A nice little hike, Thursday 9/13/18

Enjoying a touch of autumn before the actual equinox, Jimmy and I tied on our hikers to explore "the diggins."  We've been here before, once by ourselves and also with relatives, but we hadn't yet had the opportunity to hike the distance of the Diggins Loop Trail.  It's a bit of a car trip just to get to the place, but it's a scenic drive, so no matter.

Located northeast of Nevada City in the foothills, Malakoff Diggins today is what's left after miners washed away entire mountains of gravel to wash out GOLD!  Before us now are huge cliffs carved by those mighty streams of water from hydraulic "monitors."  With clear blue skies and cool temps, the day was perfect.  We hiked the 3-mile loop alone, spotting only one other couple at the start.  Pesky gnats harassed us, and we spied quite a bit of bear scat, including one fresh pile, but the bears were sleeping in the noonday sun. 

The pit has filled in with more than 100 ft of eroded deposits.  Lots of native conifers and Manzanita cover the flat plane.  In fact, I read that about 3,200 forested acres surround the pit, at 2,500-4,000 ft elevation.

We've seen the other end of Hiller Tunnel, but we didn't know it began here.  Next time Jimmy said we'd bring flashlights, wear water shoes for any dribbles along the bottom, and (hoy!) hike the 556-foot-long tunnel, through which water for the mining operation once flowed.  Water and detritus!  Please notice Jimmy is wearing an over-shirt, which came off after we'd been hoofing it a while.

We did some climbing, but nothing too strenuous.

It's a fairly easy trek, but the gnats were bothersome.

I look tiny standing up there!  Can you imagine jets of water scouring the hillsides and leaving great barren cliffs like these?  No, neither can we.  Jimmy said, "Imagine how noisy this was with the giant monitors going full tilt!"

A lake appears in the bowl when the rains come.  A large puddle is all we saw today, but judging by the many cattails and reeds, willows, etc., this remains a wetland.

Sedimentary and volcanic rocks make up the cliff walls, with alternating layers of conglomerates, white fine-grained clays, and iron-stained siltstone. The red color on the walls is from iron oxide. The brown color comes from the volcanic rocks and detritus.  I think the walls are beautiful.

Some water seepage flows down, as you see here.

It's a white castle!

A lot of junk has been left laying around, rusting.

It might take it another 100 years to totally disappear.

On the trail, looking down on a tiny stream.

"At Malakoff Diggins, the world's largest hydraulic gold mine devastated the pristine landscape -- leading to the first environmental law enacted in the nation."  The water is clear, but the rocks are stained by iron.

The 3,143-acre park was established in 1965.

Malakoff State Historic Park has a great handout brochure, but if you want to read more about all that GOLD, Google has a wealth of info on it.  Gold fever was the chief mover at Malakoff, as it was in all the California foothills.  I looked, but didn't find a spec of the yellow stuff!  Nevertheless, we really enjoyed our day.

Meantime, we're gearing up for more major happenings at our place, with a contractor/crew coming to give us new cement sidewalks around the house and a new landscape retaining wall to replace the serpentine rock wall that is kinda falling apart.  We've been moving plants out of the way, among other things, and we're busy bees preparing for this.  The house was painted last month (oooh, looks nice!), and this crew starting on the 19th is the last phase of our summer home maintenance plan (that's stretching into autumn!).  So, it's good for us to take a day away and go or do something we haven't done previously.

More fun, Out and About, in NorCal -- Thurs, 9/5/13

Today would be my sister and BiL's last full day with us, so we made a plan to check out Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, northeast of us.  Nannie and I made cashew-nut-butter and jelly sandwiches, then packed up small bags of chips, sandwiches, and drinks, and took off.  One of the last requests I heard was that we not get back too late (like after 5 pm) because they had to get things ready to leave for home in the morning.  No problem!  I wasn't driving so, I'm not exactly sure how we got there, but we ended up at Bridgeport (Nyes Crossing), southeast of us and site of Covered Bridge State Park.  This might be considered serendipity!

