Mining And Western Settlement Patterns

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

1 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Figure 29: River mining, Grand Mountain Bar, California, circa 1856. (Photograph courtesy of George Eastman House, Rochester, New York)

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns Dr. Randall Rohe Dr. Randall Rohe is a Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. He is the author of numerous articles on the history of mining and mining landscapes, including "Gold Mining Landscapes of the West." Following is a copy of the paper he presented at the Settler Communities in the West Symposium. His article traces the effects on the western landscape of precious metal mining and especially the effects of various forms of technology. Different types of mining and refining methods have various remains�head frames at mine entrances, the cut-up landscape of hydraulicking, and the torn-up stream beds from dredging are but three of many examples of historic mining resources. I am going to try, as best possible in the space allowed, to provide an overview of historic mining in the American West between 1848 and 1942. My focus will be solely on gold and silver mining which initiated settlement in much of the West and greatly influenced so much of the region's subsequent development. Even with this focus, realize that much had to be left out. The works cited in the end notes provide much more detail on the topics that are discussed in this overview. Most gold occurs in the form of lode or placer deposits. The term "placer" probably originated from the Spanish plaza de oro, a place of gold, and simply meant a surface working. Most placer deposits consist of gravels that contain gold that has been freed from the rock by weathering and erosion. Lode deposits consist of gold and silver still contained within the rock. Gold, which is chemically inert, retains its original form while being eroded, transported, and deposited, and therefore readily forms placers. Silver, on the other hand, which combines readily with most acids and forms soluble compounds, is not ordinarily found in placer deposits. Placer mining remained the chief source of gold until 1873, when lode mining surpassed it in importance. While lode mining began in California during

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

2 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

1849-50, it contributed relatively little of the total gold output until 1860.1 In the American West both placer and lode gold occur primarily in areas that have been subjected to tectonic activity (that is, mountain building). In areas where no geological disturbance has taken place, so that the rocks still lie horizontal, such mineral deposits are rare or inferior in value. Reflecting this, maps of gold and silver mining districts show that most of them followed the mountain ranges, while few districts came into being in the Columbia and Snake River Plateau and the Colorado Plateau. The four leading states, in order of total gold output, are California, Colorado, South Dakota and Nevada.2 Like gold, silver occurred in the mountains rather than the level parts of the West because the deposits originated during periods of earth movement, when ascending hot liquids flowed into fissures and cracks in the earth's crust and formed "veins" that wind and twist through the older rock as veins do through the human body. Sometimes the hot ore-bearing solutions rising from below actually penetrated solid rock, perhaps aided by minute cracks, dissolved it, and substituted new minerals for the original matter forming "replacement deposits." The Comstock of Nevada, discovered in 1859, was the first major silver district in the United States. Historically, Montana ranks first in silver production, followed by Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. By far the most important silver-producing state today is Idaho �mostly from the Coeur d'Alene district� followed by Arizona, Utah, Montana, and Colorado.3 MINING METHODS The traditional methods of placer mining consisted of panning, rocking, tomming, and sluicing. Generally, the pan or the batea (a wooden bowl) was used only for prospecting. It was not used in actual mining operations except for working extremely rich deposits on a small scale. In order to work placer deposits on a larger scale, other methods were employed. The first was called a cradle/rocker because it resembled a baby's cradle. Essentially, the rocker consisted of a wooden box mounted on rockers and open at its lower end; riffles nailed across the bottom caught the gold.4 The long tom eventually evolved into the sluice which consisted of long, narrow, open troughs, usually twelve feet long by one to two feet wide and ten inches high. Both ends of the sluice were open, with one end a little wider to permit the addition of more sections. At times sluices reached lengths of several thousand feet. Most historians believe former Southern Appalachian miners introduced the sluice into California in 1850.5 River mining or river turning came into vogue in California during the 1850s. It consisted of the use of dams, ditches, and flumes to divert streams from their natural beds. The miners then worked the drained stream bed with pans, rockers, long tomes, or sluices. While not peculiar to California, river mining probably reached its greatest development there. Even early views of river mining show clearly the extensive nature of this mining technique (Figure 29). River mining required capital, planning, and coordinated labor, and generally joint stock companies undertook such operations. The largest river mining operations occurred in California during the 1880s and 1890s. The Golden Feather Channel Company's undertaking on the Feather River in Butte County is characteristic of the large-scale river mining projects attempted during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its operations included ten miles of roads, three separate camps for up to three hundred miners, workshops, and a canal forty

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

3 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

feet wide and six thousand feet long.6 As the surface or recent placers neared exhaustion, prospecting moved to the gravel hills of "tertiary gravels." The "tertiary gravels" were extensive gold bearing deposits laid down by streams approximately fifty million years ago and subsequently buried by as much as fifteen hundred feet of younger gravels and volcanic material. These "deep" or "buried gravels" were first worked by drifting�the excavation of auriferous gravel by shafts, tunnels, galleries, and gangways, and extraction of the gold by one of the traditional methods, usually sluicing. The early drifting operations consisted of shafts ten to thirty-five feet deep from which extended drifts six to twenty-eight feet long. From such crude beginnings, drifting evolved into a distinct branch of mining. Tunnels one thousand to two thousand feet long became common and some approached three thousand feet. Some of the California drift mines eventually reached lengths of over two miles and extended over a mile underground. The relatively extensive tertiary gravels of California enabled drifting to reach an importance rarely found on later mining frontiers. The Big Dipper Mine, Iowa Hill, California, which produced $1.2 million in gold, is representative of the large scale drift mines of the 1870s and 1880s.7 In the 1850s the development of hydraulicking afforded another means of working the "deep diggings." Hydraulic mining utilized a jet of water issuing under high pressure from a nozzle to excavate and wash the gravel through sluices that caught the gold and disposed of the tailings. Hydraulicking enabled four or five men to do the work of fifty men using the traditional methods. It was mass production applied to mining. Large scale, heavily capitalized operations became common.8 One final major form of placer mining developed during the nineteenth century. Many of the large rivers that drained the goldfields contained millions of yards of low grade auriferous gravels. The means to mine them came in the 1890s with the advent of the gold dredge. A dredge consisted of a flatbottom boat equipped with excavating and gold-washing machinery. The most prominent feature of the dredge was the massive bow ladder or boom, around which circled the endless bucket line which did the excavating. Some dredges showed a profit with a recovery of gold of only nine cents a cubic yard. Further, a dredge had the capability of working the entire unobstructed length of river channel. In May 1895, before a large gathering of onlookers at Bannack, Montana, the Fielding L. Graves, the first successful American connected-bucket dredge, slipped into the waters of Grasshopper Creek, inaugurating "the Dawn of a New Era of Placer Mining Methods," according to a local newspaper editor. A hydroelectric generator, supplied from a water line, powered the dredge. The Graves, equipped with five cubic feet buckets and a fifteen-foot ladder, dug to a depth of twenty-five feet.9 By the turn of the century, it was clear that dredging would revolutionize placer mining. In 1900, twenty-seven gold dredges operated in the U.S. (sixteen in California, six in Idaho and five in Montana), and produced more than $520,000. Dredging peaked in the teens. In 1914 almost eighty dredges operated in various parts of the West. Even the early dredges moved eight hundred to fifteen hundred cubic yards of material daily. By 1912 dredges that handled upwards of ten thousand cubic yards a day existed. The last dredges to operate in the West were huge affairs that reached depths of seventy-five to one hundred feet.10

