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LONE RIDGE AND MONTEZUMA HILL. 391 
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, 460 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 River. 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-five or a hundred feet in thickness. There is a remarkable absence of 
boulders in this deposit, “ nothing as big as one’s fist 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 flat 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 set 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 Norta BLoomrtexp. 
The gravel deposits of this portion of the ridge have been very well described, as a whole, by 
Mr. Hague, in the report from which quotations have been made in a previous chapter.* Since tie 
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 
much, if anything, done, so far as I could learn, in the way of new explorations, nor have new 
* See ante, pp. 200 - 207, passin. 