The sign that Nannie's standing next to reads, in part:  "Built in 1862... this bridge was part of the Virginia Turnpike Company toll road which served the northern mines and the busy Nevada Comstock Lode... it is the longest single-span, wooden covered bridge in the United States."  The entrance is gated and locked because the bridge is unstable and engineers haven't figured out how to stabilize it yet.  We all wished we could walk across it, but, alas, not today.

 

The gift shop was open (I bought a tee shirt w/ hummingbirds on it), and my silly sister is pretending this stuffed Kodiak grizzly bear is tearing off her arm!  Photo op!

 

One of the best parts of this state park is the clear South Yuba River -- oh, so refreshing to wade in on a hot summer day.  Didn't take me and Nannie a minute to shed shoes 'n sox!  We made a pact that if one of us fell in face first (hard to walk on wet rocks), the other would also "tump over!"  Probably would've felt good to get completely soaked, but it didn't happen.

The other good part of this park is being able to pan for gold, which my brother-in-law is doing.  He bought a gold miner's pan in the gift shop and commenced looking ... for a nugget or two!  The jury is still out on whether those are REAL gold flakes in the little vial he also bought.  All of us enjoyed inspecting the multitude of rocks at river's edge.

We messed around by the river for a long time.  These big ol' trees provided perfect shade for our picnic.  After examining more rocks and panning for more gold and more river wading, we left for Malakoff Diggins.

* * * * *

Jimmy and Nannie in historic North Bloomfield, standing beside a water monitor - the means of the hydraulic mining at Malakoff Diggins.

By 1850 there was little gold left in streams. Miners began to discover gold in old riverbeds and on mountainsides high above the streams. In 1851, three miners headed northeast of what is now Nevada City for a less crowded area to prospect. One miner went back to town with a pocket full of gold nuggets for supplies and was followed back by many prospectors. These followers, however, did not find any gold and declared the area "Humbug", thus the stream was so named "Humbug Creek". Around 1852, settlers began to arrive in the area and the town of "Humbug" sprang up  Now known as North Bloomfield.

Jimmy is all but hidden in the manzanita.

While beautiful in its own way, the Malakoff mine pit is a testimony to the destruction and avarice that was part of the California gold rush, and to one of the nation's first environmental protection measures.

Nannie set up a timed photo of the four of us

 perched on boulders leftover from the hydraulic mining.

 

Nannie and Bubba at Hiller Tunnel, one of Malakoff's marvels.  Someday, me and Jimmy will remember to bring a flashlight with us to explore further inside this dark tunnel.  Maybe ....

We kept on going, the four of us, heedless of time, having fun.  So much to see, hills to climb.  Pictures to take.  Finally, I looked at my watch.  Hmmmm, it was 5 pm.  And we were 45 minutes +/- from home.  Before we left this morning, we'd decided to eat pizza in a local restaurant, as it would be easy after a day Out and About.  It was around 6 pm by the time we pulled in the pizza parking lot, and I guess we got home around 7ish.  Well, we didn't make the 5 pm margin, but no one seemed to mind.  We had a great day, and they're not driving east too far tomorrow, so an early start isn't required. 

My sister and I donned our bathing suits and made straight for our hot tub on the back deck, to soothe those aching muscles and tendons!  Just the ticket to end a wonderful day! 

Malakoff Diggins redux -- Saturday, 9/22/12

Humbug, you say?  Yes, you're partially correct. Remember this is historic gold country!  The town of Humbug, settled in 1852, became known as North Bloomfield in 1858.  Located 10 miles northeast of Nevada City, California (as the crow flies), it was originally named Humbug after the creek of the same name.  North Bloomfield is a well preserved mining town, now a state park, and it was home to hydraulic gold miners and their families from Malakoff Diggins:  The world's largest hydraulic gold mine.

 

A section of the restored Smith-Knotwell "Drugstore,"

circa 1880 - on North Bloomfield Road.

 

Rus and Jimmy posing at the wood stove in the drugstore.

(hurry up, take the picture, already!)

 

Ready for lunch from the goodies we bought earlier in the day @ the Grower's Market.  Brother Rus, Jimmy, and sis-in-law, Anne.

After a Ranger's tour of historic North Bloomfield,

we tried our hands at gold panning in Humbug Creek.

 

Rus appears to be standing on the log (but isn't).

Notice the empty gold pan....

