Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 12

First reports from Coloma and other placers excited general incredulity. The California Star on March 25, 1849, announced that gold dust was an article of traffic at Sutter's Fort. In size and character of nuggets the mines were pronounced much richer than the fields of Georgia, where gold was first discovered in the United States, also more so than anything ever placered in Mexico. A half-pound parcel offered in San Francisco, in April, in payment for provisions was accepted at eight dollars per ounce, and the store was stampeded to stare on the golden dust. On May 29, the Californian, and on June 14, the Star suspended, because the printers had vamoosed for the mines. Every sacrifice was being made to reach the mines.

Thomas O. Larkin, who had been consul at Monterey and secret agent of the government in the intrigue for the acquisition of California, wrote to Secretary of State James Buchanan, at Washington on June 1, 1848, describing conditions at San Francisco, from which then 200 to 300 had gone to the mines out of a population, according to the census of August, 1847, of 459, exclusive of the military and the Mission Dolores, and that about $20,000 of dust had been exchanged for merchandise. Half the houses in the town were closed. Spades and shovels that sold for one dollar commanded ten dollars each in the mines.

In a second letter from Monterey of June 28, Larkin wrote that he had visited the mines and found them all and more than he had anticipated. Miners were scattered over one hundred miles of country from the Sacramento to the San Joaquin, between which the placers extended. According to the best estimates, there were then 2,000 people at the mines, nine-tenths of them foreigners. Larkin believed that a few "thousand people in one hundred miles square of the Sacramento would yearly turn out the price that the United States was to pay for the new territory." Three-fourths of the houses in San Francisco were then empty, and were being sold for the cost price of the land. Even Monterey, sleeping the sleep of a Rip Van Winkle, had caught the infection.

The gold discovery had been made during the governorship of Colonel Mason, who on June 17, from Monterey, accompanied by Lieutenant Sherman, visited the mines, finding en route San Francisco almost deserted and everything going to waste and idle until arrival at Sutter's Fort on July 2, where there was life and business bustle. Mason visited the Lower mines at Mormon Diggings on the American River, where 200 men were at work. At Coloma, little more than three months after the discovery, upwards of 4,000 were mining. Gold dust was abundant in everybody's hands. He estimated that the yield from the mines was from $30,000 to $50,000 daily, and as they were on public land he seriously debated whether or not to secure a reasonable fee for mining. He resolved not to interfere unless broils and crime demanded. Crime was infrequent though in the mines, and theft and robbery unknown in the early period, despite the insecure deposit places for treasure.

Mason was carried away by the excitement, and while acknowledging in an official letter to the adjutant general that he could not earlier bring himself to believe the reports concerning the wealth of the gold district he wrote:

"I have no hesitation now in saying that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers than will pay the cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over."

No capital was required to obtain gold, as the laboring man required nothing but pick and shovel and tin pan with which to dig and wash the gravel, and many frequently picked gold in pieces of from one to six ounces out of the crevices of the rocks with butcher knives.

Mason's letter was published with President Polk's congressional message of December, 1848, and with the exhibited gold and cinnabar specimens from New Almaden, sent on by special messenger, the news was spread in official and authoritative form. The gold assayed over eighteen dollars an ounce.

In a letter to Commodore Jones at Mazatlan. Mason wrote that, treaty or no treaty, the gold discovery had decided California's destiny, and he raised his estimate that the yield would pay the war cost 500 times over. The war appropriation was $10,000,000, with $15,000,000 as the consideration for the land cession and $3,000,000 assumed as a damage debt due Americans, a total of $28,000,000, saving nothing of other expenses of the war, 100 times $28,000,000 equals $2,800,000,000. 500 times $28,000,000 equals $14,000,000,000. Mason was a little off on his figures: so was Larkin.

Many foreigners were at work at the mines, so many that certain localities were named after nationalities. The collection of the foreign miner's tax, afterward repealed, caused not a little friction, but the reported race hostility against the foreigner was exaggerated. Until the government should act in the matter, which it never did. General Riley upon his later visit said he would not disturb anyone in mining, nor would he countenance one class attempting to monopolize the workings of a mine or drive out any other.

