Redwood History Basic Data

A. THEIR DISCOVERY

A settlement was made at Trinidad Head, a town platted, and on April 13, 1850, an election held for the purpose of organizing a government. At this election it is reported that over 140 votes were cast. During the summer, the population of Trinidad increased rapidly. By the last of June, the town fathers were able to boast that a trail had been opened to the gold diggings on the Trinity. Trinidad claimed a population of 300, with 100 dwellings, counting houses and tents. Speculation in real estate boomed. [1]

J. K. Johnson and several companions in the spring of 1850 had headed north from Trinidad to look for the mouth of the Trinity. In passing up the beach, they saw glittering particles of sand, which on examination proved to be gold. Gathering some of the grains, they returned to Trinidad to purchase provisions. On their return, they found nothing but a bed of gravel, a change in the direction of the surf, having swept away or buried the glittering treasure. [2]

Not long afterwards, in May 1850, B. Nordheimer, J. H. Stinchfield, Charles D. Moore, and a number of other prospectors started up the seashore from Trinidad en route to the new town of Klamath City. As they pushed up the beach, they spotted grains of gold in the beach sand. They collected some of the flakes, but it was so intermixed with fine gray and black sand that "they could do nothing with it." They passed on, and no attempt was made to work the seashore diggings. [3]

That fall, J. W. Maxwell and ____Richardson went to the bluffs and commenced operations. They soon found that the gold was only visible under favorable conditions. The bluff, subsequently named Gold Bluffs, was several miles long and several hundred feet high, with but a few feet of sea beach between it and the Pacific. During periods when the breakers came rolling in and the surf beat against the bluffs it eroded the quartz. The fine grains of gold that thus became mixed with the sand were occasionally brought to the surface by the wave action and sometimes buried. Maxwell and Richardson watched their chance, and when the glistening grains appeared on the surface, they filled their buckskin bags with the mixture of sand and gold, and carried it up onto the bluff to be separated at their leisure. The gold was so fine and the sand so heavy that they only saved a small percentage of what the mixture contained. Word of the wonderful beach of gold reached San Francisco, where it caused tremendous excitement. [4]

In December, the Pacific Mining Company was organized with capital of $150,000 and the goal of developing the beach of gold. The Steamer Chesapeake was chartered to transport 30 adventurers to the gold region. She cleared San Francisco for the new El Dorado on December 21, 1850, and 48 hours later she hove to off Gold Bluffs. The next morning, a small boat was launched, but she was broken up as the crew took her through the surf. The occupants, however, reached the beach in safety. Not wishing to chance their lives in such a risky undertaking, the rest of the adventurers had the captain continue up the coast to the mouth of the Klamath. Chesapeake, unable to cross the bar, dropped down to Trinidad, where the prospectors were landed. They then went up the coast afoot with pack-mules rented from J. C. Campbell. [5]

Walker Van Dyke and his companions organized a second company for working the bluffs. He recalled that tons of the black sand, during storms, would slough off, tumble down the bluff, and into the breakers. When the tide had ebbed, men would gather the sand. "Our company," he recalled, "built buildings for amalgamating the ore and we made considerable money." [6]

Meanwhile, Chesapeake had returned to San Francisco, with five or six of the adventurers headed by General John Wilson and John G. Collins. A meeting of the stockholders was called to listen to their report of a new Golconda. The stockholders of the Pacific Mining Company were told that

twenty-seven miles beyond . . . [Trinidad], there is a beach several miles in extent and bounded by a high bluff. The sands of this beach are mixed with gold, to an extent almost beyond belief. The sands are of two kinds, a fine black sand and a gray sand. The gray sand can be separated very easily from the black sand, and this seems to be a desirable object. The gold is mixed with the black sand in proportions from ten cents to ten dollars to the pound. At times when the surf is high, the gold is not easily discovered, but in the Spring of the year, after a succession of calms, the entire beach is covered with a bright and yellow gold. [7]

Collins, who was Secretary of the Company, stated that he had measured a "patch of gold and sand" and estimated "it will give to each member of the company the snug little sum of forty-three million dollars." At their arrival at Gold Bluffs, the adventurers had found 19 men at the diggings. These individuals were unwilling to dig, because, as they explained to Collins, "the gold was all ready for them whenever they felt disposed to take it." Moreover, the recently opened beach road to Trinidad was so bad that they could not carry away more than 75 to 100 pounds apiece—an amount too trifling for their consideration. They had built a comfortable log cabin and planned to watch their claim until Spring, when they would take off a shipload of gold and "travel to some country where the metal was not so abundant."

