page_title: Trinity River (California)
section_title: Gold Rush
hierarchical_section_title: Trinity River (California) / History / Gold Rush
caption_attribution_description: English: Miner on the Trinity River during the California Gold Rush. Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.
context_page_description: The Trinity River is a major river in northwestern California in the United States, and is the principal tributary of the Klamath River. The Trinity flows for 165 miles through the Klamath Mountains and Coast Ranges, with a watershed area of nearly 3,000 square miles in Trinity and Humboldt Counties. Designated a National Wild and Scenic River, along most of its course the Trinity flows swiftly through tight canyons and mountain meadows.
  The river is known for its once prolific runs of anadromous fish, notably Chinook salmon and steelhead, which sustained Native American tribes for thousands of years. Due to its remoteness, the Trinity did not feature prominently in the early European colonization of California, but the gold rush in the mid-1800s brought thousands of gold seekers to the area. The river was named by Major Pierson B. Reading who, upon reaching the river in 1848, mistakenly believed it to flow into the Pacific Ocean at Trinidad Bay. During and after the gold rush, the influx of settlers and miners into the Trinity River country led to conflict with indigenous tribes, many of which saw severe depopulation due to fighting and foreign diseases.
context_section_description: In July 1848, not too long after James Marshall's famous gold find at Sutter's Mill – which started the California Gold Rush – Major Reading discovered gold on the Trinity River. The find attracted thousands of miners to the area and created boomtowns such as Douglas City, Francis, Hoboken, Lake City, Lewiston, Junction City and Quimby. Weaverville, located at the end of the trail Reading had established from the Sacramento Valley to the Trinity, prospered as the main trade center through which gold was exchanged for imported supplies and services. The initial discoveries were placer deposits, carried by the river to settle in gravel bars. The Trinity River gold rush is also noted for the large number of Chinese miners attracted to the area, as many as 2,500 by 1854. Many of the Chinese were from the Pearl River Delta (Guangdong region).
  Mining activity was initially concentrated in the eastern (upper) valleys of the Trinity River around Weaverville, as the hostile Native Americans and treacherous gorges around Burnt Ranch precluded the transport of rations and equipment to places further west. For about two decades the area was extremely productive, second only to the Sierra Nevada (the Mother Lode) itself. The rate at which gold was extracted, and new methods pioneered to access the harder to reach deposits, was feverish. Author James Hilton remarked that Weaverville was a "Shangri-La, that strange and wonderful somewhere which is not a place but a state of mind." The area was soon profiting $1.5 million a year, with hundreds of claims along the Trinity River equipped with flumes, waterwheels and other apparatus to separate fine gold from river gravel.
  The Great Flood of 1862 largely obliterated the placer mining claims along this part of the Trinity River, spurring prospectors to push west, establishing a pack trail to the area around the New River and the South Fork of the Trinity. In fact, the New River was named thusly for being a "new" river to explore for gold. Although the river gold petered out by the 1870s, lode gold was discovered in the 1880s in the mountains above the Trinity River country. Because hard rock mining was required to access the gold bearing veins, new industries such as iron forges and stamp mills prospered in the region.
  Another profitable way to access gold was hydraulic mining operations, which sprang up across the Trinity River country starting in the 1860s. At one point, there were 307 hydraulic mines in Trinity County alone, of which 145 were "fully operational", all of which depended on the use of pressurized water to demolish hillsides in search of gold bearing ore. This had an enormous impact on the landscape – leveling forests, carving huge gullies and burying streambeds under dozens of feet of sediment – which still characterizes the area today. Elaborate flume, reservoir and tunnel systems were built to supply the massive quantities of water required by these "hydraulicking" operations.
  The La Grange Mine which began operating in 1862 on Oregon Gulch, a small creek that flows into the Trinity, was the biggest hydraulic mine in California, covering over 3,000 acres (1,200 ha). Tailings washed from this single mine buried the valley, the creek and the entire town of Oregon Gulch (which had been purchased by the mine owners in anticipation of this) under a staggering 110 million cubic yards (84,000,000 m³) of sediment. This is equal to thirty times the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
caption: An early gold miner along the Trinity River
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