This documentary describes the history of hydraulic mining in Nevada County, California. It begins by describing the early days of placer mining, where miners used picks, shovels, and gold pans to extract gold from rivers and streams. As the easily accessible gold was depleted, miners turned to hydraulic mining, which used high-pressure water jets to dislodge gold-bearing gravel. This method, while efficient, caused significant environmental damage due to the large amounts of debris it released into rivers and streams. The documentary details the conflict between hydraulic miners and downstream farmers, who suffered from the pollution and flooding caused by mining debris. Legal battles ensued, culminating in a landmark court decision in 1884 that effectively banned hydraulic mining. The documentary concludes by discussing the lasting impact of hydraulic mining on the region and the ongoing efforts to balance the economic benefits of mining with environmental concerns.

Full Transcript of the Video:

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Here in Nevada County, California, in high mountain ridges with tall pines, deep gullies, and turbulent waters, there is a history of gold seekers and a dream of quick and easy riches.

Gold nuggets as big as your fist and gravels so rich that a single pan could produce a fortune.

In 1849, the Placer gold miners were working every river and stream bed in the northern mines of California.

But to the gold seekers, it was more than just picking up big chunks of free gold or swishing a little gravel and water around in a gold pan.

It was hard backstraining work.

Digging, dumping, and washing yards of rock, a few did make their fortune.

But most of their dreams of quick and easy riches did not happen.

The tools of the Placer miners were a pick, shovel, gold pan, and rocker.

The long tom and sluice box, it consisted of three boards nailed together to form a flume.

It was fitted with slats or riffles to catch the gold.

A number of these units could be fitted together end to end to make a long series.

And a whole crew of miners was kept busy shoveling dirt and gravel into the swiftly flowing water inside the box.

Water in the gold miner have gone hand in hand throughout the long history of mining.

Since gold is seven times as heavy as rock and gravel, the gold settles to the bottom of these devices where it is recovered after the worthless debris is washed away.

Finding gold in Nevada County foothills depended a great deal on luck.

It is true that some of the miners were able to pick up free gold, chisel nuggets out of crevices with a pocket knife, and get thousands of dollars worth of dust in a single pan.

But these joists belonged to only a few who were lucky enough to be the first to strike some very rich diggens.

Their followers, rarely able to share this quick wealth, were forced to work harder for less money and dream of the day when they would be the first to discover a new bonanza.

Here on the banks of Deer Creek below Nevada City, the miners were surprised to find deposits of gold-bearing gravel lying far above the present course of Deer Creek and the neighboring streams.

The gold miner cared little about how the gold got there.

Their only interest was how much they could get for themselves.

There were so many working on the new discovery, the miners had to agree upon 30 by 30-foot claims.

And with so many holes dug into the ground, the area looked like coyote burrows and was appropriately named Coyoteville.

The largest dead river is known as the Big Blue Lead.

And it has been traced from the Little Grizzly in Sierra County across Nevada County to Forest Hill in Placer County.

Its history began approximately 50 to 60 million years ago, or just about the same time that mammals began to make their first appearance on Earth.

The miners at Coyote Diggens had discovered rich deposits of gold.

The only question was how to mine them.

The only convenient source of water was located in the Canyon of Deer Creek, a short distance below.

The miners reasoned it would be simpler to take the gravel to the water by wheelbarrow or horse and wagon.

By March of 1850, the miners were damming up the creeks in the higher mountains and began digging a small ditch, one and a half miles in length, from Mosquito Creek to Coyote Hill.

And by May of 1850 at Nevada City, another ditch from Little Deer Creek to Phelps Hill was completed.

The prices for the use of the water varied from place to place.

The miners paid from $16 to $30 for a day's run, or $4 for each long tom per day.

The price was reduced for the next customer until the last miner to use the muddy water paid $1 for each long tom.

Many of the water companies were organized for the sole purpose of delivering water to the miners at a price set according to what the traffic could bear.

Soon, ditches were dug or constructed, whichever the miner found necessary, to all the leading mining camps.

Here at Buckeye Hill in April of 1852, a quarter mile from Nevada City, a man by the name of Anthony Chabot introduced a canvas hose 40 feet long, which he found made it easier to wash and loosen the material that went directly into the long tom.

It did not occur to Mr.
Chabot to go further and use the force of the water against the bank to break up the earthen gravel.

That idea lay dormant until April of 1853, when Edward E.

Mattson and his partners attached a nozzle to the end of the canvas hose on American Hill on the same drift as the Chabot's.

Mattson claimed the hose with a nozzle did the work of 100 men.

He knocked down so much dirt and gravel that he had to stop and let the long tom wash clear.

Mattson said they used the apparatus three months and created interest everywhere in the county, attracting on the average 50 visitors each day.

