The Dickinson press. (Dickinson, Stark County, D.T. [i.e. N.D.]) 1883-1927, 1888-11-03
CALIFORNIA; GOLD.
HOW THE MINERS SWEATED AND
DIED FOR 1T 1s5o-6o.

Lifetime of Blasted Hopes for Thou
sands Who Left the States Full of Ex-
pectancy-Plenty of Gold Left-Indi.
cations.
Taken from 1850 to 1860 the great majority
of diggers did not, in my belief, average 81
per day for their work and time There
was often so much time used up before tho
actual gold bearing earth could be worked
or washed Men worked one, two, and some
times three years in digging bitches to get
water on their claims Water is almost as
necessary for gold workings as is air for
human breathing. bitches had to be dug
canals would be the more appropriate namc)
over 100 miles i'll length to tap the snow fed
streams in the highest Serras. Digging up
there i'll places was of no avail There was
little to dig ill., and the water was in places
brought in immense fumes, boltcd to the
sides of precipices 200-feet from the valley
below. In river mining years were some
times spent in blasting races throughn quar-.
ter of a mile of flintv rock, and then, when
the river bed was finally laid bare, little gold
was found. In river mining certainly ono
claim out of three proved a total failure On
dry, upland surface diggings men spent
years waiting for water" that is, waiting
either for the promised ditch to be com.
pleted, or waiting fos the winter rains. How
did they livea Perhaps by packing buckets
of dirt half mile to the nearest cree, or
river and there washing it. Or by ''rockinr
out" dollar or two day from the oft
turned over gravel on some rivers banks.
And miserable, squalid life it was for thou
sands who had come out from the states full
of the expectancy of returning home in five
years at least with n pile" and marry the
girl left behind.
But they stayed ten and fifteen and twenty
years in cabins which here would not he
deemed fit for stables, cooking for them
selves, washing for themselves, forgetting
what 1t was to sleep i'll clean sheets or any
other kind living on tough beef, beans and
bacon, working like pacLhorses summer and
winter; getting yearly moro gray and
grizzled and angular; looking year after
year on the same gloomy, sterile chaparrul
covered hillside, their only recreation the
Sunday trip to the nearest store or camp for
their provisions, where they might or m ,ht
not, but generally did, wind up with more
or less of drunk, aad then for two, three
or five miles over hill and down guch
trudge home again. Little wonder they got
drunk. 1t was the only method of cettine-
temporary relief from a lifetime of blasted
hopes-the only salve to apply to the old
longing for their eastern homes. These were
the men whose eastern relatives sometimes
thought strangely of because they did not.
make or send home money. Most of them
now are buried and enriching tho soil they
dug in. Many of them are i'll namelcss and
unknown graves Many went insane. Some
times one was left, the only resident ION he
Bar" Then it would be reported that Smith
was acting queerly, and Smiths next transi-
ton would bo to the county hospital and
from thence to oneof CALIFORNIA; two insane
asylums.
Is there much gold yet in California;
Lots of it. Lots of it, though, where YOU
must put dollar and half in to get one
dollar out Lots of it in places where after
you dig certain depth, you meet too much
iock to blast and hoist out and water To
pump out. Like Springfield Flat in
Iuolumnc county-a geological curiosity
plain mile square, out of which all the,
red pay dirt has in former years been taken
to depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving OK.
posed great knobs and ridges of reddish rock.
washed and worn by some great water power
untold ages ago into fantastic shapes. Ihcso
If
small church down. They are of marble.
break on n piece ana tho fracture under the
yellowish red of the outside is rs white ms loaf
sugar. Rich gold and plenty of it, has been
taken from Springfield Flat. 1t was worth
nearly sl9 per ounce, when Tuouinne River
gold brought but sl7. But Springfield Flat
could never he bottomed on account of ,he
enormous powders so strangely piled j.,
ner III In Io.;
gets grew bigger as they worked down into
the crevices. 1t is on the ''bowldcr ran,,e."
This is remarkable underground rcolooical
freak, runnin, many miles in southern Cali.
fornia, of great bowlders similarly piled ON
each other, and in places, as at Nallecitr.
where shafts were sunk in it, the bottoms
have tumbled out and revealed subterraucai,
streams running underneath
There are ranges of low hills bortlerinc- tho
San Joaquin valley in Merced, Stanislaus
and adjoining counties where small "pros.
poets" of gold may be obtained There ar..
miles of these "washed gravel' mounds. But
save in rainy weather, when the water comes
right down on the spot where you want to
use it, there is little working these placers to
any profit What with digging and cartu..
the dirt half a mile or more to the river and
there washing it, and possibly being under
the necessity of pudding it before vou can
wash it, there is more than dollar spent in
getting dollar out. Yet gold lies in those
hills-lots Of it, could you get it out in a
lump. And there is many another deposit
locked up in California's hills and mountains
which time may reveal, but to look for il
now is to look for the needle i'll ain acre Of
haystacks.
This side Of the Rockies has never been
''prospected" for gold SO thoroughly as tho
other. There nine -tenths of the first settlers
have been miners more or less Whatever
their occupation, they have kept an eve o,,c.l
for Surface indications" and a p ok and pan
handy to test gravel for gold whenever they
had leisure and water to wash it. AS a re-
suit, from Cariboo to Mexico scarce a cllch
exists that white man has visited but that
has felt the good seeking miners pick. On
this side, and especially at the extreme cast.
an idea prevails that because it is an Older
settled country it can have no unknown min
eral deposits. Few people here know l.o,. 10
prospect or wash Il pan of dirt Gold o,usv
may be in your door yard for ages and give
no sign of its presence, and many peop!e
wouldn't know what it was if it did.-Prcn.
tice Milford in New York Star.