While there may have been a few Sonorans prospecting around what was
to become Mariposa County before l849, the first real effort to
develop the mineral wealth of the county came when Alex Goday,
leading a group of Mexican miners from Sonora, Mexico, left Agua Fria
Creek to venture east. They came to the opening between two hills
where a creek flowed down steeply into the Mariposa River. They were
following a small stream which became Goday gulch, to it head and
when arriving at some point where they could see across the canyon,
viewed a hillside covered with quartz rock. The term to describe
what they saw is "float". They moved their operations from Agua Fria
into the valley to process the quartz rock found on the surface.
Thus in the summer of 1849 this group of hard rock miners from Mexico
began processing what was quartz from a vein rather than gold that
would be found in a creek.
Placer mining was the method of finding gold in the bottoms of
rivers, in gravel banks and streams from north of Downieville to
Mariposa, the extent of the Mother Lode. At first the greatest influx of
population from the east crossed the continent and concentrated north
of Placerville, along the Yuba and American Rivers. The hardships
that they suffered in crossing half a continent in search of wealth
had caused many to perish or loose all of their worldly goods.
Arriving in California they had to mine for gold because they had no
choice if they were ever going to survive and return east. Leaving
their loved ones behind voided any thought of settling in California.
They saw this land as mostly mountains and deserts unfit for
agriculture and little else.
The methods of collecting placer gold varied. Due to the precious
element being heavier than most of the metals and rock surrounding
it, such devices as the gold pan, a semi flat round dish in which the
sand containing the gold could be swirled until the water containing
the sand and dirt spilled over the edge, would leave the nuggets
resting in the deepest portion of the pan. Very slow and not
efficient. It took hours of panning to realize even and hour's
wages. Gold at that time was valued at $16 per ounce.
Other devices were created to separate the gold. The rocker and
sluice box could handle larger quantities of dirt/sand/gold mix by
either the use of a screen to separate the larger nuggets or cleats
nailed in the bottom of a trough to stop the gold from being washed
away. Cloth, such as canvas or cotton, was added between the cleats
to catch the finer gold and in time mercury was use to attract the
gold. The mercury then had to be heated into a vapor to separate
from the gold it had an affinity for. All hard work, and when there
was little gold to be had, or there was not enough water to wash the
gravel, little rewards.
In Mariposa County in 1850, because of the discovery of the quartz
from the Mariposa vein and the shortage of water, hard rock mining
began.
The crushing of the quartz containing the gold was done first using a
device that the Sonorans knew how to build. But this form of
industrialized mining using the arrastra could no longer allow one
miner to find a strike in a single hole or creek. It meant that a
number of men, working as a company, would have to work together to
gather the quartz, or mine it underground, transport it to the
arrastra, place it into the pit where either men or animals would
grind it into a fine powder by the act of dragging a heavy stone
around in a circle tethered by a central axel.
The method was too slow, at least for the Americans, and they sought
other ways of crushing the quartz. The Mexicans who first came here
with Goday were satisfied with the methods that they had always used,
and when they crushed the quartz "float" that they found on the
hillside to the east of the Mariposa River, they washed the sand thus
created in Mariposa Creek, gathered the production into bags and
returned to Mexico. On the way they stopped by Monterey to leave
Fremont his portion, amounting to approximately $25,000 worth of gold
in leather bags. It was perhaps the only real profit from mining
that Fremont ever gained.
Of course this seemingly rich strike on property he claimed as his
own as the results of the purchasing of a Mexican Land Grant in l846
for himself and Jessie only spurred him on to greater efforts. He
could only imagine the wealth that his estate contained. He came to
Mariposa and set the corners of his claim for approximately 44,836
acres and proceeded to lease the Mariposa vein to an investment
banking firm from San Francisco. Palmer Cooke and Company. They
came to the valley of the Mariposa River and began development, not
only of the mine, but of the town of Mariposa.
But what of the other miners that gradually came into this valley
and on this Grant land. At first Fremont did not seem to care that
placer mining was taking place on his property for he saw the future
of gold mining to be underground, seeking the Mother Lode itself.
For many years, even today, men and women will pan for gold in the
creeks and gulches of Mariposa County. For it is often been said
that only a small portion of earths store of gold has been recovered.