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

4 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Placer mining eventually led to the discovery and exploitation of hardrock or lode deposits. The first California lode mine began operations near Mariposa in 1849. Lode mining required tunnels, shafts, and other excavations to remove the gold and silver bearing ores. The U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) counted over three thousand shafts, tunnels, pits, and prospect holes in a recent survey of the Leadville district in Colorado. The actual extent of the underground workings exceeds 250 miles. Until about 1875, the principal tools of the lode miners were hand drills and black powder. Under such technology, mining advanced about nine to ten feet a day. During the 1850s, the deepest shafts in the California lode mines went down only about three hundred feet. Often a deposit was worked by a tunnel into a hillside or even an open cut. The introduction of machine drills and dynamite, however, made it possible for mining operations to proceed much faster.11 Unlike placer deposits, the ores removed by lode mining required considerable processing. To accomplish this, the early miners used an arrastra, a circular depression half filled with mineral-bearing rock, surrounded by a coping wall to hold in the ore. A supported center pole had a bar that extended beyond the coping. The bar, which could be rotated about the pole, was attached at one end to a horse or mule and to one or two large, heavy stones on the other. As the animal circled the arrastra, it dragged the stones across the ore and ground it up. Later, water power replaced horse and mule power, and in hundreds of mining operations throughout the West the waterwheel became a common sight. Although a crude means of ore processing, the arrastra had a great spatial and temporal use. It saw use in mining districts from California to the Black Hills and from northern Idaho to southern Arizona. As late as 1871, over 290 of them operated in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. Some were used even as late as the 1930s and '40s. As a result, today the remains of arrastras are found throughout the West.12 Next came the stamp mill. Simple but effective, stamp mills crushed the rocks under heavy iron pestles whose movement was controlled by a cam shaft. Though the noisy machines had been used for centuries in Europe, in 1851 California miners made a notable improvement, adding replaceable shoes and mounting them to rotate freely and thus wear out evenly�a feature which gained world-wide acceptance. Employed all through the West, a few stamp mills in various stages of decay dot the region's mining districts. The first stamp mills consisted of a series of wood stampers, each covered with iron, that fitted into iron boxes into which the gold quartz was placed. By utilizing cogs of cams, the stampers fell into the boxes with a pile-driver action, ultimately crushing the ore to a fine consistency. The larger the operation, the more stampers were required. Many later mills had a hundred or more steampowered stamps.13 Mills varied widely according to local conditions, particularly the composition of the ores; yet many features were common. Though silver refining was usually more complex than gold, both metals often occurred in the same rocks and were treated similarly. The machinery reduced the ore by successive stages, starting with the rock breaker, continuing with the stamp mill, and passing on to the pans and settling devices. Among the many pieces of equipment utilized were concentrating tables, pulverizing mutters and dies, and amalgam retorts. Chemicals, including mercury, were also added at various stages.14 GOLD RUSH MIGRATIONS AND GOLDFIELD POPULATIONS

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

5 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Almost all of the American gold rushes began with the discovery of placer gold. Placer deposits offered the possibility of quick and large returns with relatively simple mining methods, and thereby stimulated extensive migrations. A huge and rapid influx of population perhaps best characterizes the American gold rushes. The California gold rush amply illustrates these characteristics. Within a few months of the discovery of gold in 1848, the vanguard of the rush appeared. Less than ten thousand people migrated to the California goldfields that year. The combined total for the rush of 1849-50, however, probably approached 250,000. Whatever the exact dimensions of the California gold rush, it produced a dramatic increase in population. California contained a population of perhaps fourteen thousand Euro-Americans in 1848. From this figure, the population increased to more than 100,000 by January 1, 1850.15 Each gold rush, to a greater or lesser degree, possessed a cosmopolitan quality. Of the American gold rushes, the California rush attained the greatest degree of ethnic diversity. The discovery of gold in California attracted people from almost every part of the world. According to the 1850 census, the foreign element, not including Spanish Californians, accounted for some 24 percent of the population, a figure over twice as great as for the United States as a whole. Despite their ethnic diversity, native-born Americans dominated most of the gold rushes.16 As might be expected, young males dominated the mining rushes to an extreme. Partial records for 1849 indicate that males formed approximately 97 percent of the California rush overland and more than 98 percent of the rush by sea. The majority of women who arrived in 1849 resided outside the goldfields.The rush of 1850 saw a slight increase in the number of female participants. That year females accounted for almost 7 percent of the rush by sea and perhaps 5 percent of the overland rush. The census of 1850 for California placed the female population at less than 8 percent; in mining counties the proportion fell below 2 percent. The census of 1852 revealed that females accounted for approximately 13 percent of the population. In most of the mining counties, females accounted for 5 percent or less of the population. In Grass Valley-Nevada City the sex ratio remained almost twice the national average as late as 1870. The gold rushes to Colorado, Montana, Idaho and elsewhere also were dominated by males.17 Besides being dominantly male, the participants of the gold rushes generally were below middle age, "both because the venture had appealed originally to young men and because the trip to California and the life in the mines were too trying to be endured by those who no longer possessed the recuperative powers of youth." A contemporary observer thought that perhaps two-thirds of those involved in the California rush between 1849 and 1851 averaged between twenty and thirty-five years of age. According to the census of 1850, more than half the white males ranged between twenty and thirty years old. The post-California rushes displayed a similar age distribution. Over 50 percent of the total population of Colorado in 1860, for example, was between twenty and thirty years of age, 85 percent was between twenty and forty years of age.18 Time after time, the placer deposits proved too limited for the large numbers brought by the gold rush�a fact reflected in the characteristic mobility displayed by a gold rush population. One recent historian estimates that up to 80 percent of the maximum population of a new mining district consisted of drifters. In a memorable simile, Hugh H. Bancroft

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

6 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

described the fluidity of the mining population of Idaho: "The miners of Idaho were like quicksilver. A mass of them dropped in any locality, broke up into individual globules, and ran off after any atom of gold in their vicinity. They stayed nowhere longer than the gold attracted them." The mobility characteristic of mining resulted in large turnovers within the population of any given mining settlement. Descriptions of an embryonic mining town invariably contained phrases like men "coming in and going out every day" and "full of transient people. " Of the population of Grass Valley-Nevada City, California in 1850, only about five out of every hundred remained in 1856. The portion of the population devoted to mining proved the most unstable. Of those engaged in mining in Nevada City-Grass Valley in 1850, only about 4 percent remained in 1856. The professional and artisan classes proved less transient. Even among these groups, however, four out of five left between 1850-1856.19 The bulk of the miners in most placer regions were initially native-born Americans and European immigrants, with Americans in the majority. The American dominance of the goldfields often ended or considerably lessened at the end of the flush production period. The exhaustion of the rich surface placers necessitated the employment of capital on a large scale and corporate methods to work the deep diggings. Many of the original miners turned to other occupations or moved to new mining regions. In area after area, men of foreign birth replaced the original miners after the flush production period. Chinese usually supplanted the original miners in the placer areas. The Chinese excelled in saving gold, especially fine gold, under difficult conditions. They worked the deposits either abandoned or considered worthless by white miners and added thousands of acres to the total area worked by the traditional methods. As yields declined, almost every placer region received its complement of Chinese, who became ubiquitous in the mining West.20 Before the California gold rush, Chinese migration to the U.S. was negligible. In the twenty years, from 1820 to l840, only eleven Chinese immigrated to America, and from 1840-1850 but 335. Of the latter, three hundred arrived in California during 1849. In 1852 Chinese immigration increased dramatically, to fifteen thousand to twenty thousand a year. In the 1850s and 60s the Chinese population of the United States was concentrated almost entirely in California with approximately 80 percent of that in the goldfields. During their first decade in the West, most Chinese worked in the mines, about 75 percent of them by the early 1860s. The Chinese, by the 1870s, had spread to almost every major placer area of the West. The late 1860s and early 1870s, in fact, probably marked the near peak of Chinese mining. In 1870, mining employed less than a third of the Chinese population, but the Chinese represented over 25 percent of all miners. In some individual states, the Chinese accounted for one-half to almost two-thirds of all miners.21 Among the hardrock miners, there was a tendency for the foreign born to undertake the manual labor and underground work, while Americans specialized in the operation of the machinery and other complicated equipment. The most experienced miner in any deep mine before the early 1860s was likely to have been a Mexican, who had previously worked in the mines of northern Mexico. Starting in the mid 1860s, the Cornish and Irish made up the majority of the miners in the most important lode districts. During the 1860s, mining in Cornwall fell on hard times that became a severe depression during the 70s. At least a quarter and perhaps a third of the mining population left Cornwall between 1871 and 1881. Many of them migrated to the mining districts of the American West. With a long experience in lode mining, the Cornish contributed much to the improvement of mining methods. The

