550 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



feet farther, in search of more water. During the month of September Mr. 

 Twaddell had procured four assays to be made for him at the lyoris mining 

 works, in Pine Canyon, and these yielded respectively $4, $10, $1, and 

 $1,800 per ton.] 



Linda Vista Gold Mines. — In September, 1886, W. L. Vail and 

 Frank A. Kasson reported assays running from $40 to $100 per ton from 

 gold ore found in the Linda Vista Hills. And in 1887 John W. Wilson and 

 son worked a mineral vein from 14 to 18 inches thick, in the hills west of 

 Linda Vista and about two miles from Pasadena. The vein yielded quartz 

 oxide free milling ore, and six different assays gave from $4.60 to $26.00 per 

 ton value in gold and silver, with gold predominating. But the right of all 

 minerals of value ever to be found within this part of the old Spanish grant 

 of the San Rafael Rancho was bought years ago from Benj. Drey fuss by J. 

 DeBarth Shorb ; hence this mine could only be worked by Shorb's permis- 

 sion, and with a percentage to him, and thus it does not pay to work it. 



In 1884 I owned some land on the Arroyo hills west of Pasadena, where 

 the Scoville bridge and other improvements are now located ; and near the 

 top of the hill there was an abandoned gold-digging. Our late townsman. 

 Dr. O. H. Conger, had assayed "the color," as miners term it, or yellow 

 dirt which was found there, and it yielded a little gold, but not enough to 

 pay for working. And the excavation has since been covered up by Mr. 

 Scoville's grading operations. 



In 1883 there were still visible some abandoned gold-diggings in the 

 semi-circular sandy flat below the county road as it winds up from the Gar- 

 vanza bridge to Highland Park. The old Pasadena stage road crossed this 

 flat within a few yards of the gold-digger's pits ; they were sand-wash dig- 

 gings ; but they are all now filled up, the land being used for a Chinese 

 market garden. And the vegetable diggers are making more money out of 

 it than the gold-diggers did. 



In the old flood-plain of the Eaton canyon wash, above Lamanda Park, 

 there is occasionally found a mysterious old pit in the sand and gravel, as if 

 somebody had been digging for water. These are remains of gold-digging 

 ventures — some of them made as long ago as 1852. [See also page 53, and 

 first footnote, page 73.] 



other mineral formations. 



On the west side of the Arroyo Seco, opposite the foot of Columbia 

 street, there are shale beds of Tertiary age, and I have gathered from 

 them specimens of selenite, a crystallized and pellucid variety of sulphate of 

 lime, or gypsum ; but it does not occur in commercial quantity. I also found 

 there, as an exudate or efflorescence of the shale beds, some granular crusts 

 of sulphate of magnesia or epsom salts, and in the same beds I found exuda- 

 tions of alkali — almost pure saleratus. 



In 1876 Prudent Beaudry tunneled into the west bank of the Arroyo 

 Seco opposite the foot of Columbia street for coal, and worked out altogether 

 about a ton of a pretty good article, though it proved to be only a pocket 

 deposit, and no more was found. The shaft or tunnel was carried in two 

 hundred feet, but the mouth has caved in or filled up with debris, so that it 



