LONE EIDGE AND MONTEZUMA HILL. 



°91 



the north. I took observations for altitude at the point of the ridge and at the mouth of a tunnel 

 which a company of miners are now driving towards the centre of the deep gravel. The course of 

 the tunnel is S. 35° W. (magnetic), and it has a grade of nine inches to twelve feet. Its length 

 to the gravel will be about 550 feet, 4G0 of which are already completed. The difficulty of getting 

 a supply of water at that altitude will be a great hindrance in the way of any successful working 

 of the deposit. The gold in the ravines near the head of Sweetland Creek probably came from this 

 Lone Ridge deposit. 



The gravel at Montezuma Hill differs quite materially from any other that I know of on the 

 ridge between the forks of the Yuba Eiver. The hill lies opposite Lone Ridge, on the divide be- 

 tween Shady Creek and the South Yuba River. The hydraulic bank on the northwestern slope of 

 the hill was plainly visible from Lone Ridge. The most of the work done at Montezuma Hill has 

 been drift-mining, the conditions not being favorable for the application of the hydraulic process. 

 The drifts have been carried quite through the hill, from side to side, but they have been allowed 

 to cave in and are not now accessible. I was consequently unable to make that detailed examina- 

 tion of the place that I wished to. The bed-rock, or body of the hill, is a granite, containing 

 porphyritically disseminated hornblende. Its altitude at the hydraulic bank on the northwest 

 slope I made to be 2,356 feet, which is about 200 feet lower than the bed-rock at Lone Ridge, 

 but at a point in the road near Malone's house, perhaps half a mile easterly from the point last 

 mentioned, granite appeared again at an altitude of 2,529 feet, or 173 feet higher than at the 

 hydraulic bank. The height of bank exposed I found by the aneroid barometer to be 130 feet, 

 and near that point was also the base of the lava capping. The thickness of the lava capping is 

 probably about 350 feet directly over the gravel, as I made the altitude of the top of the hill near 

 one of the trees marked by the Keystone Company to be 2,853 feet. The character of the lava 

 capping is similar to that seen above Columbia Hill. 



The bed-rock at the hydraulic bank was rapidly disintegrating into thin scales and sand. The 

 bank itself was made up of a fine sandy material containing more or less clay. The clay in places 

 is as much as seventy-live or a hundred feet in thickness. There is a remarkable absence of 

 boulders in this deposit, "nothing as big as one's list being seen in the tailings." Some fine quartz 

 gravel was observed in the road at a point nearly level with the top of the exposed bank. 



The following items of information about Montezuma, Hill I obtained from Mr. Glassett, a miner 

 who formerly worked in the mines at this place. The bed-rock was nearly Hat as a whole, with a 

 slight fall from the northeast to the southwest. Work was begun as early as 1853, and was 

 discontinued in 1874 or 1875. The Keystone Company attempted to employ the hydraulic pro- 

 cess, but were stopped by the expense of moving the heavy bodies of pipe-clay. The "pay streak" 

 was only about one foot thick, next the bed-rock. The drifts and breasts were run four feet high 

 and four feet wide, and timbers were set every four feet in length. A " set of timbers " would 

 correspond, therefore, to sixty-four cubic feet, or about two and one third cubic yards. The mine 

 paid, on the average "$20 to the sdt of timbers," which would make the yield per cubic yard 

 between eight and nine dollars. The gold was fine. 



From the above description, it seems impossible to trace any simple or direct connection between 

 the gravel of Montezuma Hill and that of Cherokee and points above ; the altitude of the bed-rock 

 being only thirty-five feet below that at Badger Hill, to be described further on. 





C. San Juan to North Bloomfield. 



The gravel deposits of this portion of the ridge have been very well described, as a wdiole, by 

 Mr. Hague, in the report from which quotations have been made in a previous chapter.* Since the 

 date of his report mining has been regularly carried on, the extent of bed-rock uncovered has been 

 increased, and unfinished tunnels have been pushed forward to completion, but there has not been 



4 



much, if anything, done, so far as I could learn, in the way of new explorations, nor have new 



* See ante, pp. 200 207, passim. 



