Grass Valley

We picked this destination in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains primarily to visit the Empire Mine State Historic Park. Once here we found more than we had bargained for.

Intersection of Jenkins and Hocking Streets was the first discovery of gold in the area. George Knight was on a Grass Valley hillside in October 1850 when he came upon an outcropping of white quartz rock laced with yellow. He pounded the rock with his cast iron skillet and washed out the gold. Digging under the outcropping he discovered a 4 inch gold vein. Named the Ophir Vein, the race to Grass Valley was on.

After the mining claim changed hands several times it ended up in the hands of William Bowers Bourn in 1869. The mine was highly successful, and in 1897 he commissioned Willis Polk to build what he would call his “Cottage” using waste rock from the mine. By the turn of the century he added a clubhouse with tennis courts, a bowling alley and squash courts.

We visited the mine and the Cottage. Sadly the Cottage was being refurbished and was not open for touring at this time. However we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. Between 1850 and 1956 when the mine permanently closed after a debilitating strike, the mine no less than 5.8 million ounces of gold. The Empire Mine is one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California history.

My expectations for the visit were modest, but I was really pleasantly surprised. The grounds have been maintained both in the structures and the layout in the way it would have been when the Bourn family lived here. The visitor center has a great overview that was filmed in the 50’s when mining in the area was still being done. The perspective was outstanding. We had seen different kinds of mining going on in Alaska, the Yukon and elsewhere and historical equipment often used – pans, shaker beds, sluice boxes, hydraulic jets and dredges.

However, I never pieced together that these were not just different ways being used in different places – rather they were gradual improvements in technology. Pans were slow and back breaking – lead to shaker boxes to accelerate the refinement of the gravel, which then had to be panned. Sluice boxes were just large shaker boxes with more automated water. Hydraulic nozzles accelerated the scouring of the land and moving the tailings into what was essentially just huge sluice boxes. Finally, the dredges automated the entire process in a self-contained unit. All were used at different points in time in Grass Valley.

While we couldn’t go down inside we did get to see the original Empire Mine entrance. It was an incline shaft with rails. The main shaft went down a mile and shafts branched out from there. By the time it was fully developed there were 367 miles of underground shafts covering a geographic of 5 square miles on the surface. The visitor center has a 3 dimensional scale model of the mine with an interesting audio and visual narration. The model was actually used by the management of the mine to plan and manage operations back at the turn of the century.

Each morning the miners would show up for their shifts. They would clamber aboard a sort of incline rail car that would then lower them the mile down to the base of the main shaft. It appears to me that the equipment looks pretty rickety and that safety measures limited, if they existed at all. Surprisingly the Mine’s safety record was above average for the industry.

We learned that one of the things we had always been told is a myth. Mules were permanent residents in these deep mine situations. Because they could not easily be moved up and down, they lived their entire life within the mines. We had always been told that in those situations the mules went blind over time. Apparently that was a myth – they did not. In fact, as a valuable resource, they were well cared for by especially skilled full time “mule-skinners” on the payroll.

One last interesting thing we learned about underground mining. By the time they finished digging, they had actually gone down over 2 miles. It turns out that the natural water table in this area is only 150 feet underground – now that the mine is abandoned, it is totally filled with water up to 150 feet below the entrance to the main shaft. Imagine the effort needed to keep this 367 miles of shafts free of water to run the operations – sheesh!

At Mill Street and Allison Ranch Road we visited the North Star Mine and Powerhouse. This facility ended up being the 2^nd largest producer of gold during the California Gold Rush. In 1898, the largest every Pelton Wheel was built for the mine. Developed in 1870 by Lester Allan Pelton, the Pelton Wheel was a water turbine with a unique paddle shape that was far more efficient in extracting power from the movement of water to run the gold mill. By 1928 the mine had produced over $33 million of gold. While suspended for the war effort, mining continued here until 1956.

While the Post Office was established in 1851, the town was not actually incorporate until 1893. Originally known as Boston Ravine, the name was later changed to Centerville, and then again to Grass Valley. The reasons for the name changes are unknown today.

Named the Del Oro Theatre because of the surrounding area’s connection to gold mining, ‘oro’ being Spanish for gold. This Art Modern theater was built in 1942.

The Holbrooke built in 1862 is the oldest hotel in continuous operation in the California Mother Lode. Guests included Jack London, Mark Twain, US Grant and several other presidents.

Lola Montez internationally known singer and dancer bought a mining office building built in 1851, moving into it in 1853. It is the only home she ever owned. Irish dancer and actress, she became famous as a Spanish dancer, and as the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who had her named Countess of Lansfeld. During the Revolutions of 1848 in the German States she was forced to flee and made her way to the US.

Born Charlotte, Lotta Crabtree lived a few houses down Mill Street from Lola Montez. Striking up a deep friendship, Lola taught Lotta to sing and dance and encouraged her to perform locally. Her charisma coupled with what she learned from Lola lead to a highly successful career in the US and abroad. Her life story was recalled in the 1951 film Golden Girl with Lotta being played by Mitzi Gaynor.

