■ 1 * *»-»—- 



BETWEEN NORTH BLOOMFIELD AND EUREKA. 



1 ° 



The Moore's Flat gravel has been worked in former days both upon the eastern and the western 

 side of the deposit.* On the east the gravel bank at present is as much as 135 feet in height. 

 The gravel is light in color, rather fine, and of a quartzose character, with occasional streaks of 

 sand and clay, the whole being capped with a reddish loam. The bed-rock at the present time is 

 thickly covered with small boulders, some of the largest being six or eight feet in diameter, but 

 the majority are scarcely more than a quarter as large. These boulders are mainly of white quartz, 

 and do not seem to have suffered much wear. They are smooth upon the surface. The sharp 

 angles and edges are gone, but the shape is irregular. I saw no blue gravel at this bank, though I 

 have been told that blue gravel was met with in spots at the time the deposit was worked. The 

 absence of the blue color is doubtless due to the fact that the gravel has not been so well protected 

 from the action of air and water as has that at Woolsey Flat. 



The gravel in the westerly and southwesterly excavations is similar hi character to that just 

 described, excepting that the strata of clay grow thicker and more important the more closely the 

 main ridge is approached, though nowhere at Moore's Flat did I see such thick and persistent clay 

 strata as are seen at Woolsey Flat. 



According to my estimate, about two thirds of the whole body of gravel at Moore's Flat has 

 been washed away. Deeper bed-rock tunnels will have to be run before the remainder can be 

 washed with profit. 



The gravel banks at Orleans Flat are said to have been very easily worked. They were from 

 forty to sixty feet in height, and had little or no pipe-clay in or upon them. The gravel was very 

 rich, and the Flat paid better returns than any of the other deposits in this vicinity. 



The Snow Point gravel at the Shanghai Diggings differs in some respects from that occurring at 

 the Flats below. The bank exposed at the time of my visit was 135 feet in height, the top, for 

 ten or fifteen feet, being loam. Below the loam came from twenty to twenty-five feet of pipe-clay, 

 which was followed by a bed of gravel, from seventy-five to ninety feet in thickness, consisting 

 of fine, almost sandy, quartzose material, which carries some fine gold, barely sufficient in amount 

 to pay "water money." The gravel gets gradually coarser towards the bottom, and in the last 

 fifteen feet of its thickness pebbles of from four to six inches in diameter are met with. Here and 

 there this lowest gravel is cemented, but not generally so. The color is reddish even to the bed- 

 rock, no blue gravel nor blue cement being seen. Towards the bottom the gold is also coarser; the 

 pieces being sometimes as large as grains of wheat or of corn. Boulders of from three to four feet 

 in diameter are found upon the bed-rock. 



The impression that I got from an examination of the Snow Point gravel was, that it probably 

 lay to one side of the main channel, or in some lake or bay-like expansion of the stream, at a point 

 where, perhaps, there was a long sweeping curve. This impression was strengthened later in the 



season, when I had an opportunity to get an extensive view of the whole slope of the ridge from a 

 point near Minnesota, on the opposite side of the canon. 



I made inquiries at several times in regard to the yield of the gravel in this vicinity, but could 

 not get any detailed, statements of a satisfactory character. 



Above Snow Point, near the head of Golconda Ravine, considerable prospecting has been done 

 in the expectation of finding a north and south channel, — the supposed continuation of the Bald 

 Mountain channel at Forest City, which is to be described further on in this report. Tunnels have 

 been driven in to open the gravel deposits which arc supposed to underlie the stratum of volcanic 

 tufa, One of the gentlemen interested in these explorations is Mr. S. L. Blackwell (Moore's Flat 

 Post-O(Iice). I made his acquaintance at Moore's Flat, but did not get an opportunity to visit his 

 mine. From all that I could learn from conversation with Mr. Blackwell and others, I concluded 

 that nothing has yet been found to confirm the belief in the existence of any channel crossing the 

 ridge at this altitude. It would not be surprising if gold in greater or less quantity were found 

 under the lava, as, for instance, at the Eurisco Tunnel, described on page 398, but I should be very 











* The former excavation has already been referred to ; see page 401 