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

7 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Cornish were adept at sinking shafts and drilling tunnels, at timbering and blasting, at rock drilling, and mine drainage. "Wherever a pit was found, a cousin Jack would be there digging away at the bottom of it." At least a tenth of the mining population of Nevada during the 1860s and 1870s was Cornish, with notable concentrations along the Comstock at Virginia City, Gold Hill, and Silver City. Almost everywhere there was a lode mine, however, there would be at least some Cornish. After the decline of the Comstock, the majority of the Cornish there "sought new fields to conquer, scattering in all directions: Butte, Montana; Leadville, Colorado; Tombstone, Arizona; Bodie, California." The peak of Cornish participation in mining occurred during the late 1880s and early 1890s. Thereafter Southern Europeans, especially Italians, or Eastern Europeans, such as the Poles, became prominent.22 TRANSPORTATION AND SUPPLY Great distances characteristically separated the goldfields from existing settlement. The rapid development of the Western goldfields, therefore, depended on an equally rapid development of transportation routes. While each rush brought about the use of different routes, the development of those routes followed a similar pattern. The gold rushes brought an accelerated use and fixed the location of many established routes. At other times, the mining rushes developed alternatives and cutoffs to the existing routes. Many of those routes survive to the present in one way or another. Portions of U.S. Highways 26, 30, 40, 50 and other important roads, for example, traverse the general line of the California Trail. Especially in the eastern plains, time and man have nearly obliterated all traces of the overland routes to the goldfields. In other places, grass-grown ruts extend for miles. In some areas, iron-rimmed wagon wheels left distinct cuts in solid rock.23 The significance of the gold rushes to the evolution of transportation probably best displays itself in the establishment of routes within the goldfields. For the most part, the gold discoveries occurred in largely unsettled areas devoid of all but the most primitive transportation routes. The advent of mining, especially lode mining, however, caused the rapid development and expansion of transportation. With lode mining the miners had to haul ore down to the mills and supplies back to the mines and built narrow, crude roads along the steep valleys. Many of the secondary roads and mining trails between the mines and the mills and smelters of the mining towns have survived in some way.24 The rugged and steep slopes in many sections of the Colorado Rockies made the transportation of the ore from the mines to the mills very difficult and expensive. A solution used in a number of areas was the aerial tramway. With the end of mining, of course, the tramways lost their usefulness and were abandoned. Often, however, the line of their routes is still visible in the present landscape, especially where fills or cuts were required. Sometimes, ruins of the tramway itself still survive.25 Pack trains provided the most universal immediate answer for the demand for supplies created by the influx of population occasioned by mining. The high cost of this type of transportation, however, soon induced the construction of roads to reduce freight costs. The extension of wagon roads pushed packing depots farther into the goldfields. Eventually, roads connected most of the main mining settlements with their supply bases. Pack trains, thereafter, operated only where sparse population, rugged terrain or other factors excluded profitable road construction.26

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

8 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

While geology restricted gold mining almost exclusively to the Trans-Mississippian West, its influence transcended the goldfields and the West itself. The nature of mining prevented its self-sufficiency. As a result, mining acted as a stimulus and support for other economic activities, including transportation, trade, agriculture, lumbering, and manufacturing. Mining supplied the urban centers, markets, and capital necessary for the development and expansion of transportation to and within the mining regions, and resulted in the development of outfitting and supply towns and attendant transportation routes. The development of supply points during the California gold rush illustrates the basic principles that repeat themselves over and over throughout the mining West during the nineteenth century. The majority of goods from the Atlantic seaboard�the principal source of supplies for California�reached the state via ocean steamers or sailing vessels. From the start, San Francisco assumed the role of leading port and major supply center for the California goldfields. San Francisco merchants eventually shipped much of these goods via steam or sail up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers into the Central Valley. Here numerous points aspired to become secondary supply centers. Eventually, of all the aspirants, Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville became the principal interior distributing centers for the mines. From Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville, pack trains and wagons hauled supplies to the larger mining towns serving as trans-shipment points. The "heads of whoa navigation" or sub-depots were usually the larger and strategically located mining towns like Auburn. From the sub-depots, pack trains carried the supplies to the various mining camps of the surrounding districts.27 The growth of supply centers in the rest of the West approximated that of California. In the 1860s, for example, important gold discoveries occurred in Idaho and northeastern Oregon. These goldfields naturally looked to Portland for supplies. Although it remained subordinate to San Francisco as a port, Portland developed into an important distributing point. Ocean-going steamers and sailing vessels either carried goods from San Francisco to Portland, or to a lesser degree directly to Portland. From Portland, river steamers transported the supplies up the Columbia and Snake Rivers into the interior of the Northwest. At various upriver points, a number of towns developed as trans-shipment points. These included The Dalles, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Wallula on the Columbia and Lewiston on the Snake. From these points, wagons or pack trains carried the goods to larger, strategically located mining towns like Idaho City, and then from there to the outlying mining settlements.28 With time, railroads played an increasing role in supplying the mining areas. The extension of railroads into and through the West especially facilitated the development of lode mining. It made it much easier to transport heavy mining and milling equipment, coal and other fuels, timber and lumber, and other supplies to the mining districts, and to bring out the ore or bullion. Prices for all commodities, including labor, began to decline. Often the end of mining precipitated a significant decline in the traffic on the railroads that served the mining regions. Sometimes, in fact, it was enough to eventually cause the abandonment of the line.29 URBANIZATION Unlike previous frontiers, the mining frontier was a decidedly urban one. There were several types of mining communities. The most common was the camp: a straggling settlement that might vary in size from a few houses to a small town. More impressive was the mining town,

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

9 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

a larger settlement with a somewhat less ephemeral existence, and some pretensions to substantiality. Mining settlements associated with the traditional methods in California usually had a population of less than five hundred, commonly less than one hundred.30 Settlements associated with river mining proved particularly transitory. In 1858, the San Francisco Evening Bulletin described one such scene: Upon a single stream within a distance of a few miles, during the busy season in the fall, four or five thousand miners may be employed. Canvas towns, with stores, express office, and drinking and eating saloons, spring up like magic, and are noisy and populous. But the first winter rain destroys the whole busy picture. The flumes, wheels and tools, or as much of them as is possible, are hastily broken up, taken out of the river . . . and shortly afterwards sold at auction . . . The miners pack up their things and hasten to their winter claims. 31

Settlements brought into existence by the exploitation of deep gravels typically proved larger and more stable; populations of several thousand were not unusual. The exploitation of gold and silver gave life to thousands of settlements throughout the West. The California town pictured in Figure 30 was laid out along a winding pack mule trail in 1848. It went through a series of Figure 30: Placerville, California, 1850. Not long names�Dry Diggings, Old Dry after the date of this photograph, Borthwick Diggings, Ravine City, and Hangtown. described Placerville as one long straggling street of After six years of growth and a clapboard houses and log cabins. Unlike many early population of some two thousand, mining towns, it survives to the present. (Photograph Hangtown gained incorporation as courtesy of the Wells Fargo Bank History Room) Placerville. Not long after the date of this photo, Borthwick described Placerville as one long straggling street of clapboard houses and log cabins�a street that was in many places knee-deep in mud with debris strewn everywhere�the result of mining operations. Typically, early photographs and sketches of mining towns indicate a scarcity of timber. Often, in fact, they show only a few scattered trees with no undergrowth and little or no dense growth nearby. The streams on which the town stood became the gutters for their garbage and sewage. A classic photo of Central City, Colorado, shows outhouses built on stilts over Clear Creek. Pollution became so bad in Telluride, Colorado, that the city council hired men to remove dead animals, garbage, and other refuse from the San Miguel River.32 Mining settlements widely separated in time and space bore a remarkable resemblance. Mining town after mining town evolved similarly�a morphological development that differed noticeably from most Eastern towns. The typical mining town began with its commercial area closely built up, along streets specially laid out for its development. Many mining towns, in fact, first consisted of little more than a compact business district on a single street. Early Deadwood, South Dakota, for instance, reportedly contained "two