Collins told the eager stockholders of seeing a man who had "accumulated fifty thousand pounds, or fifty thousand tons" of the richest kind of black sand. In General Wilson's opinion thousands of men could not exhaust this gold in a thousand years. [8]

After listening to these glowing reports, the stockholders voted to send up 100 additional laborers, as rapidly as they could be recruited and embarked. Plans also were made to purchase a steamer and run her up to the Gold Bluffs. [9]

To support their stories, Collins and Wilson showed the stockholders numerous specimens of the sand and gold. Collins likewise published in the Alta California two affidavits he had secured testifying as to the richness of the strike. One was signed by M. G. Thompson and G. W. Kinsey and the other by Edwin Rowe. Both were attested by L. B. Gilkey, Justice of the Peace for Trinity County. They first described the nature and richness of the beach, while Rowe added:

I am now, however, confident that with the proper arrangements for amalgamating the gold, on a scale as extensive as your company is capable of doing.

millions upon millions of dollars can be easily obtained every year for more than a century to come. [10]

This news had its anticipated effect. The next day, January 10, found the shares of the Pacific Mining Company selling at a premium. On the 18th, the steamers, Chesapeake and General Warren, cast off for the Gold Bluffs, to be followed within the week by the bark Chester. Other companies were organized and vessels chartered to take prospectors northward to the fabulous beach. By February 1851, the population of Trinidad had exploded. As hundreds of adventurers poured into Trinidad en route to Gold Bluffs, they were met with discouraging news that no process could be devised to separate the gold from the sand, and that it was a waste of time and money to attempt it. Still many eager prospectors had to be convinced by experience, and when so convinced they pushed on up the Klamath to the Salmon mines.

All efforts to work the beach on an extensive scale failed and were abandoned. As soon as this became known, Trinidad's brief period of preeminence was past, for her population declined as rapidly as it had grown. For several years Trinidad maintained its importance as a shipping point, because its proximity to the Klamath and Salmon River diggings was a marked advantage. [11]

B. LIEUTENANT CROOK VISITS the GOLD BLUFFS

Lt. George Crook in 1853 was placed in charge of a detachment and detailed as an escort to the surveying party headed by Henry Washington. The patrol left Fort Humboldt and headed up the coast toward the mouth of the Klamath. As Crook recalled, "the mountains generally were not far back from the beach." In places, when the tide was flooding, the surf hammered against the cliffs, which rose several hundred feet above the foaming breakers. The little column would have to wait for the tide to ebb before passing the bluffs. Fifteen miles south of the mouth of the Klamath, the patrol camped at Gold Bluffs, "where the beach for several miles contained gold mixed in small quantities with the sand."

To work the beach, the miners at each low tide would traverse it with pack mules loaded with panniers, "so that when the waves had thrown up a streak of pay sand, it was shoveled into the panniers, and thence packed to the sluice boxes which separated the gold."

Crook was told by the miners that when the beach was located in 1850, it was estimated that it contained forty million dollars in gold, but that "their methods of catching the gold were then so primitive and slow (they at that time packed the gold-bearing sand to some point at low tide and there mixed it with quicksilver by oxen treading on it) that before much was saved a heavy sea came and washed it all out to sea." [12]

C. INTEREST in the GOLD BLUFFS IS REVIVED

The premium paid for gold during the Civil War years caused operations to be resumed at the Gold Bluffs, as well as other points between Trinidad and Port Orford, Oregon, where "auriferous sands" were found. In commenting on this development, the editors of the Alta California observed that these bluffs bore a resemblance to the "auriferous hills of Nevada, which are now being washed away by the hydraulic process. Along the beach a natural hydraulic washing has been in progress for thousands of years."

