3 
CANON CREEK AND VICINITY. 459 
C. Tse Ringe BETWEEN Canon AnD LitTLE CANON CREEKS. 
Little Cafion Creek takes its rise in the high mass or knot of mountains in which are found also 
the sources of Goodyear Creek and of many of the feeders of the North Fork of the North Yuba 
River, and it joins Cafion Creek at a point about midway between Eureka and Scales’s Diggings. 
The ridge between these two streams is of comparatively small extent. In former years there has 
been considerable mining carried on in this section, but at present there is very little doing. 
Craig’s Flat, Morristown, Deadwood, and Bunker Hill are the only points which I was able to 
visit. I crossed Cafion Creek at two places, Poker Flat, where the altitude is 4,854 feet, and on 
the trail from Craig’s Flat to Portwine. At the latter place the bed of the stream has an altitude 
of 4,252 feet. I also crossed Little Cafion Creek on the trail from Craig’s Flat to Eureka, and 
made the altitude of the bed of the creek to be 4,345 feet. The crest of the ridge is lava-capped 
as far down as Craig’s Flat. I did not make any examination of the lava in place, but it seems 
probable, judging from the boulders seen at Morristown, that both the basaltic and the andesitic 
types occur here. Two specimens from this locality have been examined microscopically by Mr. 
Wadsworth, who calls one a basalt and the other an andesite. 
The bed-rock, where exposed to view after the removal of the gravel, is a very soft ‘lates At 
Morristown a shaft was sunk to a depth of eighty-six feet in a rock so soft as not to require blast- 
ing. The color of the slate is not uniform, it being in some places white or silvery, and in others 
reddish or bluish. The strike is to the northwest, and the dip is nearly vertical. At Deadwood 
the serpentine belt, to which frequent allusions have been made already, crosses the ridge. The 
spur leading down from Deadwood to Poker Flat is entirely of this kind of rock. The serpentine 
belt is only a few hundred feet in width, and the slate sets in again about a half mile to the south- 
west of the Bunker Hill tunnel. 
At Craig’s Flat an area of perhaps ten acres of bed-rock has been uncovered. Its altitude I 
made to be 5,100 feet. No work has been done here for several years, and the claim appears to 
be abandoned. It is said to have been extremely rich in gold at the time it was worked. From 
this point the gravel banks of Eureka, on the opposite side of Little Caiion Creek, are in plain 
sight and at a little lower level. It is clear that the two deposits were at one time connected. 
The Morristown gravel is about a mile above Craig’s Flat and on the Cation Creek slope. The 
ridge between the two places is capped with voleanic material, beneath which, in all probability, 
the old channel lies. The bed-rock at Morristown is uneven, though, on the whole, nearly level. 
I made its altitude to be 5,160 feet. The Wahoo deposit, on the opposite side of Cation Creek, 
appeared to be about eighty feet lower, and probably belongs to a different channel. The area of 
bed-rock uncovered at Morristown I estimated at thirty-five acres. The gravel is all smooth, rolled 
quartz without any cement. Some heavy boulders of smooth quartz, five or six feet in diameter, 
are found, but they are confined to within ten feet of the bed-rock. The richest stratum, near the 
bed-rock, is about eight feet thick on the average. Above this come sixty feet of quartz gravel 
and eighteen or twenty feet of pipe-clay. The banks are nowhere yet worked back to the volcanic 
capping. Between the gravel and the pipe-clay there is a peculiar black stratum, which, though 
not constant in thickness nor universally met with, has some features of interest. It appears 
to be rich in sulphur and in iron, and looks as if it had been exposed to a roasting heat. The 
statements in regard to the yield of the Morristown gravel are conflicting. According to one 
statement, the product of the mine in fifteen years, in which time the gravel was removed from 
twenty acres of bed-rock, was $460,000 ; according to others, there have been more than two and 
a quarter million dollars taken from this deposit. The gold is fine in quality, the mint returns 
for the year 1875-76, which were shown to me by Mr. Joel Pike, the superintendent in charge 
of the property, ranging from .942 to .965}. The gold found in the present bed of Canon Creek 
is said to be coarser, and to have a fineness of only .800. 
Of the ridge between Morristown and Deadwood I know nothing from personal examination. 
I was told that gravel has been found in tunnels on both sides of the ridge, and also on the spurs 
