MINING ON CARSON HILL 



Rv JOHN A. BURGESS 



News of the gold discovery at Coloma spread fast. Jim Carson 

 heard it at Monterey. Carson, a veteran of the then recent Mexican war, 

 quickly assembled a group of fellow veterans and set out for the moun- 

 tains. His party reached Carson Creek, in what is now Calaveras County, 

 in August 1848. They dug in the gravel of the creek, they panned, they 

 lived on beans, and then Jim Carson wrote a letter. He reported that, 

 as a result of the first six day's work, they had taken out 186 ounces of 

 gold apiece. He said they were "the happiest men on earth." Just how 

 long Jim Carson dug and panned and ate beans is not told but appar- 

 ently he made a satisfactory stake and returned home. And then, in 

 1853, he wrote another letter, this time to his old friends in the Cali- 

 fornia diggings : 



"It is to you, diggers, I speak you who are enduring the hard- 

 ships of the mountains, and working hard to honestly gain a fortune. 

 Many of you, no doubt, are not making much more than what supports 

 you comfortably, but a majority of you are getting more money per day 

 for your labor than you could earn per week at any place in the civilized 

 world ; and you are happy, independent, and your own masters. A great 

 many are realizing fortunes in a short time. Don't any of you despair ; 

 there are just as rich diggings as ever have been discovered and as large 

 'chunks' beneath the earth yet as have ever been taken therefrom. It is 

 true you have to work harder now to get it than formerly, yet it is to be 

 had . . . Never give up or think that the days of making fortunes in 

 the gold mines have passed. Thousands will be making fortunes in Cali- 

 fornia a hundred years hence. ' ' 



Jim Carson had turned prophet. His "hundred years hence" is 

 almost here today, and thousands are making fortunes in California; 

 not, as Jim thought, in mining gold for gold mining today is in a 

 barren zone but in hundreds of other occupations. AVe can credit Jim 

 Carson with 100 percent efficiency as a gold digger and 09 percent as a 

 prophet. 



The gold in Carson Creek was getting scarcer. John Hance began 

 to use his head and wondered where the placer gold came from. Streaks 

 of gold in the wash at the side of the creek were pointing up the hill. 

 John Hance saw the great white outcrop of bull quartz on Carson Hill 

 and decided to investigate it. A little digging, a little panning, more 

 eating of beans, and John Hance found rich gold ore in the outcrops 

 just west of the big vein. He then formed a partnership and began 

 mining in solid ground. Nearly $3,000,000 in gold is reported to have 

 been taken out in less than the next two years. The notorious scoundrel, 

 Billy Mulligan and his gang, took forcible possession of the place but 

 after holding it for nine months they were ejected by court order in 

 1853. In 1854, a lump of gold was mined that weighed 2340 troy ounces 

 (160 Ib. avoirdupois), valued at $43,534. 



The hill was covered with mining locations. The site of Hance 's 

 discovery where the richest ore was found was included in the Morgan 

 claim, which finally came into the possession of a young miner named 

 James G. Fair, and the title continued with Fair and his heirs until 1918. 

 Fair sank a shaft west of the Bull vein and it is said that the gold he 

 took out formed the beginning of his immense fortune. The last of his old 

 mine workings were blasted out in the excavation of the footwall glory- 

 hole in 1935, by the Carson Hill Gold Mining Co. under the direction 

 of the writer. 



After the rich ores near the surface had been exhausted mining 

 operations were few and small until about 1898. During this period high- 

 graders worked surreptitiously in the Morgan mines reportedly with good 

 results for themselves; Dona Elisa Martinez (tradition says she was 

 beautiful, and maybe she was) operated a lease profitably on the South 

 Carolina mine ; the Stanislaus mine at Melones took out a good body of 

 highgrade ore at Melones it was at this mine that calaverite, a gold 

 telluride, and melonite, a nickel telluride, were first found and identified ; 

 the "Old English Company" operated a mill on the Calaveras mine; two 

 newly arrived boys from Missouri asked at the English mine how to put in 

 a blast, and then proceeded to practice their new accomplishment in a 

 place that took their amateur fancy, and scattered gold all over the 

 hillside. 



There are two principal veins on Carson Hill. The Bull vein, the most 

 easterly, is the one exposed in the glory holes high on the mountain, visible 

 from the highway from north of the town of Carson Hill ; and the Cala- 

 veras vein, the main representative of the Mother Lode in this locality, is 

 the one seen in excavations west of the highway on the Melones side of the 

 hill. The Bull vein the name is used here to cover both the wide vein of 

 barren bull quartz and the gold bearing quartz and schist along its 

 borders is the one from which most of the production was made. The 

 early bonanza diggings and the later operations of the big companies 

 were on this vein system. The gold bearing outcrop has now been mined 

 out. Its extent of about 1300 feet is now marked by the Melones gloryhole, 

 farthest to the south ; and by the Footwall gloryhole and the Union pit, 

 separated by the bull quartz vein, on the north. 



Mining on a large scale was started in 1898, when the Melones Mining 

 Co., headed by Mr. \V. B. Devereaux of New York, began work on the 

 lowgrade ore at the surface along the east side of the Bull vein, south of 

 the Morgan claim. The ore carried $2 to $3 in gold. It was milled in a 100- 

 stamp mill and cyanide plant at Melones. It was this company that drove 

 the 4500-foot tunnel from Melones to beneath the ore bodies at Carson 

 Hill, and sunk the Melones shaft to the 3000-foot level. The operation was 

 well planned and well managed. Mining and milling costs were low ; for 

 1908-10 they were $1.08 per ton. After adding the loss of gold in tailing, 



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