, and the California genocide.
Placer mining is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit mining or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment.
Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park is a state park unit preserving Malakoff Diggins, the largest hydraulic mining site in California, United States. The mine was one of several hydraulic mining sites at the center of the 1882 landmark case Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company. The mine pit and several Gold Rush-era buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Malakoff Diggins-North Bloomfield Historic District. The "canyon" is 7,000 feet (2,100 m) long, as much as 3,000 feet (910 m) wide, and nearly 600 feet (180 m) deep in places. Visitors can see huge cliffs carved by mighty streams of water, results of the mining technique of washing away entire mountains of gravel to wash out the gold. The park is 26 miles (42 km) north-east of Nevada City, California, in the Gold Rush country. The 3,143-acre (1,272 ha) park was established in 1965.
Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining.
The Yuba River is a tributary of the Feather River in the Sierra Nevada and eastern Sacramento Valley, in the U.S. state of California. The main stem of the river is about 40 miles (64 km) long, and its headwaters are split into three major forks. The Yuba River proper is formed at the North Yuba and Middle Yuba rivers' confluence, with the South Yuba joining a short distance downstream. Measured to the head of the North Yuba River, the Yuba River is just over 100 miles (160 km) long.
The California Debris Commission was a federal commission created in 1893 by an act of Congress to regulate California streams that had been devastated by the sediment washed into them from gold mining operations upstream in the Sierra Nevada. It was created to mitigate the damage to natural seasonal river flow and navigation, which had been caused by the extensive use of hydraulic mining. The act was codified under Navigation in 33 U.S.C. Chapter 14. Given substantial power by Congress, the commission significantly reduced the stream damage caused.
The Yuba Goldfields, also known as the Hammonton dredge field, is the largest gold dredge field in California. Located along the Yuba River approximately 6–12 miles (10–20 km) upstream of the town of Marysville, in Yuba County, the Hammonton dredge field was actively dredged for gold from 1904 to 1968. In total, more than one billion cubic yards of river sediment and lesser hydraulic mining debris was dredged to produce an estimated 5.14 million ounces of gold. The goldfields are noted for their otherworldly appearance, filled with roughly linear mounds of gravels, ravines, streams and turquoise-colored pools of water. From the air, the goldfields are said to resemble intestines.
Anthony Chabot was a nineteenth-century businessman and entrepreneur, notable for his contribution to developing hydraulic mining and for building water systems, especially in the Bay Area, so much that he became known as the "Water King".
Gold became highly concentrated in California, United States as the result of global forces operating over hundreds of millions of years. Volcanoes, tectonic plates and erosion all combined to concentrate billions of dollars' worth of gold in the mountains of California. During the California Gold Rush, gold-seekers known as "Forty-Niners" retrieved this gold, at first using simple techniques, and then developing more sophisticated techniques, which spread around the world.
Hushing is an ancient and historic mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploitation. Mineral veins are often hidden below soil and sub-soil, which must be stripped away to discover the ore veins. A flood of water is very effective in moving soil as well as working the ore deposits when combined with other methods such as fire-setting.
Timbuctoo is an unincorporated community in Yuba County, California. It lies northwest of Smartsville, at an elevation of 397 feet.
The North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company of North Bloomfield, California, was established in 1866 and operated a hydraulic gold-mining operation at the Malakoff Mine subsequent to the California Gold Rush. In its day, no other company's operations matched North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company in size or expense. The company operated until 1910. In the years prior, its profits and procedures had been reduced due to the landmark ruling of Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company.
Orleans Flat was a historic mining town located on the San Juan Ridge about 20 miles northeast of Nevada City, California and about 5 miles northeast of North Bloomfield, California. The town was about 1 mile south of the Middle Yuba River at an elevation of about 4200 ft. To the west lay the mining towns of Moore's Flat and Woolsey's Flat, each about I mile apart. All three were settled around 1851 and their histories frequently intertwine. Collectively, they are sometimes referred to as "The Flats." All three were part of Eureka Township.
Snow Point was a historic mining town in Nevada County, California on the San Juan Ridge about 2 miles east of Moore's Flat and about 6 miles west of Graniteville. It was located at an elevation of 4321 ft just off present day German Bar Road about midway between that road's intersections with present day Moore's Flat Road and Hagerty Road.
Blue Tent is a historic 19th century gold mining community located about six miles northeast of Nevada City, California.
Confederate Gulch is a steeply incised gulch or valley on the west-facing slopes of the Big Belt Mountains in the U.S. state of Montana. Its small stream drains westward into Canyon Ferry Lake, on the upper Missouri River near present-day Townsend, Montana. In 1864, Confederate soldiers on parole during the American Civil War made a minor gold discovery in the gulch, but the discovery of the sensationally rich Montana Bar the following year—one of the richest placer strikes per acre ever made—led to other rich gold strikes up and down the gulch, and touched off a frantic boom period of placer gold mining in the area that extended through 1869. From 1866 to 1869, the gulch equaled or outstripped all other mining camps in the Montana Territory in gold production, producing an estimated $19–30 million worth of gold. For a time, Confederate Gulch was the largest community in Montana. In 1866, Montana had a total population of 28,000, and of these, about 10,000 (35%) were working in Confederate Gulch.
Mercury contamination in California waterways poses a threat to both the environment and human health. This naturally occurring heavy metal may be released into the environment from natural geological sources, but most commonly occurs from anthropogenic mining operations. This metal poses a threat not only for its effects on organisms, but also for difficulty of removal from waterways and the trouble in efficiently detecting it. The roots of mercury poisoning in waterways began with the historic mining of gold within California's streambed and hillsides; since the California Gold Rush, mercury has been used for gold extraction for its ability as a catalyze with the precious metal. due to the process of extraction and washing, mercury used would either be burned away as a hazardous vapor, or washed away into waterflows, resulting in widespread contamination of river and lake sediments. mercury continues to be released today through anthropogenic sources, though state and federal agencies work to manage and ban these practices and to mitigate its effect on the environmental and on people. Many water bodies in the state of California bear fish consumption advisories due to mercury content.
The case of Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company was a lawsuit brought to California courts in 1882 where a group of local farmers sued North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company over damages caused to farmland in the Central Valley. The farmers who brought the suit claimed that the company's hydraulic mining operations resulted in the disposal of excess sediment, debris, and chemicals in local rivers. Prosecutors argued that the debris raised river beds and restricted flow in the rivers leading to heavy man-made flooding. In the years prior, flooding of debris and chemicals had destroyed a large portion of the valley's agriculture.
Mining sludge is the waste product of alluvial mining, and in particular hydraulic sluicing. It has been particularly prominent in gold fields in Australia and California in the nineteenth century.
