Historic Gold Mining in Kern County's Sierra Nevada

[Music] welcome to this video about historic gold mining in Kern County California this video covers the current County portion of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains this video was prepared by boy mr. museum of natural history and science we invite you to visit us at 1801 Chester Avenue in downtown Bakersfield California please visit our website WWE Avista museum to work when this museum is a 501c3 nonprofit institution information on this video is presented for enjoyment of the public permission has been obtained to use copyrighted graphics and photos all graphics and photos are attributed to the appropriate source you can see a map of California's historic gold mines gold was discovered in the 1770s in the southeast part of the state the 1848 Sutter's Mill Marshall gold discovery on the American River led to the gold rush this Sierra Foothills discovery is marked by the 1848 star on the map Gold Ridge belts south of the Marshall discovery became known as the mother lode which is highlighted in red P December 1848 announcement by President Polk of the California gold discovery unleashed a torrent of cross-country migration in tens of thousands of prospectors from around the world also arrived in California seeking to make their fortune southern sierra prospectors arrived from north and south this slide shows a map with key settlements and trails of the 49ers you travel the Sierra Foothills in the 1840s and 1850s prospectors panned for gold in all of the streams that exited the Sierra Nevada or devised rock long times or sluices which were more efficient mining apparatuses by 1851 prospectors Advan to the south from the mother lode searching the Merced San Joaquin Kings Cahuilla and Kern River Valley's other gold seekers came from the south through to hatch B or Caliente Creek and Walker Basin in search of fortune in general they were disappointed but placer gold was discovered in the lower Kern River Canyon at a place called greenhorn Gulch in 1851 in the lower-left photo are three gold nuggets from Kern County that collectively weigh four-fifths of an ounce for scale the line on the lower right is one inch the Kern River pictured is the southernmost major stream that flows west from the Sierra Nevada mountains it's narrow rock-strewn Gorge empties onto the plain of the San Joaquin Valley about 120 miles north of Los Angeles due to the creation of upstream dams is no longer the free-flowing River that it was when the greenhorn adults discovery was made this map shows Kern County's metallic mining districts Kern County has produced at least 4.06 million ounces of gold that is more than any other California County outside of the motherlode counties highlighted in color are the three areas of gold mining concentration most of Kern's gold has been recovered from underground or lode mining in the Rann district in the Mojave District those areas will be discussed in a subsequent video on historic gold of Kern's Mojave Desert although the amount of gold reported from current Sierra mines is only 350 thousand ounces it was undoubtedly much higher this is because there was no required reporting of gold volume to the state until 1880 currency era mining was largely played out by them this summary lists early events in Kern River area mining Kern County did not exist until 1867 it was still a part of Tulare County firstly all mining between 1851 and 1855 was for placer gold on the Curtin River which played out quickly though miners reportedly made ten to fifty dollars a day provisions were expensive and difficult to get load or hard rock mining dominated from the mid 1850s on individual miners often had to be satisfied with flakes of gold from the river like you see in the green pan this satellite photo shows the location of early discoveries at greenhorn Gulch Keysville Kernville and Havilah old Kernville was known as whiskey flat and now lies beneath Lake Isabella so the star shows present-day Kernville these camps were all fairly close to the current River in toka graphically rugged territory present-day Bakersfield is at the southwest edge of the map prospectors figured out where placer gold was most likely to be found in the streams it may have been in crevices and fractures in the granite rock such as those pictured on the left being seven times heavier than most other minerals gold nuggets could be caught in these crevices during high water flow or if the gold was found in abandoned river channels the flat surface of boulders in the middle of the photo on the right represents an abandoned Channel good times along the Kern River were limited as the placer deposits played out by the mid 1850s newspapers created or reported false discoveries in quotes above the blue line in Los Angeles newspaper played up the current River Gold answer to the riches being made in Northern California nascent Los Angeles and San Francisco competed to be business centers of the West Coast long before sports teams accentuated the rivalry as has often been said the ones who really got rich from gold mining or provisioners that supplied bread butter bullets and blue jeans to the miners by 1856 many miners had started to move on a more accurate quote about the situation comes from the miner