At Gold Bluffs a company posted a beach-watch, and whenever they discovered black spots on the seacoast, it was reported to the superintendent. Preparations were made to begin work. The mules were loaded with their saddlebags and led to the shore. Men and mules then waited for the surf to strike the bluffs and recede. As the sea tide ebbed, leaving the beach uncovered, the miners led their mules out at a fast trot. The men then filled the saddlebags and beat a hasty retreat in advance of the breakers.

They then deposited the sand at the washhouse, where it was washed in a wooden box, with a big hole in the bottom, positioned under a ten-foot waterfall. A large round stone was at times placed under the falls to divide its force. As the gold was very fine it required great care in the adjustment of the water pressure. [13]

With the end of the Civil War and a fall in the price of gold, operations at the Gold Bluffs were shut down.

D. DREDGING IS TRIED and FAILS

In 1872 Captain Taylor of New York visited the Gold Bluffs to obtain the rich auriferous sands supposed to be deposited offshore there. Because of an accident to his diving bell, he was unable to achieve the anticipated results. Employing a "simpler process" he was able to secure sufficient auriferous sands to enable him to announce that they contained a great quantity of gold. He then in formed the press that in six fathoms of water "immediately off the bluffs," he obtained specimens of black sand that assayed $23,000 per ton. To reinforce his claim, he showed specimens that were "beyond question of exceeding richness." [14]

An official of the Gold Bluffs Submarine Mining Co., organized to exploit the Gold Bluffs, reached San Francisco in April 1873, bringing with him the "latest machinery for raising from the ocean floor" the gold bearing sands. He was accompanied by a number of skilled mechanics. The steamer Monterey was chartered and loaded with the mining machinery. Early in May, they sailed for the Gold Bluffs.

During the next three weeks, over 100 tons of sand were raised from an area from one-half mile to within 40 feet of the bluffs, and in depths of from eight to four fathoms of water. The testing officer, a well-known assayer from San Francisco, on examining the sands found scarcely any color, and no gold. The pump had brought up great quantities of gray sands, considerable black sands, coarse gravel, and shells. At each test site and at all depths tried, the pumping had continued until the rook-bed of the ocean had been reached. This operation by the Gold Bluffs Submarine Mining Co. appeared to discredit those who had claimed that "in the ocean, adjacent to the old Bluffs, and at the mouths of the Klamath, Rogue, and Umpaqua" there were rich deposits of auriferous sands. [15]

Commenting on the expedition, the Alta California informed its readers the results seem to establish that the theory of rich deposits of sands in the ocean adjacent to the Gold Bluffs coast was wrong. If this were true, then whatever financial losses the Gold Bluffs Submarine Mining Co. had suffered should not be lost on others planning similar ventures. This company, it was pointed out, had been organized to take advantage of the claims voiced by Captain Taylor. [16]

Where gold was involved such words of caution had little effect Within several months, a party of Humboldt County residents led by Captain Buhme, Frank and Robert Duff, and Harry Rogers had visited Gold Bluffs. They soon returned with reports that the "beach deposits of gold" were very rich. When this information reached the New York office of the Gold Bluffs Submarine Mining Co., negotiations were commenced for its exploitation.

Capt. I. H. Avery of the company reached Eureka from San Francisco aboard Pelican, with a "large six-inch Andrew Centrifugal Pump and other machinery requisite for a thorough and complete search for auriferous deposits on the claims of Messrs. Buhme & Duff." The pump, it was said, was very powerful and was similar to the one used to dredge St. Johns Bar in Florida, and was capable of lifting from the ocean floor 70 tons of sand per hour. [17]

Before leaving Eureka for the Gold Bluffs, Captain Avery purchased the scow Eagle. After she had been decked over and the pump mounted, she was renamed Gold Hunter. Despite her name, no auriferous sands were found in the ocean off the bluffs. Another effort to make a profit in mining the sands had been tried and found wanting.

