GEMS AND GOLD IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
I love the tv show GOLD RUSH.
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the ALASKA dredge worked but in Guyana they did better with DIAMONDS. The trick was given them by a local diamond miner who'd been making his living that way since the age of four. "Jackson" was his name. He uses a metal rod and punches it into the jungle floor to find areas with gravel. Gravel indicates vestigal rivers that once brought rocks off the mountain. That is where the rocks are. They dredge the soil same way as for gold, with flowing water, and then pick through the gravel. And find diamonds.GOLD
http://www.goldgold.com/tag/gold-prospecting-adventure/page/6DREDGING PLUNGE POOLS for nuggets
http://goldrush.wikia.com/wiki/Plunge_poolSAN BERNADINO COUNTY
http://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/socagomiinto.htmlDIAMONDS
http://geology.com/gemstones/united-states-diamond-production.shtml tells of two diamond mines in the USAOTHER GEMS:
http://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/figemstinca.html
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NORTHERN CALIFORNIAThe Unsolved Mystery Of California's Idle Diamond Mine
THE CHEROKEE GRIFT.The "Cherokee" Mine near CHICO CALIFORNIA Yielded Millions in Gold, but when miners began to find some of the worlds finest diamonds a stranger appeared and the mine was closed forever...
By Ben T. Traywick
In the proximity of Round Mountain, a few miles from Chico, lies the ghost town of Cherokee and the remains of the once famous Cherokee Mine.
Through the now crumbling walls of Cherokee’s old assay office $10,000,000 worth of gold was poured into shiny bars of precious yellow metal and shipped down to Oroville.
And here, today, on the side of an extinct Butte County volcano, amid the decaying remains of a Gold Rush Ghost town, lies the only diamond mine in California. It has never yielded up its secrets.
Not only did Cherokee have the distinction of being a real boom town, but it was here the first diamond found in California was discovered.
In 1866, while cleaning his sluice box at the mouth of the great Cherokee hydraulic wash, Mike Maher discovered a perfect blue diamond. In 1867 William Brandreth found a diamond at Cherokee which cut a stone of one and a third .carats. John Moore found a gem in 1868 that weighed six carats. And yet another miner named Slissman picked up a total of twenty diamonds in the Cherokee placers.
In the late 1870’s Cherokee was the largest and most famous hydraulic mine in America. In a short period of 25 years, miners grubbed $50,000,000 in raw gold from its vast treasure house, not to mention a sizeable fortune in glittering diamonds.
The mine in Cherokee was discovered in 1852 by prospectors guided there by Indians who had found gold near what is now called Round Mountain. Actually Cherokee was a rich gold mine, but thru the years of gold mining, approximately 400 ice clear diamonds were found. These gems were of such a quality as to compare with the best stones of Africa and South America.
At the Cherokee wash, huge nozzles, called monitors, shot high pressure streams of water against the earth, crumbling and washing hundreds of tons of earth an hour through enormous sluice boxes. This method of mining was perfectly adapted for separating the heavier gold from gravel, but it will never be known how many millions in diamonds were washed away with the gravel tailings.By the year 1870 the population of Cherokee was roughly 7,000 persons. About this same time, the gravel and mud tailings were fast becoming a real problem. These tailings flowed down to the valley farms covering everything in their wake. Dams were built to hold these tailings, but when the muddy mass built up to capacity, they gave way and allowed their contents to flow downstream, covering fields, crops, and everything else in the area.
After the break of a tailing dam, mine representatives would ride through the newly flooded areas, their pockets bulging with $20 gold pieces. At each flooded area they stopped and asked the owner his losses. They paid the named damages in gold—with no argument.
By 1890 a growing resentment against hydraulic mining appeared. Millions of tons of rock and earth from the huge hydraulic monitors had clogged streams, filled rivers, and covered vast areas of agricultural land. In 1893, pressure exerted on the California Legislature- caused the anti-hydraulic mining law to be passed, thus ending hydraulic mining.
Under the new mining restrictions the owners felt they could not operate with a desired profit, so in 1906 organized mining completely ceased in Cherokee. When the mine shut down, the town of Cherokee died. Miners and their families moved away, stores and saloons closed, and a new ghost town came into being.
Soon after organized mining ceased, individual miners and prospectors began to drift in and grub through the rocks and bluffs in search of gold. A few diamonds were continually picked up or dug from the blue volcanic clay—enough to keep the legend of diamonds alive.
Then appeared on the scene a man named Cooney, who claimed to have worked in the South African diamond fields. He expressed confidence that the Oroville area abounded in kimberlite, the blue volcanic clay in which diamonds are found. His efforts then were directed toward finding men who would assist him in securing land and beginning diamond mining operations.
In 1907, Cooney and four other men, Lorbeer, Moss, Christie, and McMullen, formed the United States Diamond Mining Company in Oroville. They secured an option on 40 acres of land and incorporated the company under the laws of Arizona for 2,500.000 shares at one dollar per share. Five blocks of stock were reserved for the five partners and the remainder put up for sale to the citizens of Oroville, Chico, and Marysville.