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

10 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

business houses in every twenty foot front" (Figure 31). As with most mining towns, the business district of Deadwood extended along its main street and contained a multiplicity of establishments, seemingly a far greater number than warranted by its population. Behind the principal streets and the business district stood the majority of the residences. The miners, however, often built their residences apart from the main part of town, scattered along the ravines and hills for convenient access to their claims.33 Corresponding with the rapid appearance of towns came an acceleration of the whole process of settlement. Businessmen, tradesmen, and other typical inhabitants of established settlement appeared almost simultaneously with the miners. Within a relatively short time came schools, churches, theaters, and other trademarks of civilization. Early descriptions of Deadwood clearly display the acceleration of the settlement process on the mining frontier. In the span of five months, Deadwood evolved from a pine forest to a city of over three thousand people, stretching for more than a mile. It contained "nearly 200 business houses, a municipal government, mayor, board of alderman, police and all the other officers necessary for the administration of justice."34 Victorian-style architecture dominated the mining towns. Styles that evolved over many years in the East all appeared within a relatively short time in the mining settlements, creating an eclectic mixture. New styles from the East as well as earlier styles from older mining areas influenced the architectural development of a mining settlement. The mining towns were, in effect, architectural melting pots in which the major styles overlapped, fused, and were sometimes combined.35 The mining frontier itself produced little that was new architecturally. Various Eastern architectural styles, occasionally modified to fit local conditions, characterized most mining communities. In Colorado, consideration for climate notably altered the Eastern styles. One observer noted that the heavy snow loads required increased roof pitches and bracing, and the mountain climate made porches largely ornamental and caused a reduction in their size. The difficulty of constructing basements resulted in their elimination. The often small residential lots resulting from the rugged terrain necessitated the crowding of homes together. Homes were often only two or three feet apart, eliminating the use of side windows. Otherwise, the basic floor plans that served middle-class Midwesterners also found common Figure 31: Wall Street, Deadwood, Dakota Territory, acceptance in the mature mining Fall 1877. (Photograph by F. Jay Haynes, courtesy of towns.36 the Haynes Foundation Collection, Montana

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

11 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Historical Society, Helena, Montana, #H-119) As the mining settlements grew, the architecture reflected their growth and change. First, substantial wood-frame buildings became common and later brick and stone gained increasingly widespread use. Helena, Montana was founded on 30 October 1864, and by March 1865, it contained a population of one thousand. A photo of Bridge Street in 1865 clearly displays the typical architecture of an early mining town (Figure 32). In the upper right-hand corner, note the low log cabins that served as residences. The business establishments, too, were largely of logs�though larger and with frame false fronts. A contemporary observer described Helena in 1865 as consisting of a narrow street between double files of straggling log cabins. Four years later, the same observer noted, "Low log-cabins with their dirt-roofs have been replaced by substantial stone buildings and frame structures, the streets have been graded and supplied with plank walks."37 Wherever they settled, the Chinese grouped together in Chinese camps or Chinatowns. The Chinese generally set up camps characterized by small tents and brush houses near their claims, generally on the banks of a stream. The manuscript census of 1850 showed a conspicuous lack of large Chinese camps in the mining areas of California. Later, in groups of a hundred or more, the Chinese banded together in short-lived villages throughout the mining region or occupied camps deserted by white miners. The structures of Chinese mining camps consisted of everything from rock shelters to dugouts to log cabins to canvas tents. Whatever the structure, they functioned largely as residential units for an almost exclusively male population. Their use by the Chinese is easy to identify today by the occurrences of Chinese ceramics, earthenware, opium tins and pipes, etc. Further, while the Chinese camps have physically disappeared, another aspect of Chinese settlement often survived�place names such as China Camp, China Diggings, Chinese Camp, and China Bar.38 While the Chinese founded a few exclusively Chinese towns like the Lava Beds, Hong Kong, and Peking Point, their larger settlements usually took the form of an enclave (Chinatown) within a larger white mining community. Some towns restricted the Chinese by ordinance to a certain section of town; other camps achieved the same result by accepted practice. This segregation was not completely forced. It provided a means for the Chinese to retain their culture and social institutions. During the early years, nearly all the inhabitants of mining town Chinatowns were young males; very few, except for a handful of merchants and professionals claimed any personal wealth or real estate. Chinese families and children were rare. Most of the few women were apparently prostitutes. Basically, the population of Chinatown mirrored the population of the larger town of which it was a part. Typically the Chinese leased buildings in the cheapest and roughest blocks, and there, surrounded by white saloons and brothels, they established their own stores, stables, blacksmith shops, laundries, hotels, pawn shops, and other structures.39

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

12 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

The majority of the Chinese quarters display a similar pattern: rows of attached, narrow, one and one-and-a-half story structures with forty-five degree-pitch roofs. The siding is often of vertical boards and the roof is usually covered with wood shingles or shakes. Some two-story buildings might have a rail-enclosed balcony across the front elevation. In contrast to the often similar Euro-American Figure 32: This view of Bridge Street, Helena, structures, few of them have false Montana, displays the typical architecture of an early fronts or large windows. Usually a mining town. (Photograph courtesy of the Montana few of the larger structures were of Historical Society) brick or adobe. Reflecting the cultural and physical environment of the American West, the structures typically bore little resemblance to those of South China. The Chinese showed great resourcefulness and ingenuity in their adaptive re-use of Euro-American structures and in their employment of available construction materials. Though subtle, the camps and Chinatowns did show the culture of their inhabitants' homeland in some ways, including the use of geomancy (feng-shui) and rammed earth (hang-t'u) construction.40 The impermanence and instability of the mining frontier is well known. The discovery of gold or silver brought a rush of people, and towns and cities appeared almost overnight. They often disappeared almost as quickly when the mines were exhausted. The West is full of ghost towns of the mining era. As early as 1869, one observer described half the mining towns of California as wholly deserted and the rest, with few exceptions, showed evidence of decay. Between 1848 and 1860, some five hundred mining settlements, mostly placer, developed in California. With time, more than 50 percent of these settlements completely disappeared. Of the rest, most survive in name only. Only a small proportion remain viable communities. Even those towns with enough importance to gain the status of a county seat often proved short-lived. The thirteen counties of the California goldfields had a total of thirty-two different county seats. Only twelve of these communities lasted long enough as towns to become incorporated.41 Outside California, the pattern repeated itself over and over. Marysville, founded in the mid 1870s, was one of the great gold-producing centers in Montana. Just the major mine produced fifty million dollars. In the 1880s and 90s Marysville had a population of between two thousand and three thousand. The town contained several streets and a substantial business district with stone and brick buildings. Marysville even had its own newspaper. By the early 1900s, however, the town had lost most of its population. Today, a number of buildings still stand and a small population remains but, for all intents and purposes, Marysville is a ghost town.42 An even better example is Rawhide, Nevada. The discovery of silver here in 1906 brought a rush of eight thousand to ten thousand people. Total production was over a million and a half dollars. In 1908, a fire destroyed thirty-seven buildings and caused one-half to