who said provisions tools bad whiskey and vicious rattlesnakes in all directions total effect unfavorable would recommend only such to come here as can't go anywhere else the sketch artist of this 1860 Kern River prospector documented much negative information in a single drawing this drawing appeared in a well-known eastern magazine I had verbalized that information in the blue boxes note the worn-out shoes worn-out pants shirt and hat stooped over appearance and glum facial expression I had it a non visible note about his teeth mercury was often uses an amalgam to separate gold from other heavy minerals the poisonous vaporized mercury often ended up in the miners body regarding his two pistols it was said that no man's outfit was complete without two Colt revolvers and a bowie knife strapped to his hip the Kern River gold camps were rough-and-tumble places little remains of keysville the location of the mammoth and Keys mines the three pictures of the shacks and the mining claim sign were taken about 30 years ago but the keysville site is a location where recreational mining can still be done on the Kern River legally on land overseen by the US Bureau of Land Management the mammoth mine was one of the longest extant mines in the southern Sierra operating intermittently from 1855 to 1941 over three million dollars of gold was reportedly recovered from above-ground and underground operations making it the most productive mine on the Kern River on the right is a photo of the glory hole the entrance underground to the mammoth mine overtop of the glory hole would have been a head frame an elevator through which men equipment and horror could travel in and out of the mine in the photo on the left is an old large head frame in mining crew from an unknown Sierra Nevada gold mine representative of what would have existed at the mammoth mine the majority of European and American prospectors had moved on to other areas before 1860 however a large number of Chinese miners remain on the car never to mine for flakes dust and flour gold between 1860 and 1900 pictured are a Chinese miner using a rocker to recover flakes and fines and a water diversion channel created by the Chinese miners one method of harnessing water power freeze in gold mining was hydraulically shooting water through a monitor or water cannon water cannons shot a high-pressure water stream at hillsides and unconsolidated alluvial sands and gravels liberating free gold this method was used in the Kern River Canyon Inn near the Pinetree mine in Tehachapi in 1884 large-scale hydraulic mining was outlawed due to causing downstream flooding and environmental damage sitting on the monitor as seen in the photo on the left makes for a great picture but was not the normal mode of operation living in Kern County Sierra gold camps was difficult provisions were expensive the soil was poor so few crops could be grown salt pork and venison were the staples of the 19th century miners diet winters were cold summers were hot the camps were among the most remote in all of California these camps were not places for women and children other than ladies of the evening Havilah was the most famous moon town of all the Kern River gold camps founded in 1865 it was named for a biblical reference to the land of old pictured is the reconstructed Town Hall this slide shows a timeline of significant Havel events and statistics this photo taken around 1900 shows the main street of Havilah the heyday of the town was long gone for this time avila was the first county seat of newly formed Kern County from 1867 to 1874 but have all eventually lost out to a new place called Bakersfield Havilah still exists as an unincorporated town with a few hundred residents life in Havilah was difficult but lively to say the least I want to tell a story about a few of the scoundrels that called semi lawless Havilah home for local Havilah butchers dick meade Tom Stewart Dutch George and George Snowden routinely terrorized the town one day dick Meade and George Snowden sit upon the unsuspecting HC Clarkson they stole his clothes for no reason in midday then turned him loose the apoplectic Clarks and ran down Main Street wearing nothing but a necktie and screaming about the assault in a later Havilah scam butcher's steward and Meade were run out of town for selling meat futures it wasn't illegal to sell meat futures but the two did not have enough cattle to back them up Stewart and George then set up shop in white pine Nevada and ran a similar scam however there they started selling meat futures without having any cattle they were arrested George jumped bail and returned to Kern County Stewart was convicted and spent years in jail in Nevada another colorful character was the founder of Havilah Asbury harpin ting this photo of young harp ending was taken in 1855 just prior to his departing his native Kentucky carpeting made a fortune mining in California and Mexico prior to the civil war but he was in his words a reckless secessionist twice he was involved in failed conspiracies one conspiracy sought to sever California and Oregon from the United States in a second one he sought to seize gold and silver on San Francisco Bay and direct it to the Confederacy he landed in prison and Alcatraz but luck was on her pending side President