E. GEOLOGISTS REPLACE the PROMOTERS and ADVENTURERS

Efforts were now concentrated on discovering more efficient ways to exploit the gold found in the bluffs. A. W. Chase observed in a paper read before the California Academy of Science on January 5, 1874, that the gold came from the bluffs. After "caves" the gold obtained on the beaches was much coarser in character, and moreover it was only "after a continued succession of swells that cut the beach at an angle that the rich sands . . . [were] found." When the surf bore in head on, it merely loaded the beach with gravel. Finally, anyone who witnessed the power of the surf had to respect its immense grinding force. All that he had observed had satisfied him that "the gold follows the first two or three lines of breakers, and will never be found in paying quantities beyond." [18]

Some "experts", however, still contended, despite the failure of the Gold Bluffs Submarine Mining Co., and Buhme & Duff, that the beach gold came from the ocean floor, but most agreed with Professor Chase that the grains of gold came from the bluffs fronting on the ocean. These people had observed every winter that after the summer's heat had parched and cracked the earth, the heavy autumn and winter rains caused huge sections of earth and gravel to cave in and split off the perpendicular face of the bluffs. Falling into the ocean, these giant clods were ground to pieces, and cradled by the swirling motion of the waves. The gravel was carried out to sea, and the black sand which contained the gold, being heavier, was deposited in streaks along the shore. After the tide had ebbed, the black sand was collected and washed in ordinary and patented toms.

Persons familiar with the area always watched for a panning surf, one bearing in from the southwest, which struck the beach diagonally, washing away the gravel and leaving the black sand. If the surf struck the beach head-on, it merely piled up a gravel deposit several feet deep. [19]

Considerable attention was now focused on working out more effective methods of separating the gold from the sand with various machinery, and by chlorination and boiling. But in the end the companies working the bluffs always returned to sluicing. Only a moiety of gold was obtained by this process but it yielded a small profit. The auriferous sands also contained some platinum. [20]

F. THE SITUATION in 1881

In 1881 John Chapman and one other party owned and operated the Gold Bluff mines. Chapman and his men watched the beaches closely, and when the "gray sands" began to go out, it constituted a signal to commence operations. The pack mules were rounded up from the range, the men put back on the payroll, and "the sand scraped together upon the beach as fast as it appears." The auriferous sands were then packed up to the washing box, dumped in piles, and washed as time permitted. [21]

Meanwhile, a placer mine had been opened at Ossagon, on the upper edge of the Klamath Gravel and adjoining the upper Gold Bluff claim. This placer was owned by the Eureka Gold Mining Co., of Ossagon Creek. Unfortunately for the stockholders the dam and supporting facilities were erected "hastily, as is too frequently the case in such enterprises." When the winter rains came, the dam and sluiceway were washed away. The works were reconstructed, and a stronger dam, 250 feet long, 13 feet high, with a capacity. of 80,000,000 cubic feet of water, constructed. A ditch one-half mile in length was dug, while the pressure box had an elevation of 150 feet. The sluice was composed of 60 boxes, each 12 feet long and three feet wide. There were six blocks or ripples to the box. [22]

G. MINING OPERATIONS at GOLD BLUFFS ARE CLOSED

During the 1880s activities at the Gold Bluffs and the Ossagon placer slumped. By 1890 only two of the registered voters, John Eva and Michael Richardsonin the Gold Bluffs District of Humboldt County, listed their occupation as miners. In addition, three other voters (James Brown, a machinist, and David Cuddihy and William Fairchild, laborers) may have been employed at the mines. [23]

By 1920 mining operations at the Gold Bluffs had been closed down. When he visited the area in 1923, D. L. Thornbury reported that "oldtimers" told him that years before the beach had been narrow and steep, and that the breakers had washed the foot of the bluffs. But by the time of his visit this situation prevailed at only the south end. Along the northern part of Gold Bluffs for a distance of three miles, sand had accumulated. In addition, a wide sandbar had formed about a mile offshore, so that the force of the waves had greatly diminished and only on occasions did they reach the base of the bluffs. [24]