Jimmy picks a site further downstream to pan.

The water level is very low (end of a very dry summer).

Jimmy is showing how much gold he found in, ahem, Humbug Creek: Zero. Humbug!  This is how the creek got its name in the first place!

Exploring further:  The North Bloomfield School - built at a cost of $3000 in 1872-73.  It served the community until it closed in 1941.  We walked around it; couldn't get in.

The school and St Columncille's Catholic Church are across the street from LeDu's Diggins.  As strange as it seemed to us, the church was formerly a Union Guard Hall and used in 1860 to train men for the Civil War under Capt. Frank Coffey of nearby French Corral.  Strange because you don't think of the West Coast as being involved in the War Between the States. 

Anne and Rus on Malakoff Diggins loop trail.

Jimmy (holding a non-gold-bearing rock!)

and Rus (standing on a non-gold-bearing rock!).  

Okay, so we didn't find any precious metal, but we did spot an unusual bee "hive" in this ground hole the size of a basketball.  The bees seemed to be rebuilding their paper-like nest after something (perhaps a bear) exposed it - the ground all around the hole had been disturbed.  Bees were all around the area....

And then there's this foot-long guy.  He seemed to resent me almost driving over it, and when I got out of the car to examine it, including touching its tail, it reared up and gave me the evil eye.  Go ahead, it seemed to say - Make My Day!

Although we all thought today felt pretty durned hot, we enjoyed being outside exploring this historic area.  It was Another Great Adventure!

Thar's gold in them thar hills! Fri, 9/8/12

Close to the South Yuba River in Northern California, Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park preserves and interprets the 1850's - 1880's hydraulic mining era, when gold seekers combed the Sierra foothills and washed away whole mountains looking for the precious metal.

Approx 20 miles NE of Nevada City is this amazing State Historic Park.

Please enlarge to read.

The two photos above show only a little bit of the pit. The pit is about 6,800' long from SW to NE and it ranges from 1,000-3,800' wide from north to south. Landslides and erosion have changed the pit from the days of hydraulic mining. Where Jimmy is standing used to be 100'- 300' deeper! Soil deposits have accumulated on the pit floor, and native vegetation has grown into the once-exposed areas.

Giant high-pressure monitors like the one above directed powerful streams of water to wash the gold from rock at the pit. An 8-inch nozzle could throw water 200 feet in an unbroken mass and wash 50-pound stones 100' downstream. At capacity, the resulting waterpower could work 100,000 tons of gravel per day. Hard to imagine that kind of power that can wash away a mountain and devastate pristine landscape. Silt traveled all the way to San Francisco Bay! Towns and farms were flooded, lives were lost. This led to the first environmental law enacted in the nation. Fascinating history, worth reading up on.

The miners dug a 7,847' drainage tunnel thru bedrock from the Diggins pit to Humbug Creek in 1872. Most of it has collapsed. Jimmy is standing at an opening near the Diggins. (enlarge sign for the You Are Here arrow).

The Park has more than 20 miles of scenic foothill hiking trails. We hiked into the pit, but the sun was hot. We'll go back when it's cooler to hike around and explore. We only touched the surface.

 

A harmless garter snake sneaking along the road edge.

A pretty Adelpha californica (California Sister).

In what's left of North Bloomfield town, Jimmy peers in a barbershop window. A town tour given by the Ranger took us inside both original and a few restored bldgs. Jimmy and I were the only people in town this day, so we had a long, interesting tour!

We're not sure what it was, but it looks like a piece of rusting mining equipment.

Between the Diggins pit and the town of North Bloomfield, we paid a visit to the old cemetery. Many of the graves were marked by simple wooden crosses or boards (above and below).

 This man died in 1885 at the age of 83.

And then, there's this! These free-range cows were very musical, each one having a jangling bell around its neck - keeps the bears away, maybe? Too bad we didn't drive Smartie to the Diggins today - it would've been right at home parking next to the Ranger's "Bumble-bee" Smartie!

An Alaskan grizzly bear (donated by a bank!) found a home at the Museum.

Outside the museum ... and the last shot of the day as my camera battery went kaput.

I didn't find any gold. I found silver instead!

A good day, indeed!