Show harvesting PLACER GOLD by dennis H stovall gathering placer nuggets is the most fascinating work in the world the miner who gathers the royal metal into glittering heaps at cleanup clean up time has the good fortune not allotted to many of feasting his eyes on the tempting piles and lating himself on the consummation of the harvest however that is but one part of the story placer mining during the early days in california was a gamble in which hardships privations and perils were necessary adjuncts to the treasure sought today placer mining by hydraulic giants is business in which capital skill and leal ical ingenuity play a most important part A hydraulic giant cart can wash down more dirt and gravel in an hour than the early day miner with his crude rocker aria and sluice could do in weeks it costs from one and one half to five cents a cubic yard to tear down and mine a mountain with a hydraulic giant in the placer fields of call all fornia and southern oregon the gravel in this section of the west pays from six to twenty and sixty cents a yard cleanup clean up as it is termed is the harvest time of the placer miner it usually comes in the spring or early summer at the close of the season and when there are no longer rains enough to keep up a 8 full pipe head in the giants some miners however clean their sluices every month and others once a week but the real cleanup clean up the harvest time does not come till the seasons end just as the farmer th his wheat after the grain is cut at cleanup clean up the giants cease their thun i der and only enough water water is allowed to run in the sluices as will aid in gathering the gold As the gold is washed from the banks it is carried in company with the great mass of gravel dirt and debris by the giants flood down a race cut across the bedrock of the diggings to the sluices the natural riffle in the bedrock race is the best possible riffle tor for catching gold and it is here that nearly all of the nuggets and many of the finer pieces find lodge ment the sluice boxes are set at the end of 0 the bedrock race specially prepared rif af fles made of steel fit in the bottom of the sluices farther on down toward the dump the last opportunity of catching the gold is utilized by block and pole riffles fiffles rif fles the bedrock race is first swept clean and every particle of precious yellow gathered up the riffles fiffles are then lifted from frola the sluices rinsed and laid aside with a small stream of water flowing through the mass of gold and dirt on the sluice floor is swept gently to and fro with a brush broom the dirt and refuse is dissolved dissolve by the waste water and flows off over the dump revealing the gold particles beneath the larger nuggets are first gathered up as potatoes from a hill the remaining mass is swept into piles scooped up and put into strong leather bags or alasi jars ready for the refinery mint and the stamp of uncle sam |