Gold Panning

Sluice Box

Hydraulic Mining

A deposit that is not to deep can be worked by pick and shovel, but from ten feet to hundreds of feet deep have been worked by hydraulic pressure since the earliest days of mining history in the West. Outfits and companies often build immense reservoirs high up in the mountains, piping the water to the diggings for hydraulic purposes. In hydraulic mining a strong current of water is forced into the placer dislodging the sand and gravel, which is caught in a sluice-box.

The sluice-box was built of plain rough lumber like a trough with both ends left open. Slats, or riffles, which were blocks of wood, rails, poles, iron bars, and often sacking, matting, or hides with the hair up, were laid crosswise on the bottom of the sluice-box, being farther apart at the end of the box than at the beginning. The riffles caught the free gold.

Through the sieve in the end of the long tom the sand was forced into the sluice-box by a stream of water. As it passed by slight incline through the sluice-box, gold being slow of movement dragged back and dodged against the riffles.

Many of the old-timer knew very little of horn silver, chlorides, bromides, or bornites, and what he did know often did him very little good. On acount of the long hauls to Denver or Omaha, the cost of building the roads, and the high treatment charges, the ore had to be rich. Many were the hardships of these early prospectors in the Southwest. The minerals were not easy to get like placer ores of California, nor did they resemble the free-muilling quartz ores of Colorado, Montana, and Nevada. They are all smelting, or refractory ores, and the character of the mineral was different. They had to be assayed by fire, and often it was weeks after making a strike before the prospector found out it's value.

The ore is usually crushed and separated in floatation tanks first, then calcined (gives off noxious sulphur dioxide) before smelting with charcoal. This gives an alloy which may contain some or all of the following, lead, zinc, silver, gold, and cadmium. The latter are only ever present in tiny levels usually.

Early prospectors relied heavily on burros as they trekked long distances across the deserts in search of gold and silver. Many of these burros survived, even though their owners perished under the harsh desert conditions. Many more burros escaped or were released during the settlement of the West. Because of their hardiness, Wild Burros have thrived throughout the North American deserts, and their numbers have increased to perhaps 20,000.

Many miners and prospectors found they had a true friend they could talk to, palaver with and even complain to, as well as rely on for survival... a friend who was so loyal and hard working, so tough and so strong, and often so reciprocal that their relationship passed the bounds of simple friendship. Miners often became so attached to their burros that they frequently shared their flapjacks and biscuits with them. And in return, it was these same loyal friends who always seemed to make sure their owner's "necessities" somehow made it over the next hill - from camp to camp - day to day - month in and month out.

Perhaps it's the tenacious nature of burros... perhaps it's their appealing and loveable nature... perhaps it's their strength, their loyalty or their endurance... but one thing's for certain: more heartwarming stories have emerged from the mining days in the 1800's and early 1900's that feature a burro than perhaps any other animal.