

130 



THE AUBIFEKOUS GRAVELS OF THE SIERBA NEVADA. 





Abby's Ferry. The surface of the depression on the west side of Table 

 Mountain is drained by Coyote Creek, a branch of the Stanislaus, both 

 streams running nearly south in this part of their course. The depth of the 

 gravel which partially fills this depression is stated by those who have worked 

 there to be in places considerably over a hundred feet. The position of the 

 rim-rock is also said to indicate that the course of the channel is nearly west. 

 Only a small portion of the Flat seems to have been worked by drifting 

 down to the surface of the bed-rock. Mr. Goodyear, who examined this 

 locality, in 1877, for a private company, says that no definite information can 

 now be obtained in regard to the yield of the gravel of Vallecito Flat, in the 

 early days, except that it was « extremely rich," and that many large nuggets 

 were found there. He adds : « That it was indeed rich may be inferred, how- 

 ever, from the extent of the drifting which was done, and the conditions 

 under which it was done. From the best information which I could obtain, 

 it appears that about eight or ten acres of this ground at the lower end of 



the Flat were drifted out It was done by the sinking of vertical 



shafts from fifty to over a hundred feet m depth, through which all the 

 water had to be pumped and all the gravel hoisted. Moreover, as the 

 individual < claims ' in those days were very small, and as only a few claim- 

 ants would unite in the sinking of any single shaft, the shafts were very 

 numerous, and often very close together ; and their mouths, together with 

 the heaps of dirt around them, still remain to attest the extent of the work 

 which was done."* Of late years a portion of the ground which had been 

 thus previously exhausted, as far as practicable, by the earlier drifting has 

 been washed away down to the bed-rock. This operation was still going on 

 in 1877, and up to that time two or three acres of ground had been worked 

 over in this way to an average depth of thirty-five or forty feet, and in 

 places to as much as sixty or seventy, but under great disadvantages, for 

 want of the necessary deep drainage, without which the gravel has had to 

 be hoisted in cars on inclined tracks and the water pumped by machinery. 

 Immediately north of this drifted ground there is, as Mr. Goodyear thinks, 

 an area of from forty to fifty acres in the bottom of the valley which has 

 not been touched, and over which the gravel may average from seventy-five 

 to eighty feet in depth, as appears from prospecting shafts sunk over it to a 

 depth, some of them, of over a hundred feet, and from which the miners were 

 driven out by water. Altogether this is a very remarkable locality, espe- 



* From a pamphlet report by Mr. Goodyear, to private parties, made in April, 1877. 