The earliest important notice of the discovery was published in the Baltimore Sun of September 20, 1848, by which time private letters were arriving telling of the wonderful story. Soon all the newspapers were full of the subject and consignments of gold confirmed the tidings. Everybody talked California. The adventurous prepared for a general grand rush by land and sea, by latter route long before the great overland tide of '49 began. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company organized in April, 1848, and its first steamer on the semi-monthly route between Panama and Astoria via San Francisco was the California, which arrived at San Francisco on February 18, 1849.

The early influx in the emigration flood to the gold placers was of Mexicans from Sonora, then Chileans and some Chinese. These assembled principally in the Southern Mines, which included the San Joaquin and its tributaries at the lower extremity of the Mother Lode originating in Mariposa County. Colonel Mason so much feared wholesale desertion of the garrisons that in contemplation of the thought that the laborer earned in the mines in a day more than double a soldier's pay and allowances for a month he added in a report: "I really think some extraordinary mark of favor should be given to those soldiers who remain faithful to their flag through this tempting crisis."

During the latter nine months in 1849, 233 vessels arrived in San Francisco from United States ports, besides 316 from foreign ports — a total of 549, averaging two daily and many unseaworthy, veritable "floating coffins." The overland caravans started in spring began to arrive in a continuous stream almost across the continent, and crossing the Sierras landed for a few years their human freight in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys to scatter over the country. A great and unparalleled spectacle was this immigration of 1849.

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN MINES

In July, 1849, General Riley visited the mining regions by way of San Juan Bautista, crossing the San Joaquin near the mouth of the Merced and examining the principal camps on the Tuolumne and Stanislaus and their tributaries, then those on the Calaveras, Mokelumne, Cosumnes and American, returning to Monterey by way of Stockton. The mining country had by this time been divided in two sections, commonly known as the Northern and the Southern Mines. Sutter's Fort, or Sacramento, was the interior point from which the Northern Mines were reached, and Stockton, the new settlement on Mormon Slough of the San Joaquin, for the Southern, being also the distributing points for the districts and both accessible from San Francisco by water. The traffic was enormous. The rivers, naturally clear streams, had already commenced to become turbid, but they had deep, well-defined channels and navigation for vessels of considerable draught was as yet easy.

Many of the mining camps in the Sierra foothills became little towns, some to be abandoned with the impoverishment of the placers, others to advance from tent aggregations to villages of rough boarded houses, and yet others to permanency as towns. Not a few as in the San Joaquin Valley that had arisen to the dignity of county seats lost in time even that distinction with the advent of the railroad and the removal of the seat and were abandoned as in Merced, Fresno, Tulare and Kern Counties.

In 1856 Dr. Trask, the state geologist, reported that mining was successfully prosecuted in twenty-three counties. The aggregate area in which gold was known to exist was estimated at from 11,000 to 15,000 square miles, adding that "when this is compared with the area actually occupied (probably not exceeding 400 square miles and one-fourth of these old placers") the latter will be found to comprise a mere mite of our available resources. With our present population of the mining districts and the broad expanse of territory over which they are spread, they appear like mere specks dotting the surface of an inland sea, so indistinct as scarcely to be appreciable on the broad expanse by which they are surrounded." Trask described the gold region as extending from the Oregon line north to the Kern River south — 460 miles long by from ten to 150 in width, and he classified the region into three distinct ranges — the Upper or Eastern, the Middle Placers and the Valley mines. It was in the second range that the greater proportion of the mining community was located, more particularly in the central and eastern portions. The third range comprised the districts among the foothills extending westward into the eastern edge of the plains of the San Joaquin and Sacramento three to five miles and having a linear distance of about 250 miles.

The valley mines were on what constituted the high terraces of the plains composed mostly of alluvial drift. They were the most shallow of any of the discovered ranges and the most easily worked, though nearly coextensive with the middle or upper districts, and falling little short of the latter. In a review of the ranges, Trask said incidentally: "It will be seen that we have still enough and to spare for all who are present, and for all that may hereafter arrive, for at least the next half century. There need be but little fear of their failing to yield their annual crop of gold, as long, perhaps, as our valleys will yield their crops of grain."

The placers in the Fresno region were almost at the extremity of the Southern Mines. The accepted dividing line between the Northern and Southern Mines was the ridge on the north side of the north fork of the Mokelumne. All the rivers of the Southern Mines were tributaries of the San Joaquin. In extent of territory, population and yield, the Southern were almost the equal of the Northern mines in the early period, but they "petered out" more rapidly, and in a few years were comparatively exhausted, except for quartz outcroppings, and were favored by the Chinese and Indians more.