Lincoln pardoned him in February 1864 and he fled to the southern Sierra Nevada there are pending discovered gold with Confederate sympathizers he bought the land nearby and founded the town of havilah around his goal discovery one day Union soldiers from Visalia descended upon the fugitive harkening and his followers in Havilah who they thought might be planning another treasonous operation but they found harpooning overseeing a legitimate mining operation instead of arresting him again they had breakfast together ever the adventurer are pending left Haviland and california in the late 1860's after being swindled in the great diamond hoax of 1872 are pending returned to Kentucky in later New York there he worked as a Wall Street financier and investor this later photo of happening appeared in his 1913 autobiography he possessed no lack of narcissism he made millions of dollars in lost millions of dollars multiple times his time in Kern County was a brief five years but in his autobiography he states I assisted in the passage of a bill that cut off from Tulare the county of Kern and named Havilah the county seat I was literally chased from absolute poverty into the possession of a million dollars I discovered a great mining district and founded a thriving town and if the matter of paternity is ever brought to court it will probably be proved to the satisfaction of a jury that I am the father of Kern County our in 1923 this slide summarizes the geologic story of where gold was found in the southern Sierra the gold was finally disseminated in quartz veins and dykes within granite pictured are two white colored quartz Ridge a polite dykes broken by a small vertical fault these veins are a good visualization of the type of rock where gold was found gold present in the streams as placer x' was eroded out of this hard vane type rock the photo was taken a few miles south of Hamelin once gold was discovered in hard rock a method of determining its concentration was needed since gold has an extremely high melting point one of the best methods was to crush the ore then Heath the ore and drive off any non gold rock particles in an assay kill the assay Killam pictured is on display at the ran Desert Museum in randsburg intermittent spikes in gold prices allowed early load mines that not been flooded - occasionally reopen Keeseville mammoth mine and keys mine car mills big blue mine Cavallo's king solomon mine and the bright star mine in the paiute mountains were among those operating after 1900 in the photo use of an air driven drill is shown underground in 1900 drilling a hole in rock these drills were often called widow-makers because of their tendency to cause Rock Falls in the danger and simply using such a powerful drill in tight spaces dynamite was then placed in the drill holes and subsequently exploded loosening the ore or would then be carried out of the mine by ore carts in processed to separate valuable metals from gang or worthless rock this 1913 havel area photo shows or from a field or cart ready to be fed into a larger car or was crushed in multiple ways at Kern County mines including her Astra's and stamp mills stamp mills were a common apparatus to crush or in the southern sierra mines they were usually very close to the mines on the left is a single stamp mill in this type or was fed into a small trough and pounded into fines by the one reciprocating stamp a heavy metal piston as the piston continuously crushed or by moving up and down fines would be sloshed onto the sluice by water worthless fines would be carried down the end of the sluice or as heavy gold bearing fines would be captured on the sluice by an amalgam such as mercury most stamp mills had batteries of stamps on the right is part of an abandoned southern sierra mill that had at least one battery of six to eight stamps working in concert stamp mills were extremely loud and the absence of noise often signal a problem with either the mine or the stamp mill here you see a working stamp mill at the Mariposa County Museum in Mariposa you cannot see the pistons working but notice the milky water about to descend onto the sluice the milky color is due to suspended particles of quartz and feldspar being carried within the water the sketch shown is titled going to Kern River but in 1860 it just as easily could have been titled leaving Kern River in summary Kern's Sierra gold mining at a rather short heyday in the 1800s commercial mining continued sporadically until the 1950s the area suffered from remoteness rugged topography poor living and food growing conditions small ore bodies and expensive provisions the reported value of gold found up to 19:57 was seven million dollars calculated at twenty to twenty-five dollars an ounce however gold can still be found in the Kern River by a recreational placer mining gold was discovered in Kern's desert areas at randsburg and Mojave in 1894 those mines had a much longer longevity but the spirit of the hardy Kern River prospectors lives on thank you for viewing this video and thanks to those folks who assisted in making this presentation look for other videos regarding Kern County's geology and mineral history we invite you to visit Wayne Avista Museum of Natural History and Science in Bakersfield California please visit our website