It was now known that the gold deposits had never been too valuable. The gold was extremely fine, and, contrary to opinions voiced in the 19th century, nearly all had been recovered in sluiceing. Moreover, the beach sands were expensive to work, and the gold was so fine that it would float on water when dry. Every pan would show color, but it took many pans to secure a penny's worth of gold. The largest amount of gold recovered in any one year was $25,000, with one seven-day run producing $1,600. [25]

H. COMMENTS and RECOMMENDATIONS

In the years since 1923, the beach fronting the Gold Bluffs has continued to grow. It now parallels the bluffs for eight miles. The northern section of the beach, which was built-up first, is at least one-third of a mile in width. The beach then narrows and fronting the Lower Bluffs, it is several hundred yards across. As the beach at the Gold Bluffs is a valuable resource and will attract many visitors, the Service will have an opportunity of interpreting the story of how nature creates beaches.

A map on file in the Humboldt County Clerk's Office in Eureka for 1922 locates the mining operations at the Upper and Lower Gold Bluffs. At the Upper Bluffs, the camp and facilities are positioned on the bluff overlooking Home Creek from the north, while at the Lower Bluffs, they are located in the swampy area behind the pond. The Ossagon Placer is not located, an indication that little or no remains existed in that year.

On April 26, 1969, using this map as a guide and a photograph found at the Visitor Center of the Prairie Creek California State Park, I was able to pinpoint the Upper Bluffs camp. Remains of the sluiceway, ditch, and several buildings were identified. Assisted by a Ranger of the California State Parks, I searched in vain for any remains of the camp at the Lower Bluffs. Dense undergrowth and a swamp, however, made a thorough reconnaissance impossible. Lack of time and the thick underbrush made it impossible to locate any remains that may survive of the Ossagon Placer.

It is recommended that the story of mining operations at the Gold Bluffs be interpreted at the Upper Bluffs. Our reasons are: (a) here there are some historical remains; the operations here were the most profitable and therefore probably the most significant; there is a historic photograph of the camp; and as the camp was located adjacent to Fern Canyon, it will have high visitor interest. The camp site should be designated Class VI Land. Efforts should be continued to locate and identify historical remains at the Lower Bluffs and the Ossagon Placer.

ENDNOTES

1. Alta California, July 1, 3, 7, 1850; Harry L. Wells, History of Siskiyou County, California . . . (Oakland, 1881), p. 57.

2. Bledsoe, History of Del Norte, p. 137.

3. Wells, History of Siskiyou County, p. 62.

4. Ibid., pp. 62-63.

5. Ibid., p. 63; Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, p. 50.

6. McBeth, Lower Klamath Country, p. 22.

7. Alta California, Jan. 9, 1851.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Wells, History of Siskiyou County, p. 63; Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, pp. 50-51. In the period December through March, 28 vessels cleared San Francisco bound for Trinidad or the Gold Bluffs. Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, p. 121.

12. Crook, Autobiography, pp. 11-12.

13. Alta California, Oct. 20, 1864.

14. Alta California, June 2, 1873.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., Nov. 29, 1873.

18. Bledsoe, History of Del Norte, pp. 138-139.

19. Ibid., p. 138; Thornbury, California's Redwood Wonderland, pp. 129-30.

20. Bledsoe, History of Del Norte, p. 138. When the auriferous sands were washed with sluices, the gold caught in riffles sawed in a plank salted with mercury. Ibid., p. 137.

21. Elliott, History of Humboldt County, p. 150.

22. Ibid., p. 151.

23. Great Register of Humboldt County, 1890 (Eureka, 1890).

24. Thornbury, California's Redwood Wonderland, p. 129-130.

25. Ibid., 130.; Bledsoe, History of Del Norte, pp. 137-138. The best strike was near the Upper Bluff.