Rich Underground Placer Gold Mine California

Rich Underground Placer Gold Mine California

This mine is in Placer County California and sits directly adjacent to some hydraulic workings. Because of this adits location it may have initially been struck as a drain tunnel, however, as you can see in the video there are in fact extensive underground workings of placer material.

What is left of the support timbers shows they were hand hewn. You can also notice in two places within the video the metal strips that were likely used in lieu of actual rail. The last three minutes of the video were sketchy as the sharp pieces of broken serpentinite (serpentine) were covered in a mixture of silt and decomposing wood soup.

Unfortunately, this adit ends in a collapse before making it to any larger ancient river gravels that are prominent in this area. There were areas of this mine I could not fully explore due to safety concerns. A second flooded adit was later found that likely ties into the flooded section of the adit shown on this video. This mine was likely worked after the ban of hydraulic placer mining in California in 1884.