The rivers of this southern mining region were the Mokelumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced and the San Joaquin (in the foothills and mountains), with their forks. Spots in favorable locations along the creeks as far south as the San Joaquin, where it comes down in a westerly direction from the Sierras, repaid the miners with good returns, but neither the placers nor the quartz veins were comparable with those further north. The fact is the mines in this locality gave out at the San Joaquin, as they did in the north where the Pitt River, tributary of the Sacramento, came from the same mountain chain, and yet according to general tradition Millerton on the San Joaquin in its palmy days of 1853 of the mining period was as lively a miner's village with as many saloons and as much drinking, as much gambling and as much roistering as any, isolated as it was in a pocket of the foothills out of the line of travel.

The gathered gold in gravels and sands was not of uniform value, size or shape. The variance was so great that an expert could readily distinguish them. The poorest usually came from the Kern River, much mixed with silver. It improved in Fresno County, and even here the gold varied much. It was better in Mariposa, and had a high standard in Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Calaveras. The main original deposits were in quartz or limestone veins on the western slope of the Sierras at elevations of 1,000 to 4,000 or 5,000 feet above sea level, and the chief of these was the Mother Lode, traceable at or near the surface, from Mariposa to Amador County with frequent branch veins. The Merced, Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Mokelumne Rivers, with some of their tributaries, cut the lode at points where it branched, eroding the quartz veins and depositing the gold downstream far or near.

REMEMBERED EARLIEST CAMPS

Among the best remembered earliest mining camps in the northeastern Fresno County region were Coarse Gold Gulch, discovered in the summer of 1850, Texas Flat, Grub Gulch, Hildreth, Fine Gold Gulch, Temperance Flat, Rootville the immediate predecessor of Millerton on the San Joaquin and one mile below the fort, "Soldier Bar" and "Cassady's Bar" on the bend of the river above the fort. The channel of the river with its small tributaries from the bridge at Hamptonville, below Millerton, was worked for forty miles up into the mountains. The Kings, which contributes to the wealth of the county as the provider of the water for irrigation and has its rise as high in the Sierras as the San Joaquin, has never witnessed any mining operations, though some placer mining was once upon a time conducted at or near what is now known as Piedra where the magnesite mine in an entire mountain is located. Quartz locations on its banks have been made many times, though no notable mine has been developed.

It is conceded that during the early mining period, as well as in subsequent years and as late as the 70's and up to the 80's the gold placers and the surface outcroppings were well worked over and exhausted. No portion of the county but has been prospected by the grub-stake miner. Discoveries are being made to this day and quartz mine locations are frequent occurrences. Even the old mining district boundary lines are adhered to as a reminder of the past. These locations prove to be little more than chance discoveries of pockets or vein outcroppings, raising great expectations with no realization save in a few exceptions. No systematic development of the mineral deposits has followed for self-evident reasons in the too great risk of investment, cost of or lack of transportation and remoteness of the locations.

A marked map of the county would show it peppered in spots as remote and inaccessible as the upper precipitous gulches of the Kings River forks with mining locations and punctured with prospects holes and developing tunnel openings with their dumps. Late in the 70's there was sporadic effort at a development of quartz mines, but no rich or lasting ones resulted from the labor and money investments. Even the picturesque and extravagant names of the most notable of these have passed from memory. On the Madera side of the river in the drift gold gulches districts of earliest days several mills were erected, but the life of the enterprises was evanescent. In the end they were all money losers, encouraging though the first prospects. The names of them if recalled are reminders of wasted effort and misspent money. Not all were absolute failures, though all were abandoned and are only memories now. The number of them spells legion.

In Grub Gulch district was the Josephine, owned by an English syndicate, fourteen miles northeast from Raymond, located in 1880; also Les Mines d'Or de Quartz Mountain, a Belgian corporation that sank, without any returns, a fortune of the stockholders in erecting and locating a costly plant that has been idle for many years in charge of a watchman and given over to the bats and owls. The Raymond quarries have furnished granite for the state buildings at Sacramento, for miles upon miles of street curbing in San Francisco and after a period of comparative inactivity were drawn heavily upon for the rebuilding of the San Francisco public and other buildings after the great disaster, and the later Panama Exposition. The quarries at Academy in this county have and are furnishing granite rock for ornamental architecture and grave stones and monuments. In the inaccessible Minarets section, north of the San Joaquin there are said to be on the southern slope inexhaustible iron deposits in practically a mountain of almost pure metal, one of the known largest and richest iron ore deposits in the world.