Advertisements were issued in local papers in order to obtain subscribers for the stock issue. In a very few days a long list of people had signed to invest their money in purchase of the stock. With the new stockholders’ money Cooney got the mining operations underway. Three shifts were put to work in the mines at eight hours each, late in November of 1908.The stockholders held a meeting to organize and elect officers. Cooney was elected president of the company, Henry Vail, a wealthy Oroville dredger-man, was elected vice-president. Lorbeer was named general superintendent, and Christie and Moss were placed en the board of directors.
Stock values showed a substantial increase and sales went up in proportion, when in December 1908, a woman, cleaning her Christmas turkey, found a two carat diamond in its craw. This particular bird had been raised in the vicinity of Oroville.
As the cost of operations increased, the partners ran short of ready cash. From somewhere Cooney came up with the needed funds and accepted a portion of his partners’ stocks in return. Unnoticed by the others, Cooney slowly began to gain control of the company.
On Saturday, March 27, 1909, Henry Vail, vice-president of the company, washed some disintegrated blue clay taken from the 180 feet level. A small blue, perfectly formed diamond appeared. Two smaller stones were also found in this lump of blue clay.
About the time Vail found these three gems a representative of the DeBeers syndicate arrived in Oroville. DeBeers was the greatest producer of diamonds in the world and wanted controlling interest in the United States Diamond Mining Company. Americans were paying DeBeers 40 million dollars a year for diamonds produced from their South African properties; so from an economic viewpoint they could tolerate no competition in America. DeBeer’s syndicate had set aside a fund of 500 million dollars to be used only for obtaining the controlling interest of every new diamond discovery in the world. Their representative attempted to get a man named Sweetman, who was the City Assessor of Chico and a stockholder, to purchase a controlling share of stock, offering him a position with DeBeers and promising to make him a rich man. Sweetman refused because of the mining interests held by friends.
On May 8, 1909, two miners, working on a drift from the 200 feet level, dug out a big chunk of soft blue material. Their lamps picked up blazing lights in the clay. The miners grabbed all the clay they could hold in their hands and ‘rushed out of the mine. In the sunshine the handfuls of muddy stones reflected the sunlight with a dazzling brilliance. Lorbeer washed the gems clean of mud and found there were more than 100 of them!
Lorbeer and the two miners rushed into Oroville shouting, “Diamonds! Real diamonds! We found diamonds!” A large crowd gathered in the street to inspect the newly found diamonds.Cooney had been in Butte, Montana when the strike had been made. When informed of the discovery of the gems, he seemed rather upset over the news. Early Sunday morning, Lorbeer had finished panning the clay brought up by the miners. He rushed to Cooney at the hotel, his hat filled with muddy, greasy, and glistening stones.
One glance at the stones and Cooney remarked, “These are nothing but rocks.” With that he took the hatful of stones and rushed Lorbeer into the hotel. The two remained inside for over an hour. When they emerged, Cooney said, “Those stones were no good. I threw them away!”
He and Lorbeer then went down to the Chamber of Commerce to look at the other stones. Cooney carefully examined them and shook his head; he told the crowd that had gathered the stones were poor quality, fit only for industrial use as drill points and cutting tools.
The following Monday Cooney unexpectedly suspended all operations in the mine. Immediately thereafter he caught the train for San Francisco. He returned two days later accompanied by two strangers. A meeting with his partners was called. At once a fierce argument developed between Moss, McMullen, Christie, and Cooney over the closing of the mine. Lorbeer sided with Cooney, obviously thinking this was his most advantageous move. Moss, McMullen, and Christie were voted out of the directorship and the two strangers voted in. This business completed, the two strangers departed, never to be seen again.
Cooney had the mine boarded and barricaded so no one could enter. So far as is known no one has been down inside the mine since the day the two miners came clambering out with their hands full of diamonds.
Although Cooney already controlled the company without question, he offered his former partners $2500 each for the stocks they still retained. Already panicky, they sold their holdings without question. Two other investors in San Francisco, who held large blocks of stock, became suspicious and sent a diamond expert to Oroville to examine the 200 gems that had been taken from the mine. Cooney flatly refused to let him see the stones or even tell him where they were.Some weeks passed, then Cooney’s agent appeared in San Francisco and offered to buy all the stocks owned by the investors. Disgusted with Cooney’s methods and attitude, and afraid they might lose all they had invested, the two men sold all their stocks for several thousand dollars. It is still a mys-tery as to where Cooney obtained such an enormous amount of cash as that which he used to purchase absolute control of the mine.
Stranger still, Cooney did not resume operations in the mine as everyone expected, but instead left it closed, shut down all operations permanently, and even sold off the mining equipment. He remained in the Oroville area for approximately three more years. It appeared he had sufficient funds with which to live quite comfortably. And yet another mystery is the fact that when Cooney died twenty years later on November 18, 1929, in Salem, Oregon, at the age of ninety, he was a pauper.
With him in death he took the unanswered questions to the puzzle:
Did Cooney sell out to DeBeer’s syndicate?
Did he salt the mine and then change his mind?
Were there really diamonds in the mine?
Why did Cooney close the mine?
Why has it never been reopened?
The mine has never been reopened and the answers will never be known or the secret unfolded until miners again pursue the discovery of the glittering stones in the old shafts of California's only diamond mine, abandoned 98 years ago.