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

13 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

three-quarters of a million dollars' worth of damage. The town was never completely rebuilt and after the fire it quickly declined. Today, nothing remains but a few foundations and the outlines of its once-busy streets.43 While many mining towns, especially the camps, physically passed out of existence, place names, an important component of mining settlement, frequently survived. Often colorful adjectives affixed to the somewhat distinctive terms of camp, diggings, ravine, bar, flat, run, slide, and gulch resulted in an unusual heritage of "names on the land." In California, for instance, the list includes Angels Camp, Poker Flat, Seven-up Ravine, Ten Cent Gulch, and Whiskey Diggings. Without the distinct nomenclature, but equally colorful are Bogus Thunder, Rough and Ready, Timbuctoo, You Bet, Port Wine, Fiddletown, Red Dog, Yankee Jim's and Hardscrabble.44 MINING LANDSCAPES Today, landscapes are probably the most obvious legacies of mining. The traditional methods left the least perceivable imprint on the land. These small-scale operations excavated only a few feet and accounted for the removal of relatively small amounts of surface material. Panning removed one-half to one cubic yard of material per day, rocking one to two cubic yards per day, tomming three to four cubic yards per day, and sluicing seven to eight cubic yards per day. The bulk of the material extracted in the traditional mining operations eventually ended up only a short distance away, often only a few feet.45 The small-scale nature of the traditional operations and their widely scattered locations often make recognition of their landscapes difficult. Characteristically, however, such areas have a shallow hummocky appearance. Small, round piles of rock and gravel are usually scattered about and short, shallow trenches or cuts characteristically mark the adjacent hillsides. The traditional methods achieved widespread employment throughout the West. Yet, today, areas displaying the effects of these methods occupy a relatively limited area. As the initial forms of mining in most areas, subsequent mining often eradicated all traces of traditional methods. Other times, later cultural activities destroyed all evidence of these mining operations. Vegetation often obscures these areas and makes it difficult to ascertain the extent of former mining. Today, the best examples of areas worked by the minor methods occur along the upper ends of the smaller streams and along adjacent side ravines and gulches.46 Of the hand methods, sluicing resulted in the greatest changes to the landscape. Low parallel lines of gravels and cobble often mark areas worked by sluicing and noticeable trenches line the adjacent hillsides. In some areas, in fact, sluicing stripped the soil to bedrock. The finer debris from sluicing often accumulated in circular or elongated rises up to five feet high and three or more feet long. The former location of sluices is often marked by lines of large rocks thrown out of them by the miners, with the larger ones marking the head of the sluice. Occasionally the location where the concentrates were panned out is obvious as a slight rise. Today, many of the areas mined by sluicing in the last century still lack a complete vegetation cover. Most of these areas, however, contain notable evidence of revegetation. While the traditional methods typically had a limited and imperceptible impact on the land, their use in an area is sometimes revealed by place names. Rocker Gulch near Idaho City, Idaho, for example, was named for the miner's rocker or cradled. 47

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

14 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Characteristically, the traditional methods served to work the gravels removed by drifting. As a result, the surface evidence of drifting approximates those of the traditional methods. Drift landscapes occur scattered throughout the West. Drifting, however, reached its greatest development in the tertiary gravels of California and here the greatest evidence survives today. Table Mountain alone contained a total of forty thousand feet of tunnels. Drift mines literally pockmark some localities. The Jackass Hill and Campo Seco-Stent region contain hundreds of "coyote holes." Outside California, drifting largely took place on a small scale in recent gravels. However, it still left noticeable evidence. In the Clear Creek district of Colorado, for instance, nearly every wide section in the valley of South Clear Creek south of Idaho Springs for some seven miles contains evidence of drift mining.48 As a result of hydraulicking, both the area of land affected and the degree of alteration changed dramatically. Even early hydraulicking removed upwards of fifty to one-hundred cubic yards of material daily. The total amount of material excavated by hydraulic mining just in the Sierra Nevada of California was eight times that removed in the construction of the Panama Canal. Not surprisingly, hydraulic mining created huge amounts of tailings which were piled nearby or dumped into adjacent streams and resulted in extensive aggradation. Graphs of low-water records of the Yuba River at Marysville and the Sacramento River at Sacramento for 1849-1913 reveal the general trend of the deposition of mining debris. Figures show that during these years the bed of the Yuba rose about 0.33 foot per year and the Sacramento 0.25 foot per year. The streets of Marysville, once twenty to twenty-five feet above the bed of the Yuba, by 1879 were below it and the town experienced some devastating floods when levees intended to confine the mining debris gave way.49 Throughout much of the American West, the vegetation of many river valleys remained largely unchanged until the advent of mining. Placer mining, however, typically was concentrated in these valleys and resulted in very noticeable changes. These changes began with the first mining operations. The small-scale forms of mining generally employed during the initial period of mining characteristically resulted in the alteration of relatively small areas. As the scale of mining increased, a corresponding increase occurred in the area of vegetation altered. Many contemporary photographs indicate the almost wholesale destruction of vegetation that accompanied hydraulic mining.50 Compared to the traditional methods, the revegetation of areas where hydraulicking constituted the chief form of mining took notably longer. Hydraulic mining removed soil to greater depths, commonly to bedrock, over large areas, and left steep slopes. Characteristically, revegetation occurred most rapidly in the bottom of the pits left by hydraulicking. In California, most hydraulic mining ended in the middle 1880s. By the turn of the century, vegetation in some of these pits already almost equalled the adjacent forest which remained untouched. The bottom of some hydraulic mines, like the Le Du, near North Bloomfield, California, however, remain only slightly revegetated to the present. The Le Du mine operated from 1857 to 1915. Revegetation occurs least quickly on the slopes of the hydraulic pits. Hydraulicking often produced nearly vertical slopes that greatly impeded any revegetation. Subsequent erosion usually reduced these slopes, but some even to this day contain little or no vegetation. Others, however, show evidence of revegetation less than fifty years after mining ceased. The Gold Hill Mine near Idaho City, Idaho, operated between the 1860s and 1930s. Within fifty years after the end of mining, vegetation covered much of the floor of the hydraulic pit of the Gold Hill Mine. Even the steep slopes of the pit

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

15 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

showed evidence of re-vegetation.51 Large-scale hydraulicking left huge amphitheater-like pits in the side of hills. Some reached such proportions that they resembled small canyons. The Malakoff Diggings of California so impressed a German visitor in the 1880s that he described it as a "barren amphitheater, so vast that it could contain a whole settlement and so deep that a high church steeple could hardly reach to the ledge." At the Malakoff Diggings, hydraulic mining removed an estimated 41,000,000 cubic yards of material and left a canyon over a mile long and up to 350 feet deep. The mine utilized three nozzles and 30,500,000 gallons of water, twice as much as the entire city of San Francisco. It had over 150 miles of ditches, dams, and associated reservoirs to supply its gigantic operations. This impressive legacy of hydraulic mining is now a California State Park. Dozens of similar mines operated in California during the height of hydraulic mining.52 Commonly, hydraulicking left broad valleys and adjacent hill slopes furrowed in every direction by cuts, often to bedrock. Sometimes only thin partitions of ground separate the numerous cuts. Other times only "curious monuments of gravel and rock dot the scene." Hydraulic mining so altered some river valleys that a reconstruction of their original appearance seems impossible. Hydraulic mining commonly cut the land into an intricate pattern of gullies, ravines, and gravel monuments. Such areas like those near Breckenridge, Colorado, or Tyler, California resemble a badlands.53 Often hydraulicking completely removed the soil and left exposed large areas of bedrock. At Columbia, California, it exposed areas of bedrock and left pillars of limestone, some of which are ten feet high and produced landscapes so different from the original "as to be unrecognizable to the miner of 49-50." A landscape that almost resembled a badlands with "many great masses of white limestone in bizarre shapes . . . the earth, torn up everywhere, resembles a battlefield of the antediluvian giants and monsters." Hydraulic mining often cut hill slopes back into almost vertical cliffs. They are often seventy-five to one hundred feet high and sometimes extend for several miles. Those found in the Boise Basin of Idaho are especially impressive. Narrow cuts often mark the entire length of such cliffs. Some cuts consist of only short, narrow gashes. Others lead into wide, open amphitheaters surrounded by high banks. Large boulders removed from the sluices and stacked in the course of mining typically litter the surrounding surface.54 The significant changes in the land surface represented but a portion of the total impact of mining on the environment. Its effect on hydrology proved equally if not more important. All forms of placer mining required water, and diversion of water for mining purposes occurred early in the development of most Western mining districts. Initially, short inexpensive ditches that conveyed water to a limited area proved adequate. Hydraulic mining, however, required huge amounts of water and an extensive system of water facilities developed to meet this demand. Huge reservoirs and thousands of miles of canals, ditches, and flumes were built to supply water for the hydraulic mines. By 1882, California alone contained a total of six thousand miles of main ditches, another one thousand miles of subsidiary lines, and an unknown length of small distributors.55 Whenever possible, the mining ditches consisted of unlined earth cuts. Invariably, however, especially the larger ditches often contained several miles lined with timber or rock. Often, too, the terrain required the construction of flumes or the excavation of canals through