The Kniepper copper mine, in the Big Dry Creek district, was later developed as the Fresno, and a first successful development of a copper ledge was that of the Ne Plus Ultra, on the Daulton ranch on the Madera side and it actually for a time sent mats to Swansea, Eng., for refining. It paid for a time but in the end petered out and another costly experiment was charged up to experience and corresponding loss. It was never resuscitated, evidence, however promising its fair prospects, that the jig was up. The Copper King and the Fresno copper mines near Clovis swallowed up small fortunes in exploitation and extravagant management.

The Copper King, originally the Heiskell mine, cost the British shareholders $400,000 in the exploitation. Under the spectacular regime of Manager Daley, an F. F. V., there was a move to erect smelter works, but neighboring fruit growers blocked it by injunction. Expensive tractors were operated to convey ore to the railroad station, and were abandoned after arousing the opposition of the county supervisors because of the damage in cutting up the roads. Luxurious quarters were fitted up for the manager, provided with electric lights, porcelain baths and other costly appurtenances. The story is also authenticated that at the Palace Hotel grill in San Francisco the manager would order three canvas-back ducks, and enriching the third with the sanguinary juices of two of them as extracted in the grilling, feast solely on the breast meat of that costly third bird, with a five-dollar bottle of champagne as accompanying beverage. The high priced machinery and tractors were "after the burst up" sold for old junk, and years later a nice profit was made by speculators, who bought up the ore on the neglected dump-pile when copper jumped up to twenty-six cents a pound with the demands on account of the war in Europe. The Copper King property has been taken over by a Texas corporation, organized in 1917, which having transferred its interest to California incorporators, the latter will operate it under a lease and royalty arrangement with option to buy after a given time for a stipulated price. It resumed operations in January, 1918, after long years of inactivity.

As late as 1865 gold dust was the medium of circulation in Fresno, rather than coin, as the Civil War had created a scarcity in circulated metallic coin and paper money being a curiosity and practically unknown in California even for many years thereafter.

Property values were estimated in ounces of pure gold rather than in dollars and cents. Gold dust was acceptable for taxes by special authority of the supervisors, and in business according to valuations as per this publication on March 8, 1865, in the Millerton Times:

NOTICE

On and after the 1st of March, 1865, we, the undersigned, pledge ourselves to receive and pay out GOLD DUST at the following rates only:

San Joaquin River or Bar dust, where it is not mixed with other dust, at $15.50 per ounce.

Fine Gold Gulch, Cottonwood, Long Gulch, and all taken out in small gulches between the San Joaquin and Fresno Rivers (except Coarse Gold Gulch) at $14 per ounce.

Coarse Gold Gulch dust at $16.50.

Big Dry Creek at $16.50.

Temperance Flat dust, and dust taken out at the head of Little Dry Creek, at $14.

Sycamore Creek dust, free from quicksilver and not mixed with other dust, at $17.50.

Fresno River dust, taken out below McKeown's store at $15.50.

The above rates are as near as we can come at the value of the various kinds of dust in gold coin, and after this date, we do not intend to receive or pay out anything that is not equal in value to United States gold or silver coin.

(Signed): Geo. Grierson & Co.. J. R. Jones, Lewis Leach, James Urquhart, Ira McCray, Wm. Faymonville, Wm. Fielding, S. W. Henry, Robert Abbott, C. F. Walker, T. A. Long, Jno. White, Thos. Simpson, W. Krug, Geo. S. Palmer, Clark Hoxie, S. T. Garrison, T. C. Stallo, W. S. Wyatt, S. Gaster, J. Linnebacker, Geo. McClelland, J. R. Barkley, Henry Henricie, Chas. A. Hart, Tong Sing, Hop Wo, Daniel Brannan, H. W. Clark, D. H. Miller, C. P. Converse, L. M. Mathews, C. G. Sayle, Ira Stroud.

There were 138 quartz mills in operation in the state in 1856 — eighty-six propelled by water, forty-eight by steam and four by horse power, moving 1,521 stamps. The cost of the machinery was $1,763,000.