Williams news., 1903-05-30
THE "SACRAMENTO WASH. "
Views of the Needles PIacers by Several
 WeII.Known Mining Men.

WeII-Known Mining Men.
 J. c. Steele, a well-known mining operator, has given the Pacific Coast Miner some interesting views of the recently discovered placer fields in the Sacramento Wash" near the town of Needles.
 According to him, the new placer deposits are in the bed of valley that appears to have been formed by an ancient stream, and which is said to course for 15O miles or so from Nevada in the neighborhood of Searchlight, bending around through California and reaching the Colorado river from the west at a point about five miles north of Needles. The Santa Fe railroad swings northwesterly from Needles and enters the "wash" valley about ten miles from the Colorado river and about two miles east of Ibex. At this point of entry the valley narrows to a gorge of about 200 feet, where the old stream broke through range of hills. The term ''wash" is in that arid region ap- piled to dry valley formed and bedded with detritus by the inter- mittent flow of waters caused by slight seasonal rains or by cloud bursts.
 It had become known that through the gravelly floor of this valley flowed one of the subterranean streams that are fairly numerous in that great desert region. Water could be found at from ten to fifteen feet. w. H. Orr of Needles con- ceived the enterprise of building a bedrock dam at the narrow gorge mentioned, conserving the subter- ranean stream and carrying its waters to Needles. It was esti- mated that 200 miners inches could be developed. Upon inves- tigating the site for the dam, bed of clay was found at depth of thirty feet and it was decided to form the dam with the aid of large tongued and grooved piles driven into the clay. Some of the piles broke in driving and had to be pulled up. In the dirt attached to some of these extracted piles gold was observed, and the new buried placer field was discovered. Orr's luck recalls that of one Dow of Dow's Flat.
 Orr and his associates quietly To- cated about two miles of a channel, and kept the secret for time, but it leaked out at Needles that the Sacramento wash was a gold field, and by the third day the rush was at it's height, the valley having a population of about about 500 that day, including MT. Steele. who hap pened to arrive from an Arizona mining district just then with an old California prospector.
 Below the discovery the valley widens to about 1000 feet, with we'll defined banks for the several miles to the river. Above Ibex the valley widens to several miles. Hun dreds of claims cover the territory. When Mir. Steele left a few days ago very little real prospecting had been done, the gold bearing stratum having been tested in but four places. Where investigated, there is bed of barren, loose material ten to fifteen feet deep, and below it to the clay similar bed of gold bearing gravel, through which the values appear pretty evenly dis tributed. MT. Orr prospected his territory in two places by driving down four-inch pipe for fifteen feet below the bottom of 12-foot cut and bringing up the contained gravel. It banned $2.9O, or about $27 to the cubic yard. From this Orr confidently estimated the con- tents of his ground at $5,OOO,OOO per mile. A similar experiment a mile from the Colorado river was reported to show $50 per yard. This is about the extent to which