Just down the street from both was the Grass Valley Library. This Carnegie Grant library was built in 1914, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Grass Valley Museum currently resides in the Victorian building that housed Mount St. Mary’s Convent and Orphan Asylum. Katherine Russell lead the Sisters of Mercy on a crusade to help the orphans of miners in the valley and in 1866 opened the convent and orphanage. It operated until 1932 when it was purchased by the Grass Valley Historic Preservation Committee.

We ventured over to nearby Nevada City. Actually incorporated before Grass Valley in 1856, this town actually followed its nearby town into the Gold Rush era.

We strolled the main street of Nevada City discovering the Nevada Theater. After the Bailey House Hotel burned down in 1863, locals acting as The Nevada Theater Association began fundraising for a new building, selling stock at $100 a share. Holding a ball in 1865 to raise the final funds needed, the theater opened September 9, 1865. The Nevada Theater is the oldest theater building in the state of California.

In Nice it was nice – temps in the 70’s. At 2,500 feet in the Sierra Nevada’s, it is cold and wet in Nevada City with highs in the 40’s. So when we passed by the historic National Hotel, opened in August of 1856, the Woman heard their famous hot buttered rum’s a callin. Predating the Holbrooke in Grass Valley by half a decade the National would be the oldest continuously operated hotel west of the Rockies if not for an unfortunate fire in 1863 which caused the hotel to be shut down for a short time for repair. Both guests and employees claim to have seen ghostly men dressed in Victorian suits smoking cigars in the lobby, a young woman dressed in a flowing Victoria dress gliding through the bar, and all claim to have heard the bar piano play by itself in the dead of the night (so to speak).

We made one last attempt to embrace the mining history of the area by visiting Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park. This launched another wondrous GPS blunder. We looked up the Park in Brenda’s POI database and she had it, the address the same as the Park brochure we had (but sadly the Park brochure had no maps or directions included.) We started out and could see it was going to be a bit roundabout – 15 miles by the crow was calculating to an hour of driving time. We turned off the main highway on a much smaller but not bad road. We reached the town of Washington on the South Yuba River, founded in 1849 by miners, and sporting a current population of 185. Once we left Washington Brenda directed us to Relief Hill Road, unpaved, and said we would be at the Park in 7 miles.

We began climbing and Relief Hill Road began narrowing. It turns out this is an 1800 era mining road never really intended for automated equipment. We kept climbing until we hit fog. Then we hit snow and the snow was accumulating on the dirt road. We still had 5 miles to go but I pressed on. Eventually we met a Forest Service pickup coming our way, thankfully at a rare spot where I could pull over so a vehicle could pass. The ranger stopped and rolled down his window, suggesting he was attempting to go over Relief Hill and had turned around do to the road conditions. He suggested I do the same, which I did. While this wasn’t the worst road I have ever been on, it is definitely in the top 5.

We asked the ranger, and in fact there was a fully paved route to the Park on pretty major roads. It was a couple miles longer that route than this way, which is why Brenda chose to send us this way. But the estimated driving time was only about ¾ of the time it would take to get to the Park along Relief Hill Road. Thanks Brenda!

In the mid-1800’s most miners had abandoned their claims the town of North Bloomfield as the claims could not produce enough profit for the work. A French immigrant Julius Poquillion bought up these abandoned claims and amassed over 1,500 acres. He convinced a San Francisco investment group to invest in the equipment needed to conduct large scale hydraulic mining. At the height of their activity, 100,000 tons of gravel was blasted from the hillsides by these powerful water cannon.

They blasted so much gravel that the valley began to fill, interfering with their operations. So in 1872 they accomplished an impressive engineering of a nearly 8,000 foot (almost a mile and a half) drainage tunnel straight through bedrock from the Diggins to Humbug Creek. The drainage tunnel allowed them to use the excess water from the hydraulic mining to evacuate the tailings into the South Yuba River.

As you can imagine, this practice was devastating to the land. While done by man and not by nature, the remains of these hydraulic mining operations have left a barren landscape. While I hate to compare this devastation to something created by nature, the landscape reminds me a great deal of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The exposed bluffs expose the underlying rock formations with varying shades of red.

The drainage tunnel led to the end of hydraulic mining in California. Farmers and ranchers along the South Yuba River found the heavy metal laced tailings devastated their crops and livestock.

On January 7, 1884 Judge Lorenzo Sawyer handed down a decision (now known as the Sawyer Decision) in the case of Woodruff, a Marysville property owner, against the North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company placing significant restrictions on the practice. To date the San Francisco based investors had spent $3 million on the equipment and had only produced $3 million on the value of gold and valuable metals extracted. Under the new restrictions their production would plummet and costs soar. Cutting their risks, the operations were totally abandoned.

We visited the town of North Bloomfield, now part of the Park. Settled in 1852 it was originally named Humbug – a name given by unhappy miners given the meager results for their effort. By the height of the hydraulic mining the population exceeded 2,000, with general stores, pharmacies, saloons, churches and a US post office. However, soon after the Sawyer Decision the town was abandoned and became a ghost town. Interestingly many of the residents who abandoned the town returned during the Depression, occupying the vacant buildings just in order to have somewhere to live.

Today only Park employees live here. I love the official town sign outlining the population. Apparently the winter population of the town is 8, swelling to 12 during the summer months when more tourism needs attending to.

Talk to you soon!