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

16 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

bedrock. Frequently, remnants of dams and considerable portions of old mining ditches still exist. Many of the reservoirs created for hydraulic mining, too, remain a part of the landscape. After the end of mining, some mining ditches found use for other purposes. Some two score of the water systems constructed in California during the mining era�rebuilt, improved, and adopted �became part of the Pacific Gas and Electric System. Still others were used for irrigation and domestic water supply. Unlike natural water courses, the mining ditches and canals parallel the contour lines on a topographic map, and make their identification easy.56 Perhaps of all the mining landscapes, the most striking and distinctive resulted from dredging (Figure 33). After saving the gold, the dredge redeposited the coarse gravel in the form of a ridge ten, twenty, thirty or more feet high over the finer gravel, clay, and sand. Characteristically these rows consist of gravel and boulders one-and-one-half feet in diameter and larger. Superficially, dredge tailings often appear similar in rock content and form. Sometimes, however, the gravel surface consists only of a cap a few feet thick overlaying clay and sand. An elevator or stacker at the rear of the dredge disposed of the large rocks and cobbles in the more or less conical pile. As the dredge moved along the valley its pond moved with it and filled the valley behind it with tailings. The silts discharged off the stern from the gold-saving equipment settled first to the bottom of the pond. The cobbles and gravels dropped by the stacker then covered this layer of silt.57 The recency of most dredging operations and the resulting lack of or limited vegetation makes these areas easily discernable. Dredge tailings cover large portions of many river valleys. The dissected terrain of alternating valleys and ridges make dredged areas easily recognizable. The width, height, and steepness of the tailings vary somewhat with the characteristics and thickness of the gravel deposits and the type of dredge. The large floating dredges reached depths of seventy-five to eighty feet and sometimes more, and left tailings in the form of large orderly rows of gravel. The lines of tailings characteristically exhibit a serrated pattern produced by the irregular forward movement of the dredge.58 Of the placer methods, perhaps dredging most altered riverine vegetation. Dredging removed all vegetation, completely overturned the soil, and left in its place large parallel rows of gravel with steep slopes. The additional factor of time (the recency of most dredging operations) has resulted in the almost complete absence of vegetation in some dredge areas. Characteristically, vegetation first reappears in the low areas between the parallel rows of gravel. Vegetation especially appears quickly around the margins of the ubiquitous dredge ponds. These ponds are in various stages of fill. Once filled, vegetation quickly covers them. In some cases the revegetation between the gravel ridges almost completely masks the tailings from ground level.59 Dredging completely destroyed the original stream courses and caused the channel to shift and often divide into multiple channels. After dredging, once broad, flat valleys consisted of a series of nearly parallel ridges and valleys. An excellent example is an area along the Yuba River near Hammonton, California. Dredging began in the Hammonton or Yuba River district in 1903. Here the Yuba Consolidated Goldfields Company perfected large-scale bucket-line dredging into one of the most efficient methods for mining placer gold. The district was dredged almost continuously from 1903 to 1968. These operations moved more than a billion cubic yards of gravel and produced almost five million ounces of gold. On an 1895 map, the area is shown as an essentially flat floodplain. Dredging, however, produced a

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

17 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

series of steep, more or less parallel gravel ridges up to fifty feet and more in a height. Dredging resulted in the formation of many lakes and ponds. Floating dredges required the construction of ponds to enable their operation. Within the rough dissected terrain created by dredging, water often collected between the ridges to form the other small lakes and ponds. Sediment practically fills some of the lakes and ponds created by earlier dredging.60 Today, dredge areas are scattered throughout the West. Especially notable dredge landscapes, covering as much as twenty-five square miles, extend along the Feather, Yuba, American, and Tuolumne Rivers in California. In the Folsom district on the American River, dredging left over one billion cubic yards of tailings that cover an area ten miles long and up to seven miles wide. The immensity of such areas is best displayed on aerial photos.61 Often dredged areas contain remains of mining equipment. The dismantling and removing of a dredge after the completion of mining often proved costly. As a result, many mining companies simply stripped the dredge of its machinery and abandoned its hull and other structures. Even some remains of the Fielding Graves, the first successful gold dredge in the U.S., still survive along Grasshopper Creek just downstream from the Figure 33: Gold dredging landscape near Idaho City, ghost town of Bannack, Montana. Idaho. Perhaps the most obvious and distinctive of all Throughout the West, remains of many dredges, in various stages of the landscapes produced by ruining is that which resulted from dredging. (Photograph by Randall decay, still exist. In almost every Robe) major placer area of the West, in fact, some trace of the dredge remains and in a few places a complete dredge survives. The one at Bonanza, Idaho, looks like it's still in usable shape.62 Mining used great quantities of lumber for construction purposes. The lode mines required great amounts of timber to support the miles of tunnels, shafts, edits, and passageways. The Territorial Enterprise in 1862 noted "an immense pile of timbers" for this purpose at the Ophir Mine. "The pile at present contains about 4,000 sticks, about 12 inches square, each stick containing some 250 feet, board measures. Two thousand more of these timbers will soon be brought over from Washoe Valley, which will give in board measure about 1,500,000 feet." This paper claimed that the Ophir Mine alone contained more timber within its subterranean depths than all the buildings in Virginia City.63 Besides lumber for mine props, railway ties, mine buildings and the like, lode mining consumed quantities of timber to fuel mining machinery, stamp mills, and smelters. Oak, juniper, pinyon, and mountain mahogany were commonly utilized as fuel or manufactured into charcoal. In many parts of the West, the needs of mining soon exhausted the local supplies of fuel wood. On the Comstock of Nevada, for example, the supply of wood seldom met the demand. The pinyon and juniper of the nearby ravines and hills were removed in an

