FOREST CITY AND VICINITY. : 439 
grains are thick, and owe their present forms largely to their original vein shape, the modifications 
occurring principally about the edges.” He also says that the gold from Rock Creek and that 
from Bald Mountain “seem to have come from the same kind of gravel.” 
City of Six is at the head of Slug Caiion, near the Downieville trail, and about three quarters of 
a mile to the north of Rock Creek, from which it is separated by a lava ridge. The summit of the 
trail across the ridge is 230 feet above the mouth of the Ruby Tunnel. Tunnels or drifts used to 
connect City of Six with-Rock Creek, and gold to the value of several hundred thousand dollars 
was taken from the gravel. The grade of the bed-rock is said to have been about two and a half 
feet to the hundred, sloping downwards towards Rock Creek. At City of Six there are open 
gravel banks, but they have been so long deserted that it did not seem worth while to stop to 
make any examination in detail. High bed-rock rises both to the east and the west of the caiion 
above the level of the gravel, indicating a northern source for the old stream. The view from the 
top of the gravel bank at City of Six is very extensive toward the north and northeast. In front 
there is the caiion of the North Fork of the North Yuba. To the right the Sierra Buttes are in 
full view. Monte Cristo to the left is just hidden from sight by a projecting spur. But over all 
the area which the eye can sweep there is nothing to guide one in a search for the continuation of 
the old river. There are no gravel banks, no towns, no mining camps in sight ; nothing to give 
a hint as to where the stream came from. ‘The gravels of Monte Cristo and Craycroft’s, as will 
be seen later, are indeed at a higher altitude than that of City of Six, but the difference is not so 
great as to force one to a belief that these places were ever connected. 
Above Forest City there has been nothing accomplished which can be called decisive as to the 
existence of a northeastern main channel or a northeastern tributary. The Bald Mountain Exten- 
sion Company, which must not be confounded with the Bald Mountain Company, has acquired a 
large extent of territory immediately to the east of the Bald Mountain ground, and has begun 
a tunnel with the expectation of being obliged to go nearly four thousand feet before striking the 
rich channel. About one third of this distance is now completed. The mouth of the tunnel is at 
an altitude of 4,600 feet. 
The Pliocene shaft, near the crest of the ridge, at the sag where the heads of Rock Creek and 
Kanaka Creek most nearly approach each other, was started with the expectation of reaching an 
underlying gravel channel beneath the lava capping. The present depth of the shaft, I was told, 
is about 180 feet. Further sinking has been suspended on account of the great influx of water, 
and no time can be set for the resumption of the work. The altitude of the mouth of the shaft is 
about 5,400 feet. 
At several places on the southern slope of the lava ridge and about the heads of Kanaka Creek 
exploratory tunnels have been begun, and gold-bearing gravel has been found in small quantity ; 
but, so far, there is nothing either in the character of the gravel, or in the relative positions of the 
tunnels, to prove the existence of any extensive continuous channel under the lava. That there is 
gravel in the Kanaka Creek cajion, at a higher altitude than the old channel at Alleghany and 
Chips’s Flat, admits of no question ; the deposits, however, so far as developed, have no necessary 
or even probable connection with each other further than this, that they may all have been on 
streams tributary to some main river. 
The Crescent tunnel, at Buzan and Gauch’s claim, was the only one I had an opportunity to 
visit. This tunnel is at the head of Barrett Creek, one of the forks of Kanaka Creek, between two 
and a half and three miles from Forest City. Its altitude is 4,855 feet, and the crest of the ridge 
above is about 600 feet higher. It lies in a depression between two spurs of bed-rock, which are 
about a quarter of a mile apart, and rise at least 150 feet above the mouth of the tunnel. The 
general course of the tunnel, which is not straight, is N. 30° W. (magnetic). Its length is 650 
feet, and its grade, following the line between bed-rock and gravel, is about 2? feet to the hundred. 
At the shaft, which was sunk fifty-one feet to bed-rock, there were six feet of gravel covered 
first with a bluish clay, showing impressions of leaves, and then to the surface with mountain 
cement. The gravel which I saw contained considerable float bed-rock, together with quartz 