This new method of mining did not leave Mr.
Mattson a rich man.

Like Marshall, he died in poverty.

The advantages of this method of mining were so obvious that it was soon employed on all claims.

From this crude beginning, hydraulic mining rapidly developed with bigger and yet bigger iron pipes and nozzles.

The monitor or little giant was constructed so that it could be moved from side to side and depressed or elevated by an operator called the pipe man, who could easily direct the streams of water to any desired portion of the bank.

It was necessary to construct dams and ditches in order to meet the demand for water from the hydraulic areas.

The South Yuba Canal Company in Nevada City was the largest of the water supply companies.

They expanded their field until at the peak of operations, they maintained 450 miles of waterways.

The company constructed a flume seven miles in length.

One and a half miles of the flume had to pass along a solid rock wall of a mountain.

To hold the flume, a shelf was blasted out of the solid rock in places 100 feet high.

Workmen were lowered down from the top by ropes to begin drilling and blasting.

In addition, a tunnel 3,800 feet long was drilled at the cost of $112,000 to allow the water to flow into Deer Creek above Nevada City.

The whole canal cost $600,000 for its 16-mile course.

The water companies started selling water at $1 an inch for 10 hours a day.

As immense reservoirs were constructed and the supply became almost unlimited, the price declined to 12 and 1/2 cents per inch.

Water was generally owned by companies and sold to the miners, but many large mines had their own ditch system.

Here in Nevada County is San Juan Ridge.

It lies between the south and middle forks of the Yuba River.

Hydraulic mining grew by leaps and bounds using tremendous amounts of water, labor, and capital investment.

The hydraulic miners on San Juan Ridge got their water from small lakes at high elevations, such as English Lake at 6,000 feet, which was dammed up and had a reservoir of 650,000 cubic feet of water.

This lake served 80 miles of ditches and flumes for hydraulic miners.

Four small lakes at Bowman's Ranch were enclosed with dams costing $1 million.

The ditches were usually 8 to 15 feet wide at the top and 4 to 6 feet wide at the bottom and carried 3,500 miners inches of water.

The mountain country from which the supplies of water was obtained was cut by gorges or canyons of great depth surrounded by ridges running in every direction.

Flumes span deep gorges or canyons on timber work in many instances.

Sometimes they had to be suspended from canyon walls and were often carried across adjacent canyons so that waters of small tributaries might be tapped.

At French Corral, there were three hydraulic operations, the Eureka Lake and Yuba Canal Company, the North Bloomfield Mining and Water Company, and the Milton Mining and Water Company.

In 1878, the Ridge Telephone Company introduced the first long distance telephone line in the world at a cost of $6,000.

It was 60 miles long and used to obtain the most effective management of the reservoirs, ditches, and flumes.

Earlier miners spoke of pans of gravel and ounces of gold, but the hydraulic miners spoke of tons of gravel and pounds of gold.

The force produced by the downward pressure of water from a height of 400 feet was tremendous.

A five inch nozzle under 400 foot head would use 11,250 gallons a minute.

This unbroken stream was so powerful, a 50 pound rock could be carried 100 feet before it would fall from its own weight.

So powerful, a man 200 feet or more away could be killed by the force of the water.

The life of a pipe man must have been an interesting one.

To the pipe man, the monitor was a living, breathing thing.

It was tame, obedient, and powerful.

He knew better than anyone else how to swerve the big nozzle and drive the avalanche of boulders ahead of the powerful jet of water, scattering rocks like handfuls of bullets.

He could make the monitor respond with a long deep growl as the water bit deeply into the towering red clay bank until a slab 1,000 tons came crashing down with a mighty roar.

Many times, intermixed layers of gravel were cemented together in the banks and proved exceedingly hard to wash away.

The most efficient manner of mining these banks was by undermining or washing away the base near bedrock and allowing the whole mass to come crashing down and break itself into pieces from the fall.

Frequently, the cave-in could compromise many tons of gravel.

Sometimes when a two venturesome miner was buried in the falling mass of gravel, the most successful way to free him was to turn on all the available monitors and literally sluice him out.

But to the pipemen, the wind could be swift or bite with an icy tongue.

Rains could pour and snow could fly, but there would be the expert placer piper clad from head to foot in his clothes of rubber and wool.

Here at North Bloomfield was the rich Molokoff mine.

The Molokoff cost $3 million before it became paying property, but with banks 600 feet high, the owners were not gambling because they had correctly estimated their mining claim to be worth $35 million.

Once a month or more, the mine would be shut down for a cleanup where double sluice boxes were provided and the flow merely shifted and the cleanup made.

It was not uncommon for cleanups to yield $50,000 to $100,000 worth of gold.

