Large Scale Central

The WASHINGTON MINE

General Discussion
#1

Hi all,
Far Northern California was/is one of the largest producers of gold ore/bullion in the country and I had the chance to visit one of the oldest, still producing gold mines in this area last week. Attached is a brief history of the Washington Mine and a link to their web site for further information if your interested. Oh, yea, I also included a few pictures. Hope you enjoy the visit.
Rick

The Washington Mine, the first gold quartz mine in Shasta County, California, was discovered in 1852 by John Souter and his partner John Syme. This mine became the first patented mine in California. In short, a patented mine is one that the claimants have filed the correct papers under the amendments of the General Mining Law of 1872 and been granted absolute title to the land that is encompassed by the claim. Of course a number of criteria must be met not the least of which is paying all the required processing fees and purchase price of the land applied for. The Washington Mine lays about 3 miles northwest of French Gulch, California along French Gulch Creek and is currently operating full time. During the initial mining period of the 1850’s 1870’s the Washington produced about 2 million dollars. Following a few idle years the Washington was purchased in 1930 by a dentist living in Shasta City, Ca who leased it to a French Gulch miner, J. H. Scott, for $10,000 and 25 % royalties. Scott took out $800,000 before World War II forced him to close down. The Washington Mine has operated on again off again since the close of World War II and continues to produce gold ore in quantities that keep it in operation. The mine is currently owned by the SHASTA GOLD CORP and is operated by the French Gulch (Nevada) Mining Corp. A link to the Shasta Gold Corporation’s web page is here if you are interested in more information and history of the Washington Mine.

Shasta Gold Corp. » The Washington Mine

Here is the mine opening, tunnel, adit, or what ever you want to call it as it exists today. I imagine it looked considerable different back in the 1800’s. Unfortunatly we did not get to go down into the tunnel because of OSHA and other company regulations. The large round pipe or duct is the ventilation for the tunnels and drifts. The fresh air is actually pulled into the mines from the other side of the mountain at one of the emergency escapes and pushed out at this point.

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Another view of the tunnel entrance and some of the equipment sitting around. None of the crews were working this day (Saturday) but right now they are running two crews employing a total of about 60 men.

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One of the trucks used on the surface with the company name on the bed. There was a lot of equipment sitting around and I only took picts of a few pieces.

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One of the larger skips used in the main drifts of the mine. Each bucket load is about a ton of ore or muck rock.

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One of the smaller skips, you can see that it is articulated in the center. I like the reminder about maintainence.

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The front of the main mill building. the whole place is a combination of old and new structures but all the processing equipment is modern and up to date.

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A picture of the older mill building from the upper side, you can see some of the modern crusher and conveyor equipment behind and above the mill.

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Another view that better shows the side hill design of the typical ore mill building

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At the bottom level of the mill looking back up the hill.

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Inside the mill looking up the hill. This building probably dates to the 1920’s-30’s and is all full dimension lumber with large circular daw marks in the wood. The white structure at the foreground of the picture is the OSHA required noise insulated enclosure containing the ball mills. The mills consist of large steel cylinders containing large steel ball bearings (3") that tumble around inside the cylinders crushing up the rock. A very noisy operation even with the enclosure. Where you see the window is the mill operators booth.

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A stack of “core samples” taken from various areas inside the mine. These samples are taken in order to try to trace the quartz viens without removing tons of rock unneccessarily.

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Believe it or not this is high grade ore waiting to go through the mill for processing. The final processing is not done here on site but the ore concentrates are shipped to Nevada for the final gold extraction.

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Hope you enjoyed the tour.
Rick

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#2

Fascinating! Really interesting to see what a modern hard rock mine looks like. So many mines these days are just open pits.

#3

Kewl!

#4

Thanks for posting :slight_smile:
Ralph

#5

Interesting. Thanks for the pics Rick

#6

Very cool. Thanks for the pics.

-Kevin.

#7

Thanks!

