The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-10-02
GEORGE OHLEYER'S VIEWS,
. Review of Hydraulic Mining
- Since the Days of King
-. Solomon.
THE NORTH BLOOMFIELD CASE
Present Status of Placer Mining,
- Valley Farming and River
Navigation.

Gold taken from alluvial deposits,
although valuable in itself, has never en-
riched the locality where found. There
being but one crop, the industry is not
=. only ephemeral, but in its very nature
revolutionary and destructive TO the peace
full and permanent occupation of the
locality where found. Such is the history
of all placer mining since gold has been
taken from the soil. In every instance the
country was wrecked or afterward lost
and forgotten. We know that the land of
Ophir furnished the gold that embellished
King Soiomon's Temple, but it seems that
wisest of all men had no further use for
the locality, and its whereabouts is mys-
terry to this day. The Romans found the
yellow metal in their territory, but its
getting was so destructive to soil and
streams that it was suppressed by the laws
of the empire. The gold mines of South
America and Central America and OF
Mexico became exhausted, leaving those
regions in poverty and barbarism except
where relieved by agriculture.
tits singular fact that no historian
and ne description of a gravel mining
country points with pride to the effect on
the locality OF such mining. and it can
readily be assumed that California will
offer no exception to this worlds history.
Take the natural exhaustion of our own
gold fields in. more than half OF the orig
. inal mining counties. Without the agri-
cultural and pastoral resources they were
sure to lapse into their hitherto wilder
ness. In them the single crop was har-
vested, and the laborers took their de-
parture, as did King Solomon's men, or
they turned their attention TO 9th r indus
tries.
As seekers of gold, the ancients and their
methods were as pigmies to giants COM
pared to our day and generation. They
planted the seed and we grew trees OF gi-
gantic proportions. Spain dropped water
over the hills and we blew them up and
washed them away. They destroyed rivu-
lets, and we filled rivers and bays and dis
colored the ocean for more than twenty
miles from shore. Our hydraulic methods
were more than match to all the earth.
quakes, volcanoes and earthly commissions
ever recorded, and they were such whether
the crop was a paying one or not.
On this point 1t will be well to let the
record speak.
In the celebrated trial of Edward Wood.
ruff against the North Bloomfield Gravel
Mining Company, the court, composed Of
: Judges Lorenzo Sawyer, Circuit Judge Of
the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Mathew P
Deadly, of the District Court of Oregon
sitting in bank after listening to evi
dence for weeks, and then going upon the
grounds Tor personal inspection, described
the hydraulic process as follows:
-. Hydraulic mining, as used in this opinion
IS the process by which bank of gold bearinl
earth and rock is excavated by Jet of water
discharged through the converRinE nozzles OF
pipe, under great pressure, the earth and de
bTis being carried away by the same water
through sluices, and discharged on lower level,
=. intofhe natural streams and warehouses be
3 low Where The gravel or other material OF
the bank IS cemented or whether the bank
is composed of masses of pipe-ciay, it is
shattered by blasting with powder, sometimes
: from fifteen to twenty tons of powder being
used at one blast to break up bank
In the early periods of hydraulic mining, as
e. In 1882 the water was discharged through q
r. rubber or canvas hose, with nozzles of not
more. than an inch in diameter; but later
up0n the invention of the Little Giant and
.tMOnitor'' machines, the size. OF the nozzles
were largely increased, till now the nozzle is
from four TO nine inches in diameter, dis
: charging from 500 to 1000 inches Of water
under pressure of from three to four or five
hundred feet. For example, an S-inch noz
zle. at the North Bloomfield mine, discharges
$1,000 cubic feet of water in an hour, with a
velocity OF 100 feet per second. The eXca
waiting power OF such body OF water, dis
charged with such velocity, is enormous; and
unless the gravel is very heavy or firmly ce
mented,i II Is much in excess of its transport
ing power.
Al some OF these mines as at North Bloom
field, several OF these monitors are worked
much of the time night and day, the several
levels upon which they are at work being bril-
uanty illuminated by electric lights, the cleo
tricity being generated by water-power A
night scene of the kind at the North Bloom
field mine is in the highest degree weird and
startling, and 1t cannot fail to strike stranger.
with wonder and admiration. The amount O
debris discharged into the rivers by these oper
ations can only be duly appreciated by actual
observation.
Thus the learned Judge, whose decision
was not appealed from, very correctly de-
scribes the hydraulic process as he saw il
in one mine, but it fits all to greater OF
? less extent.
!. Now, considering the awful conse
quences of such system on riparian in.
terests, their solicitude must be excu sed
when revival of the method is proposed
AS further evidence of the power of thi:
from the San Francisco Chronicle is to the