How We Get Gold

[HardPack]

Found this publication recently:

“How We Get Gold in California” by William V. Wells (published 2010 by VistaBooks.com). Wells was apparently an original 49er that returned to the California goldfields in 1860. He documents the gold placering equipment and techniques in use in 1849 then again in 1860. Of interest is that both the Long Tom Sluice and Dry Washer were in use in the California Goldfields by 1860. Plus much more.

[HardPack]

On 6/8/2024 at 6:50 PM, HardPack said:

both the Long Tom Sluice and Dry Washer were in use in the California Goldfields by 1860

Whether you are dry panning or metal detecting all those hillside “old boot tacks” you keep finding, according to others, are actually bellows tacks from an “old puffer dry washer”. Occasionally I also pick up twisted wire cable ties where the pay dirt was loaded into sacks then packed down to the stream for processing. Apparently wire cable was around prior to the 1880’s. On an old claim the placer miners followed a narrow seep channel emitting from a contact between different rock formations. During the wet season there may had been enough water to operate a “Long Tom” but not a sluice run. During the wet season the channel from the seep is only 6 inches wide. You can follow the stepped terraces from the bottom to top of the drainage where they built berms to hold back the water from the seep for processing the pay dirt. After the processed material filled the basin below the berm they built a berm further up then repeated the process. At the top of their workings, just below the rock contact, the slope angle jumps from 30 degrees to over 45 degrees. At this point the workings extends outwards from the confides of the drainage to a width of 100 feet, the digging’s side slope deepen to over 20 feet plus closer to the contact. During the dry season they apparently either switched to dry washing or sack packing. I have been finding pieces of wire strands near areas where they dug out pockets of surface quartz along the north/south running contact. Definitely a group effort, they moved a lot of material off that hillside. Apparently there was not enough capital among them to start a drift mine operation or the amount of gold recovery did not warrant further effort. The placer mining in the area dates from the 1850’s with the last commercial operation ending in the mid 1960’s. 

[Steve Herschbach]

https://www.abebooks.com/9780896460416/Got-Gold-California-Wells-Williams-089646041X/plp