Klondikeike
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REAL GOLD MINING STORIES...FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCES...Klondike's Lost Mine....
Klondike here...
I've had a request to start a new topic and maybe post a story once a month or so from some of my past mining experiences....
So here is the first one...it's actually a continuation of the drift mine I started on another post...The name of that mine was:... The Golden Slide Mine, near Downieville, Ca
We had driven in under the Yuba River and were about 400 feet deep into the mountain...when we realized there was an old tunnel above us....we pumped a million gallons of water every 12 hours to keep the river water out of the mine...
Once we had drifted in about 400 feet through solid rock...we raised up into the old 1850 main haulage tunnel that had been hand dug.... there were NO drill marks... Later found out this tunnel was dug from 1850 to 1855...(Until after the Civil War was over, there wasn't much Black Powder on the west coast..so most tunnels prior to 1865 were usually single or double jacked...(A double Jack was where one person held the steel and the second person hit the steel with a sledge hammer...a single jack was just one person doing both jobs...)...for the entire length of the tunnel, there were NO drill marks left in the bedrock...meaning no black powder... the old boys had taken about 3 feet of solid bedrock and about 4 feet of river gravel....a typical and classic 7' X 7' tunnel... At one point we came upon a place where the main tunnel stopped and a tunnel went both right and left... in the floor was a major crack and above the crack in the ceiling, was a bright ..pure... snow white quartz boulder shaped like a cigar and about 20 feet long...Holding the large quartz boulder was a 8 in diameter Cedar Stall ( a Stall is a single pillar used to hold the ceiling or "back" in place...) This stall was hand shaped to fit into the crack in the floor..and hand shaped to match the curve of the large boulder... I broke my knife blade trying to scratch the cedar bark... this stall had turned into stone over the 120 plus years inside that mine.... further on to the left....we found the bedrock coming up and angling up at about a 45 degree angle... This is the original inside rim of the channel before the land slide...This must have been a rich spot here as the bedrock was as clean as a newly washed diner plate for maybe 50 feet and about 15 feet high...and above us and near the top of the tunnel cut ..was a very, very, very large bedrock boulder..maybe the size of a full sized quad cab Dodge pickup...it was huge.. and was riding about 4 inches above the bedrock... with maybe 300 to 400 very small cedar stalls...I mean small..... no more than 1/2 inch thick... some even smaller...and 3 to 4 inches long cedar Stalls holding or suspending this large boulder above the bedrock..and somehow they had cleaned all the dirt out from underneath it and held in place ...... It was one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen of the massive effort to mine gold in a very dangerous place...and the engineering ability to trust such small pieces of sticks to hold such a heavy rock.... we took some samples from various places with the cracks in the bedrock... and then the power went out... we almost lost a few crew members as we were laying down track rail in our main tunnel.... we never reopened the tunnel after that...and the samples were very good indeed... but not worth the risk of such a dangerous mine...
Before the power went out.. we were able to reach the "face" of the left tunnel....the Face is the end of the tunnel.. and there we found several small holes...we called them "Coyote" holes... These were dug by the Chinese miners...after the white miners moved on.... When the mine was operated with Chinese slave labor... they were paid $.25 a day... and were charged 20 cents for room and board..and 4 cents for tool "rental"... Often these Chinese were sent into these small holes, and if there was a cave in.. no attempt to rescue them was done.. just another Chinese miner started another hole... It was pretty bad working conditions....Near the wash plant outside the tunnel...we found a stack of six very old., but in perfect condition, white, with blue pattern of China rice bowls.... plus several coins with square holes in them...
Until next time...
Klondike....
Klondike here...
I've had a request to start a new topic and maybe post a story once a month or so from some of my past mining experiences....
So here is the first one...it's actually a continuation of the drift mine I started on another post...The name of that mine was:... The Golden Slide Mine, near Downieville, Ca
We had driven in under the Yuba River and were about 400 feet deep into the mountain...when we realized there was an old tunnel above us....we pumped a million gallons of water every 12 hours to keep the river water out of the mine...
Once we had drifted in about 400 feet through solid rock...we raised up into the old 1850 main haulage tunnel that had been hand dug.... there were NO drill marks... Later found out this tunnel was dug from 1850 to 1855...(Until after the Civil War was over, there wasn't much Black Powder on the west coast..so most tunnels prior to 1865 were usually single or double jacked...(A double Jack was where one person held the steel and the second person hit the steel with a sledge hammer...a single jack was just one person doing both jobs...)...for the entire length of the tunnel, there were NO drill marks left in the bedrock...meaning no black powder... the old boys had taken about 3 feet of solid bedrock and about 4 feet of river gravel....a typical and classic 7' X 7' tunnel... At one point we came upon a place where the main tunnel stopped and a tunnel went both right and left... in the floor was a major crack and above the crack in the ceiling, was a bright ..pure... snow white quartz boulder shaped like a cigar and about 20 feet long...Holding the large quartz boulder was a 8 in diameter Cedar Stall ( a Stall is a single pillar used to hold the ceiling or "back" in place...) This stall was hand shaped to fit into the crack in the floor..and hand shaped to match the curve of the large boulder... I broke my knife blade trying to scratch the cedar bark... this stall had turned into stone over the 120 plus years inside that mine.... further on to the left....we found the bedrock coming up and angling up at about a 45 degree angle... This is the original inside rim of the channel before the land slide...This must have been a rich spot here as the bedrock was as clean as a newly washed diner plate for maybe 50 feet and about 15 feet high...and above us and near the top of the tunnel cut ..was a very, very, very large bedrock boulder..maybe the size of a full sized quad cab Dodge pickup...it was huge.. and was riding about 4 inches above the bedrock... with maybe 300 to 400 very small cedar stalls...I mean small..... no more than 1/2 inch thick... some even smaller...and 3 to 4 inches long cedar Stalls holding or suspending this large boulder above the bedrock..and somehow they had cleaned all the dirt out from underneath it and held in place ...... It was one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen of the massive effort to mine gold in a very dangerous place...and the engineering ability to trust such small pieces of sticks to hold such a heavy rock.... we took some samples from various places with the cracks in the bedrock... and then the power went out... we almost lost a few crew members as we were laying down track rail in our main tunnel.... we never reopened the tunnel after that...and the samples were very good indeed... but not worth the risk of such a dangerous mine...
Before the power went out.. we were able to reach the "face" of the left tunnel....the Face is the end of the tunnel.. and there we found several small holes...we called them "Coyote" holes... These were dug by the Chinese miners...after the white miners moved on.... When the mine was operated with Chinese slave labor... they were paid $.25 a day... and were charged 20 cents for room and board..and 4 cents for tool "rental"... Often these Chinese were sent into these small holes, and if there was a cave in.. no attempt to rescue them was done.. just another Chinese miner started another hole... It was pretty bad working conditions....Near the wash plant outside the tunnel...we found a stack of six very old., but in perfect condition, white, with blue pattern of China rice bowls.... plus several coins with square holes in them...
Until next time...
Klondike....
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