In 1880, the Molokoff produced the largest gold bar ever shipped from Nevada County.

It weighed 510 pounds.

There were over 75 men working at the mine, and the oil burning locomotive headlights were placed strategically over the diggens to enable the men to work the monitors 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The monitors shot out water with cannonball velocity, thundering against the cliff and washing away 50,000 tons of earth and gravel daily and using 16 million gallons of water a year.

From 1862 to 1884, the Molokoff yielded $4 million in gold and washed away 41 million yards of earth and gravel called debris.

At the peak of hydraulic mining, there were 425 such mines operating in California, and all were dumping millions of cubic yards of debris into the creeks and rivers, creating big problems downstream.

The farmer, who had always looked to the mountains for his summer supply of water to irrigate his crops and to water his stock, was getting a conglomeration of water, silt, and tons of mining debris.

Four rivers-- the feather, the yuba, the bear, and the American-- carried most of the debris.

These rivers drained into the Sacramento, which carried the hydraulic waste towards the sea.

In early stages of mining, no particular damage seemed to have been caused by mining waste.

Agricultural and shipping interest paid little, if any, attention to mining debris that was beginning to load the rivers.

In the winter of 1861, excessive rains caused an overflow of the Sacramento River and its tributaries.

The flood carried tons of mining waste, which had been picked up by the small mountain streams that emptied into the four rivers.

In turn, these rivers deposited their burden upon the alluvial plains, which had built up over the years by nature's own methodical process of erosion and deposition.

Channels of the valley rivers served as natural settling basins for heavier debris, and levees were built to confine the waters to their normal course.

However, levees forced the rivers to lose their debris and their channels, which built up the riverbeds above the surrounding lands.

Although levee building continued, riverbanks were finally topped by floods.

Debris-laden waters submerged adjacent land with sand and clay to depths that even buried orchards, gardens, and dwellings.

The winter flood of 1861 brought a deluge of hydraulic waste to the valleys, which aroused the farmers, but their protests availed them little because mining was a more powerful industry.

Since very little protest was made to or against the miners, hydraulic mines grew and flourished.

The valley farmers and citizens organized the Anti-Dibree Association.

The citizens of the Upper Sacramento Valley in 1875 petitioned the state government for relief from the accumulation of mining debris in the river channels, but the request was left unanswered.

They found themselves still confronted with the nuisance and were compelled at last resort to seek relief through the courts.

The suits took various forms in different courts.

Some were in the name of the people, some in the names of the counties, and others in the names of private parties.

Partisans of each area continued to carry on verbal and journalistic battles, claiming bribery and corruption.

Newspaper editors published stories that interested their particular section.

This conflict between editors is reflected in an editorial by O.

P.

Stidger of the North San Juan Times.

The Sacramento Bee is hopping mad because the Placer Herald and the Argus of Auburn have been saying some naughty things of the insect's course on the debris question.

The bee thinks the Herald and Argus have been bought up by the miners, but it has an area of word to say when a question is asked, how much did the grangers pay you to wage war against hydraulic mining?
The insect turns its eyes in holy horror at what it says is the venality of the press.

But unfortunately, it never looks in the mirror to see itself as others sees it, its sting is harmless.

By about 1880, it was estimated that over 100 million cubic yards of gravel had been washed from the mining area in question, and that over 700 million cubic yards remained to be washed.

Debris from the mines was discharged mostly into the middle and south fork of the Yuba River and into the Feather River, which flows through Marysville.

This debris laid in river water was the source of complaint and main issue in the case of woodruff against the mining companies.

But on June 18, 1883, about 5 o'clock in the morning, everything burst out all over.

The English dam containing 600 million cubic feet of water at an elevation of 6,000 feet, the equivalent of 80 tons of TNT, broke.

George Davis, the dam watchman, arrived right after the break and telephoned warnings of the floodwaters to areas below.

The water of the middle Yuba was 60 feet high and moving along at 10 miles per hour with a roar that could be heard for miles.

A great rolling wave swept away everything in its path downstream.

Farm, farmhouse, and sheep at Woolsey's Flat were swept away.

Two miles further, a dam and a flume were demolished, and the water reached a level of 70 feet at Bloody Run Creek, where a trestle and 200 feet of flume were destroyed.

Water at a level of 80 feet at Emery's Crossing swept away a bridge and a dozen cabins.

Several Chinese miners also lost their lives.

The most important crossing of the middle Yuba was Freeman's Crossing.

The house and blacksmith shop was demolished, and the 200-pound anvil was never seen again.

The broom factory and bridge itself was carried away.

By the time the floodwaters left Nevada County, it had swept away buildings, shops, cabins, roads, dams, flumes, and mining equipment.