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

18 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

ever-expanding circle. To satisfy the Comstock's demand for wood, gigantic drives of lumber and cordwood up to four miles or more long took place on the Carson River each spring. More than 150,000 cords of wood were floated down the Carson in a typical season. It has been estimated that over a thirty-year period, the Comstock lode consumed eight hundred million feet of lumber �enough to build fifty thousand ranch-type houses, each with two baths and a double garage.64 Unlike the Comstock, the fuel resources of central Nevada consisted largely of local supplies of pinyon and juniper. Smelting a ton of ore required from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels of charcoal. The mills at Eureka consumed as much as 1.25 million bushels of charcoal a year. From four thousand to five thousand acres of woodland had to be cut annually to supply the Eureka mills this much charcoal. By 1874, the surrounding mountain slopes were denuded of pinyon and juniper for a radius of twenty miles. Operations north of the pinyon-juniper distribution in the Great Basin had to resort to drastic measures to obtain energy. In the Tuscarora district, for example, quite a trade developed in gathering sagebrush to run the furnaces and hoists, and the surrounding area was soon denuded of sage. The fast-burning sagebrush produced a long hot flame which built steam faster than other available types of fuel. A stamp mill or hoisting works powered by sagebrush smoked like a miniature Vesuvius and covered the surrounding area with ashes.65 In some mining districts, wood was burned under the boilers of the steam engines at virtually every step in mining the ore and processing it into gold or silver. Nearly every photograph of the mines of some districts shows large stacks of cordwood near the pumping plant and hoisting works. Bahre and Hutchinson estimate that in the period 1879-1886, the stamp mills of the Tombstone district consumed nearly fifty thousand cords of fuel wood.66 Lode mines, scattered over the bedrock hills, ridges and mountain slopes, usually cover less than five acres. Since lode mining occurred underground, there is often little surface evidence. The tunnels, edits, shafts, etc., are still evident, though many are caved in and partially filled with debris and/or water. Less conspicuous are the many small, shallow prospect holes which are often obscured by vegetation. Sometimes associated features, like tramways, tanks, or narrow-gauge railroads or their ruins, survive. Generally few of the mine buildings and little surface equipment remains. Usually they have been purposely removed or have suffered the ravages of time and man. Occasionally, headworks, tipples, loading chutes, etc., have survived. Commonly, they consist of a wooden framework covered with sheets of corrugated iron. Rarely, some rusting mining machinery or other surface equipment still stands. Undoubtedly, the most characteristic feature of lode landscapes is the waste pile or mine dump at or near the mine. These brown yellow dumps at or below the mine entrance are very conspicuous. Parts of the West are literally dotted with piles of tailings. They range in size from a few cubic yards to the immense tailings pile at Carson Hill, California, which contains some three million tons of mining waste. If consolidated, the waste and low grade ore dumps in Leadville, Colorado, would cover at least two square miles; the mill tailings and slag heaps would cover yet another square mile.67 Mine dumps are composed mostly of clay, finely comminuted metallic minerals, and siliceous fragments of various sizes and shapes. They are generally coherent, as indicated by a tendency to stand in nearly vertical surfaces where they have been eroded and they are

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

19 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

resistant to wasting. While the dumps appear to be quite porous, the clay retards percolation and the substrate is moist. Within a few years after mining ceases, a thin soil, apparently composed mostly of substances washed and blown onto the dump, begins to form on the upper surface. Conditions become favorable to plant growth and many dumps, which appear from a distance to be sterile mounds, are gradually being revegetated.68 Unlike placer deposits, the ores removed by lode mining required considerable processing. To accomplish this, mills and smelters were built. The mills and smelters built during the peak of the mining era were large complex structures. Huge stamps crushed the ore into a fine paste which was then chemically treated in large vats to separate out the gold and silver. Some of these mills cost as much as twenty-five thousand dollars and covered twenty acres of land. Often much remains of these mills and they form a prominent part of today's landscape. Other times only the concrete foundations survive. The mills and smelters meant air pollution. A traveler to the Gilpin district, Colorado, noted the "sulphurous fumes and huge piles of wasting pyrites" and "villainous vapors from the Boston & Colorado Smelting Works. " "For good quarter of a mile, if not more, this entertainment was forced upon all, men and beasts, and as a natural consequence the camp gained a reputation for cough-compelling odors that it has always since retained, and probably always will, unless Prof. Hill of the smelting works kindly consents to move away into some more easily ventilated locality." A few years later Charles Haney wrote that the smoke from the furnaces of Hill's Argo works darkened the sky in that direction at all times and drifted with the wind like "a mist of clouds moving alone." Haney, in fact, claimed that "about all the clouds we have here [come] from that smoke."69 The mills and smelters of the lode mining towns filled the air with "sulphurous fumes," "coal dust and darkness," "cough-compelling" odors, and "villainous vapors." The mountain environment with its narrow canyons, thin air, and temperature inversions exacerbated such air pollution. Eureka, Nevada, gained a well-deserved reputation for the poor quality of its air. "We could smell Eureka before we got here. Anybody can smell it a couple of miles off, unless anybody has defect in his olfactory perceptions or has his nostrils plugged up." "Black clouds of dense smoke from the furnaces, heavily laden and heavily scented with the fumes of lead, arsenic and other volatile elements of the ores, " constantly filled the air and covered the town with soot, scale, and black dust, so that it resembled a manufacturing town in the Pennsylvania coal regions. The problem became so bad that elongated stacks were run up the canyon walls and then vertically to vent the fumes.70 Equally polluted was any stream adjacent to a mill or smelter or their waste piles. The processes used to reduce the gold and silver ores induced toxic substances into the streams. Long after the mills ceased operations the leaching of chemicals from the waste piles continued�some to this day, and streams that have the appearance of crystal clear mountain streams hold little aquatic life. Abandoned and inactive mines, as well as mill tailings, deliver heavy metals and other forms of pollution to nearly thirteen hundred miles of Colorado streams. One of the worst examples of that source of pollution is California Gulch near Leadville, Colorado, which spills into the Arkansas River. Wastes from hundreds of old mines drain into California Gulch through the Yak Tunnel. The wastes include dissolved metals that are extremely poisonous to trout. The gulch delivers the metals into the Arkansas. For one and a half miles below the confluence of the gulch and the Arkansas, the river is virtually dead. A recent survey by the California State Water Resources Control

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

20 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

Board concluded that as many as 180 deserted mines�spread across more than half the counties in the state�could be polluting water supplies with acid waste and toxic metals.71 After milling, the concentrates were smelted to recover the metals in metallic form. Waste from the smelters also accumulated in enormous dumps known as slag. It generally is very fine-grained, black, and extremely heavy. During the later periods of lode mining, the milling of huge volumes of low grade ore created large amounts of tailings and slimes that had to be disposed of. At first, the tailings were simply dumped into nearby streams. Eventually, however, this practice became illegal. As a result, the mills constructed "tailing ponds" to hold the debris. These ponds, in varying stages of fill, are still obvious in many parts of the West. The manner of dumping waste from the mines increased the possibility of flood in some areas by altering the channel and floodplain. In June 1884, a flood on South Clear Creek, Colorado, eroded parts of the Equator and Marshall dumps. The sediment lodged temporarily in the channel downstream from Silverdale and caused the flooding of parts of Georgetown. Subsequently, a short tunnel was cut through the outcrop south of the Marshall tunnel to divert Leavenworth Creek away from the Marshall dump and prevent a reoccurrence. Leavenworth Creek still flows through this tunnel for a short distance.72 Eventually a problem for all lode mines was water. This was especially true on the Comstock of Nevada where water was encountered at depths of only fifty feet. Pumps and drainage tunnels only partly solved the problem. As a result, Adolph Sutro began construction of a tunnel nearly four miles long to solve the drainage problem permanently. In 1865 the legislature granted him a fifty-year franchise to construct the tunnel, wide enough for a double railroad track and more than three miles long. Sutro estimated the cost of construction at three million dollars and set about raising the money, which he finally obtained from British sources. The Sutro Tunnel was to not only provide drainage and ventilation but also make the transportation of the ore to the mills easier. The tunnel, one of the great engineering feats of the nineteenth century, took seven years and over two million dollars to construct. It was completed too late, however, for by that time the Comstock mines were failing. In 1879 Sutro resigned as superintendent of the Sutro Tunnel Company and within a year disposed of his stock� before its value collapsed. Similar tunnels were constructed throughout the West. Many of them, including the Sutro Tunnel, are still in existence.73 CONCLUSION The history of mining in the West is one of changing technology, and each successive improvement brought with it a greater destruction of the land. Despite the increasing destructive effects of mining, most concern that was expressed was economic in nature. Generally, mining was vehemently opposed only when it conflicted with other economic uses. For the most part, it was not until the twentieth century that a concern for the environment itself was expressed and often it was limited in extent and effect. Each distinct type of mining exhibited that distinctiveness in its alteration of the natural landscape, and each method produced its own unique landscape. At the same time, the inherent characteristics of each method limited the landscape it produced to certain localities. The simple methods displayed a rather broad geographic range, while the large-scale, more complex forms proved rather restrictive. The latter, however, exerted a greater and more

