California Gold Rush Stories: Becoming California

Today we think of nearby Beale Air Force Base as the home of high altitude spy planes and in-air refueling tankers, but in the days before we learned to fly our eyes were on the ground and gold lay all around where Beale would one day be built.

In the ravines that run off Albion Hill, behind today's housing area on the base, 49ers found gold lying on the surface. In Albion Ravine the hundreds of earth and rock dams built by those long gone miners still attest to their searches for riches.

Competition was more fierce than a Cold War as the miners struggled to reach and surpass their daily ounce of dust break-even point. To find less than the daily $15 ounce was called, in the language of the day, "Chinaman's Diggings" because only a thrifty oriental could live on the gleanings in a time when a potato cost a dollar.

There are still mounds of earth to be seen near the Beale AFB flight line, supposedly the result of digging by Chinese miners. Each small hill is said to be what one Chinese miner dug in a day, according to Peggy Bal, who explores the gold mining activity around what is now an air base in her book Pebbles in the Stream.

As was the case all over the Gold Country, surface gold mining soon went deeper with shafts and tunnels, stamp mills and a process imported from South America.

"An arrastre was a round trough built of stone or concrete,' Bal writes. "Ore was mixed with water and crushed by stones dragged by a mule or horse hitched to a wooden beam."

The resulting ore paste flowed out a small cut in the arrastre into a box where mercury was used to capture the gold. At the time the "rastras" were considered a better method than the ever-present stamp mills because they more thoroughly crushed the gold-bearing quartz ore.

Abandoned mine shafts on the base have caused at least one near catastrophe. In the mid forties a man on night maneuvers fell into a forty foot deep shaft filled with water. Hid buddies rescued him by dropping a long pole down the shaft that he used as a ladder to get out.

The occasional small nugget still can be found in the streams and pools near and on Beale Air Force Base.



	"Becoming California, a series that brings the California Gold Rush alive with the people who lived it."
	Air Base Once a Landing Place for Miners by Don Baumgart
	Today we think of nearby Beale Air Force Base as the home of high altitude spy planes and in-air refueling tankers, but in the days before we learned to fly our eyes were on the ground and gold lay all around where Beale would one day be built. In the ravines that run off Albion Hill, behind today's housing area on the base, 49ers found gold lying on the surface. In Albion Ravine the hundreds of earth and rock dams built by those long gone miners still attest to their searches for riches. Competition was more fierce than a Cold War as the miners struggled to reach and surpass their daily ounce of dust break-even point. To find less than the daily $15 ounce was called, in the language of the day, "Chinaman's Diggings" because only a thrifty oriental could live on the gleanings in a time when a potato cost a dollar. There are still mounds of earth to be seen near the Beale AFB flight line, supposedly the result of digging by Chinese miners. Each small hill is said to be what one Chinese miner dug in a day, according to Peggy Bal, who explores the gold mining activity around what is now an air base in her book Pebbles in the Stream. As was the case all over the Gold Country, surface gold mining soon went deeper with shafts and tunnels, stamp mills and a process imported from South America. "An arrastre was a round trough built of stone or concrete,' Bal writes. "Ore was mixed with water and crushed by stones dragged by a mule or horse hitched to a wooden beam." The resulting ore paste flowed out a small cut in the arrastre into a box where mercury was used to capture the gold. At the time the "rastras" were considered a better method than the ever-present stamp mills because they more thoroughly crushed the gold-bearing quartz ore. Abandoned mine shafts on the base have caused at least one near catastrophe. In the mid forties a man on night maneuvers fell into a forty foot deep shaft filled with water. Hid buddies rescued him by dropping a long pole down the shaft that he used as a ladder to get out. The occasional small nugget still can be found in the streams and pools near and on Beale Air Force Base. --------- Copyright Don Baumgart, 2007
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