Articles from the Historical Society in Josephine County Oregon

Hydraulic Region - Josephine County as a Hydraulic Region
by Michael Oaks

This section was always very adaptable to placer gold mining. Every stream and gulch contains gold. Even in the valleys, where the soil is rich, there is gold and the farmer and the miner worked side by side.

Beds of ancient channels are found along the rivers and streams. The gravels of these old channels compose the diggings of the hydraulic placer mines. These channels lie on the bedrock to a depth of from eight to two hundred feet.

On the bottom, next to the bedrock, are the boulders, the nuggets and the coarse gold. Above this are the finer gravel and the "pie clays" lying in stratums of blue and gray. Still above this is the layer or capping of red clay, which carries its values in fine or flour gold.

Placer mines required capital, skill and much labor. Long flumes to span deep gulches had to be built; many miles of ditches had to be constructed, reservoirs erected, thousands of feet of piping laid, and giants and other machinery set.

One giant could wash down more gravel in an hour than the pioneer, with his shovel and rocker, could do in weeks. During the placer mining hey-day of Josephine County it was usually considered that a giant mines $100 in gold each day it was operated. From $6,000 to $60,000 annually was realized around 1900 to 1904.

The deafening roar of the giant that once was commonplace in Josephine County has been silenced for many years but the scars on the landscape have been left forever.

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