#8

Nice. I’m looking forward to getting my version into “operation.” Just have to drink more soda! I ran out of siding yesterday!

#9

Soda rots your teeth. I use those disposable turkey or lasagna pans from the Dollar Store and just use the bottoms.

#10

Mine’s diet so it hasn’t been a problem. I’ll probably die from cancer but I’ll have my teeth!

#11

Neat little mine. Your explanations are right on. The opening is called a drift because it does not open to the daylight on the other end. A tunnel is open on both ends and that is the difference.

The vehicle you refered to as a skip is actually called an LHD (load-haul-dump). A skip is a bucket attached to cables that pulls the material from underground to the surface. The LHD would muck (haul material) a stope (room that is opened up with the ore in it) and haul the material to a bin and then the bin would load a skip to haul the material to the surface. This is used in a verticle shaft type mine. This mine looks like it has a “drive-in” type access.

The description of the ventilation system is correct Rick. The reason they use a reverse ventialtion system (sorry if thats not the right word, its been 10 years since I took ventilation class) is because in an emergency, air can still get into the mine and thus miners can still breeth. Also it is helpful for venting bad gasses. THe LHD is a diesel motor and puts out harmful gasses. You can push those gases out the main entrance better than you can suck them out the emergency shafts.

#12

A nice photo essay. Thanks.
The formal term for a horizontal passage from the surface into a mine is adit, whereas a drift is a horizontal or nearly horizontal underground opening usually driven along a vein. Jake is right that a tunnel has to be open at each end.

#13

I’m always amazed at all the new stuff about industrial operations I can learn on a train site. Thanks for the post Rick and to Jake and Art for the additional info.

#14

Jake & Art,

Thanks for the additional information, I think your right on all counts.
I would like to clarify however that.

The geologist giving us the look around referred to the loaders as “skips”
but being a geologist and not a “miner” he was probably confused:) :slight_smile:

The mine has at least two other openings to the outside world that they refer
to as emergency escapes. At least one of these openings is large, so does that
then indeed make this a tunnel? or still a adit?

That makes good sense about the “reverse” ventilation.

About 20 years ago a Canadian investment group reopened the old Reed Mine, another
gold rush era mine in this area and contracted with us to do the ventilation work.
First time I had ever been involved with mine ventilation and it was quite a learning curve.

The work we did was considered secondary ventilation. Basically what we did was install a
large duct run similar to what you see in the first picture with a high static pressure inline fan
to pump air about 500 feet down the adit. This pressurized the end of the mine and pushed
the air back up the length of the tunnel to the adit opening for discharge from the mine.

Glad we got our payment up front, in typical gold mine fashion they lasted less than a year.

One interesting thing is that while working there the super gave me a pineapple size chunk of
high grade ore that I later used as a crushed ore load on flat cars for my railroad.

Rick

#15

Nice post Rick. Thanks!

#16

No rick it would still be refered to as a Drift. Think tunnel in the terms of a railroad tunnel. Even though there is a other side that daylights it would still be refered to as a drift.

Us miners always refer to Geologists as Rock eaters. It comes from one test that a geologist will do to determine wither a rock is shale or siltstone (I think, cant remember so far back) they bite off a small piece and grind it between their teeth to determine the “sandiness” of the material. Thus, Rock Eater!!! :slight_smile:

#17

I’ve never been called a Rock Eater before, but that’s what I am, I guess, because I do distinguish between shale and siltstone by biting off a small piece, as you say, Jake, and grinding it between my teeth to determine its “sandiness.” Siltstone is gritty, shale is slippery. I also worked for a mineral and land surveyor in Arizona, whose job it was to survey mining claims for patent. My job was to describe everything there was to describe about every pit, open cut, adit, and monument on every claim for the patent application. It was fun work for a high school grad, and I saw some marvelous mining country before it was ultimately open pitted.

#18

Wow, another one I had forgotten about. This is kind of like a treasure hunt, finding these old threads then trying to find the pictures that match the story and matching them up.

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