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

21 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

permanent impact on the land. Certainly, few other economic activities have had such a tremendous impact on the land as mining. In the process of altering the natural landscape, mining created a distinct cultural one. While time often brought the deterioration of this cultural landscape, seldom did it completely eliminate all traces. As the initial phase of occupance in much of the West, mining initiated patterns that continue to the present and left many elements that remain part of the cultural landscape of today. History tells us that each improvement in mining technology brought with it a greater impact on the land. It is, therefore, not surprising that many environmentalists and conservationists view with great alarm the recent development of a high-tech, large-scale gold-mining technique known as heap leaching. At the same time, they have called for the repeal or modification of the General Mining Law of 1872, which guarantees the right to establish mineral claims on Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land where there is a reasonable chance the claim will pay. Furthermore, the 1872 law provides for the outright sale of public lands if minerals that can be mined at a profit are discovered. The long-established price on these patented land is $2.50 an acre for placer mines, and $5.00 an acre for lode mines. The abuses of the law are legendary.74 The peak of gold and silver mining in the West is long past. Despite the passage of time, the imprint of mining remains visible in the present landscape. It is difficult to travel through most parts of the West without seeing evidence of the mining era. From abandoned mines to deserted towns, the West is full of reminders of this period. Among the most prominent of these remnants are the various landscapes created by mining. ENDNOTES 1. Randall Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining In the American West: An Environmental History," NCGE/GPN Slide Set (Lincoln: Great Plains National, 1990), 1-2. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 2. 4. Randall Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion of Traditional Placer Mining in the West," Material Culture 18 (Fall 1986): 128-131. 5. Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 134-138. 6. Ibid., 140; and California State Mining Bureau, Eleventh Annual Report of State Mineralogist (San Francisco, 1893), 440-441. 7. Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 146-147, 149; and William B. Clarke, Gold Districts Of California, California Division of Mines and Geology, Bulletin No. 193 (San Francisco, 1970), 67. 8. Randall Rohe, "Hydraulicking in the American West: The Development and Diffusion of a Mining Technique," Montana, The Magazine of Western History 35 (Spring 1985): 19; and Randall Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes of the West," California Geology 37 (October 1984): 225, 227.

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

22 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

9. Randall E. Rohe, "Gold Dredging in the American West: Origin and Diffusion, "The Pacific Historian 28 (Summer 1984): 5-6; and Clark Spence, The Conrey Placer Mining Company (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1989), 7. 10. Rohe, "Gold Dredging," 8-9; and Spence, 10-12; and Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 228. 11. Rodman, Paul, California Gold, The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 132; and Spence, 5. 12. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 11; and Roger E. Kelly and Marsha C. G. Kelly, "Arrastras: Unique Western Historic Milling Sites," Historical Archaeology 17 (1983): 87, 90. 13. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 11; Paul, California Gold, 133-137. 14. See the diagram in William Carter, Ghost Towns in the West (Menlo Park: Lane Magazine and Book Company, 1971), 126-127; and for more detail see Rodman Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 32-33, 65-67, 98-104, 119-120, 122-124. 15. Randall Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Populations in the American West 1848-1888," The Geographical Bulletin 28 (May 1986): 5-6. 16. Ibid., 12. 17. Ibid., 10-12; and Ralph Mann, After the Gold Rush: Society In Grass Valley and Nevada City, California, 1849-1870 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 224. 18. Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Populations," 12. 19. Ibid., 9-10; and Randall Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," Material Culture 16 (Fall 1984): 112. 20. Randall Rohe, "After the Gold Rush: Chinese Mining in the Far West, 1850-1890," Montana, The Magazine of Western History 32 (Autumn 1982): 2. 21. Ibid., 4, 6, 18. 22. Rohe, "Goldrush Migrations and Goldfield Population," 20-22. 23. George R. Stewart, The California Trail (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 320; and Thomas Morley, "The Independence Road to Fort Laramie: By Aerial Photographs," Plains Anthropologist 6 (1961): 242-251. 24. Randall Rohe, "Feeding The Mines: The Development of Supply Centers for the Goldfields," Annals of Wyoming 57 (Spring 1985): 52. 25. Duane A. Smith, Colorado Mining (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), 56-57, 60, 133.

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

23 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

26. Rohe, "Feeding The Mines," 56. 27. Ibid., 40-41. 28. Ibid., 42-51. 29. Paul, Mining Frontiers, 125. 30. Paul, California Gold, 72; and William Robert Kenny, "History of the Sonora Mining Region of California 1848-1860" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1955), 377-378. 31. San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 4 January 1858. 32. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," 103; and Randall Rohe, "The Interplay of Environment and Mining in the Far West," in The Mountainous West: Explorations in Historical Geography, ed. Lary Dilsaver and William Wyckoff (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming); and Rohe, "Man and the Land: Mining's Impact In The Far West," Arizona and the West 28 (Winter 1986): 302-304. 33. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," 108-110. 34. Ibid., 102. 35. Ibid., 104, 107. 36. Ibid., 107. 37. Ibid., 104, 105, 107. 38. Randall Rohe, "Chinese Camps and Chinatowns: Chinese Mining Settlements in the Far West," unpublished manuscript (1993), no pagination. 39. Ibid. 40. Randall Rohe, "Chinese in the Goldfields of the West 1848-1900," unpublished paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council for Geographic Education, Hershey, PA, 10-14 October, 1989, 15. 41. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining Town," 41. 42. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining in the West," 13. 43. Carter, Ghost Towns, 96-97; and A. H. Koschmann and M.H. Bergendahl, "Principal Gold-Producing Districts of the United States," U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 610 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), 191; and Stanley W. Paher, Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1970), 456-461. 44. Rohe, "The Geography and Material Culture of the Western Mining," 114-115. 45. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe "Man and the Land," 314-315. 46. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 315.

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

24 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

47. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 151. 48. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 225; and Rohe, "Origins and Diffusion," 151-152. 49. Randall Rohe, "Man as a Geomorphic Agent: Hydraulic Mining in the American West," The Pacific Historian 27 (Spring 1983): 10-11; and Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 227. 50. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 301-303. 51. Ibid., 308-309; and Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 7. 52. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 316-318; Dutch Flat Forum, 19 July 1877; and Robert L. Kelley, "Forgotten Giant: The Hydraulic Gold Mining Industry in California," Pacific Historical Review 23 (November 1954): 349. 53. Rohe, "Man As a Geomorphic Agent," 7. 54. Ibid., 6-7. 55. Ibid., 8. 56. Ibid., 8; and Frederick Hall, "Hydroelectric Power Systems of California and Their Extensions into Oregon and Nevada, " U.S. Geological Survey Water Supply Paper, No. 493, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1923), 28-29, 117, 206, 208-209, 214-215, 220, 286, 307; and Charles M. Coleman, P. G. and E. of California: The Centennial Story of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, 1852-1952 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952), 101, 405-406, 438; and W. B. Lardner and M. J. Brock, History of Placer and Nevada Counties, California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1924), 162, 180, 282. 57. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 228; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 320-321. 58. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes, " 228. 59. Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 9; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 309. 60. Clark, 62-63; and U.S. Geological Survey, Browns Valley California Quadrangle (1:24,000), 1949. 61. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 228. 62. Ibid., 228-229. 63. Rohe, "Man and the Land", 305. 64. Ibid., 305-307 65. Ibid., 307. 66. Ibid., 307-308. 67. Rohe, "Gold Mining Landscapes," 229; and Rohe, "Gold and Silver Mining," 10; and Rohe, "Man and the Land," 323-324.

9/7/2008 5:53 PM

Mining and Western Settlement Patterns

25 of 25

file:///D:/October%205th/sett12.html

68. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 324. 69. Ibid., 336-337. 70. Rohe, "The Interplay of Environment and Mining." 71. Robe, "Man and the Land," 337; Denver Post, 28 May 1989, p. 12A; and Milwaukee Journal, 18 April 1993, p. 14. 72. Rohe, "Man and the Land," 337. 73. T. H. Watkins, Gold and Silver In the West (Palo Alto: American West Publishing Company, 1971), 72-73; and Paul, Mining Frontiers, 81-83. 74. See George Laycock, "Going For The Gold," Audubon (July 1989), 70-80. Next Page

9/7/2008 5:53 PM