And when the water reached Marysville, the water rose three feet, carrying much driftwood, sand, and mining debris.

It was estimated to be 18 to 20 inches deep for miles and miles.

The Sacramento Bee published a cartoon of the damage done by hydraulic mining.

It was widely believed that the dam had been blown up.

The dam was inspected a day before the break.

There was a recent history of damaged dams.

In October of 1881, the Brush Dam at Parks Bar was set afire, and also the Bird Cell Dam on the Bear River, and the Elta Dam on Cedar Creek.

The Milton Mining and Water Company offered a reward of $5,000 for the conviction of the presumed saboteurs.

The money was never claimed.

The damage, $923,000.

Valley papers railed at the loss of property and crops that resulted from the flood.

Nevada County papers sneered at their accusations and pointed out that the loss of water, flumes, ditches, and mining equipment had thrown more than 100 hydraulic miners out of work and essentially turned French grille and nearby mining communities into instant ghost towns.

To local miners, the loss of a few cattle and sheep and downing a few acres of grain and a few sections of swampland and bug-eaten soil in the lower country was insignificant and not really serious enough to wail about.

The case of Edward Woodruff versus North Bloomfield Mining Company, Milton Mining and Water Company, and some eight other companies.

Mr.
Woodruff was Marysville's best businessman.

He owned over 1,000 acres of farming land that was considered among the best in the state.

He owned the Hawk Farm in Sutter County on the opposite side of the Feather River.

It was conceded that 125 acres was destroyed by overflow of debris from the South and Middle Yuba rivers.

On January 7, 1884, Judge L.

B.

Sawyer of the United States Circuit Court granted a perpetual injunction against the North Bloomfield Mining Company that made it illegal to discharge tailings into the streams and rivers.

This to the miners meant the same thing as prohibition of the industry.

The Anti-Debree Association militantly accepted the challenge to protect its gains acquired under the Sawyer decision.

It hired a group of watchmen to check and spy upon the mines that were operating, contrary to the court's orders.

The watchmen were a source of information to gain injunctions against the operators and a means by which the anti-debris people could close the mines.

In Nevada County at Sweetland, in Woods Saloon came the cry, "Get a rope," and from the back dashed a figure who had been identified as a spy, a short distance away.

The justice of the peace found sanctuary for the watchmen for the night.

At daybreak, he was spirited out of town and advised to stay out of the mountains.

After most of the mines had been closed down by a continuous series of cordon junctions, Mr.
Stidget of the North San Juan Times wrote this in his paper.

"The woods are full of anti-debris spies.

We hope the boys will let them alone.

They are doing no harm, as all of the hydraulic mines have closed down now.

They are only a bill of expense to their employers without rendering in return any compensation.

The talk of lynching a few of the stripped fellows must not be encouraged.

It is true the business they are employed in is low and mean, but what of that?
The lazy cusses must live.

They are too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal.

Hence, if not given employment as a spies, they would become tramps and starve.

The governmental action concerns the cost of building massive barriers by the United States government.

Economic aid to construct such barriers was secured in 1934 by Congressman Harry Englebright of Nevada City, California.

He secured an amendment to the Kamenety Act, whereby the government would build the barriers and the cost would be repaid on a total basis by the operators using the storage facilities behind the dam for their debris.

Under the Kamenety Act, two dams have been constructed, the North Fork and the Harry Englebright Dam.

The two dams were not used for mining debris.

If hydraulic mining continued to operate as it did before 1884, plus the amount of silk deposited from natural erosion, the damage would be tremendous.

The rivers would be so overloaded with silt and debris that flood control measures would be next to impossible.

Control of mining waste or debris has kept the hydraulic mining industry fettered until the present time.

How can this waste be controlled so that the industry can regain its former power in the mining world?
Those who attempt a solution must take cognizance of the problem where it concerns the Fish and Game Commission, Soil Conservation Commission, Health and Safety, and River Pollution under the Dickey Water Pollution Act, which was passed by the California legislature in 1949.

No solution is proposed for this problem, but a fortune awaits the person who can find an adequate and economical method of disposal of hydraulic mining debris.

Whoever it must be must take into consideration the concerns previously enumerated.

If and when this happens, hydraulic mining as an industry will once more gain its former position as a gold mining power in California.

At present, it is the Rip Van Winkle of the mining world, slumbering in its bed of debris, waiting for the day when it can awaken and quickly regain the position it held in gold mining before being put to sleep by Sawyer's perpetual injunction in 1884.

For more information about gold mining in Nevada County, contact the Nevada County Historical Society, North Star Mining Museum, the Searles Library, or the Firehouse Museum in Nevada City for the rich heritage of Nevada County.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [music fades out]