Mariposa is at the southern end of the Mother Lode and at
the
extreme end of the southern mining district. There has been mining
south of Mariposa over the years but nothing to compare in production
rivaling the Princeton in Mt Bullion and the Mariposa. Places like
Grub Gulch, Coarsegold, Finegold and the Fresno River, were all tried
by the miners always looking for more prospects. Towns were built,
babies born, glory holes dug, all in the anticipation of the next one
being the big one. Few big strikes really occurred considering the
number of men that were living in the most primitive conditions
prospecting to the pinnacles of the Sierra. Even the east side of
the Sierra drew miners to such places as Bodie, Virginia City,
Aurora, and far into the Nevada desert.
For many of the miners who arrived in California with little
resources, that first winter was filled with wet, cold, sickness and
loneliness. Having to live off the land during periods when supplies
from Stockton and Sacramento could not arrive in the mining camps,
placed the relatively unskilled farmers from the mid-west in a
position of having to compete with the Native Americans for even
simple fare. At first, the Indians would take in the starving
miners, but when the numbers became greater and greater, and when the
power of gun power began to deplete the natural food supply, the
Natives began to starve also. Thus the horse, ox and mule came to
replace the game as food for the Natives. On the second trip of the
Mariposa Battalion into Yosemite Valley, they found piles of harnesses
in the recently abandoned village.
The early chapters of C. Gregory Crampton's book, The Mariposa
Indian War 1850-1851, based on the diaries of young miner Robert
Eccleston, describe the hard life along a claim near Agua Fria.
Spending the winter in a tent or cabin, essentially living on the
ground and unable to mine because of too much water, made the men
ready to do anything else. When the call went out to form the
Battalion, the promise of a hot meal and adventure was enough to
entice 200 men to join.
Similar experiences were had by the immigrant miners all along the
Mother Lode. In the northern parts, many raging rivers had to be
diverted to give access to the gravel bars. Dams were built with
diversion flumes so close together that the water backing up from one
claim, inundated the one above it. Jean-Nicolas Perlot tells of
spending part of the winter in a tent near Bear Valley waiting for
the rain to stop. The great difference was in Mariposa County where
the streams were mostly seasonal and it was the lack of water in the
late summer and fall that drove the miners to go underground. As
early as 1850 companies, such as Palmer Cooke and Co., began the
first hard rock tunnels and shafts following the veins.
Processing the gold contained in quartz rock became an early problem
in Mariposa County. The Mexican Arrastra proved to be inefficient
for this use, too slow and required too much animal and manpower.
Stamp mills had been used in an earlier Gold Rush in Georgia and when
the first of its type was brought to Mariposa, using wooden stamps
they were destroyed by the hardness of the quartz which was not a
problem in Georgia. It was located on Mariposa Creek just below town
and it is assumed that the water from the creek would drive the
machine.
James Duff, a black man from Missouri, brought an iron stamp mill
overland for the Mariposa Mine. In order to power this machine, a
ditch was dug from high up on Stockton Creek, passing along the
backside of the hill east of town, and through the saddle south east
of the High School, to run a large water wheel at the mine. This
mill building, called the first of its kind in California, is shown
in the photograph by Carlton E. Watkins at the Mariposa Museum and
History Center and contained in the book, Mariposa County, by this
author. Another photograph by Watkins shows the entire mine with a
second mill wheel, probably a tailings wheel used to move the
material towards Mariposa Creek.
(Copy write by Leroy Radanovich)
Leroy Radanovich Email:
Leroy Radanovich
To learn much more about Mariposa County along with
historical photos:
A signed copy of "Images of America" - Mariposa County,
By Leroy Radanovich can be purchased at his web site:
Radanovich Galleria & Books
This is a early day photo of the Mariposa Mine in
Mariposa County
that is mentioned in the article to
the left by Mr. Radanovich.
This photo and others can be purchased in various sizes.
All prints are archivally printed on fiber based paper, given a selenium wash which renders the photographs permanent with a
warm tone ready for framing
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Mariposa in 1920
This photo and others can be purchased in various sizes.
All prints are archivally printed on fiber based paper, given a selenium wash which renders the photographs permanent with a
warm tone ready for framing
Radanovich Galleria & Books
Mariposa County Courthouse written by Leroy Radanovich and
Scott Pinkerton is a book about the oldest courthouse in California that is still in use today.
The book is signed by Leroy Radanovich.
To purchase the book:
Radanovich Galleria & Books
Mariposa in 1860
This photo and others can be purchased in various sizes.
All prints are archivally printed on fiber based paper, given a selenium wash which renders the photographs permanent with a
warm tone ready for framing
Radanovich Galleria & Books