A Trip to California in 1853

"If you will pick in the side of the mountain and stick your toes in so you will have a good foothold, and hold against my back with my shovel, and two of the other men, one on each side of me, fix their feet so they can lift me on their picks while I hold to the shelf, I will try and see how it looks above."

Two of our strongest men lifted him on their picks while I held against his back with the shovel until he was high enough to look above the shelf.

"The mountain," he said, "is not steep above here, and it is not far to the top, if we could only get over this shelf. Let me put one foot on one pick and the other foot on the other pick and you fellows lift me up as high as you can. Wash, you hold against my back and if I can get a little farther up, I can catch some brush and pull myself up over the shelf." They lifted and I held him to the shelf, while he climbed up over it. We reached him a shovel and a pick. He dug a good place in which to set his feet, and then reached the shovel over the bench, for one of the boys to catch hold. We lifted one of the boys, while Crawford pulled him up. We kept this process up until all were up but one. We left the lightest one to the last. He was down where he couldn't see any of us and he got scared and trembled and claimed that he did not believe he could hold to the shovel for us to draw him up. We dug holes to set our heels in and then held others by the feet so they could look down over the shelf and see and talk to him. He was pale and greatly frightened. I got some of the men to hold me by the feet while I encouraged him. I told him to take a good hold of the shovel and as soon as he came to where I was and got him by the arm, he could count himself safe. I don't believe that there ever was a white man or an Indian, who ever went up that mountain before, nor since the last man we got up.

About two miles from where we got on the top of the mountain, we came to a mining town, called Poor Man's Diggings. We could not get work there. We prospected for a few days, but could find no gold, although there were a good many good, paying claims belonging to other men. We left there and went to what was called American Valley, where a man struck a rich claim. This was called a rich claim, because it would pay one hundred dollars or over to the hand a day. We tried to hire out and work by the day, but they had all the hands they could work. Everywhere up north, they paid a man at least five dollars a day.

We left the American Valley country, which was on the headwaters of the Feather River, and struck for the Sacramento River Valley. We thought we might find work on a ranch.

We went down to Marysville. The Uba River enters the Sacramento below Marysville and the Feather River above. Farming was all done when we got down there, so we could not find work. We then struck for Sacramento City. As a fellow would say, we were getting "about strapped," that is, running short of money. We walked from Marysville to the American River bridge one night, about fifty miles. We ate breakfast there, walked twenty miles up the American River and about three o'clock that day, hired to work for the next morning at two dollars and seventy-five cents per day, and board ourselves. I worked for a man by the name of Stewart. I was to work two weeks, but I worked ten days.

We went from here back to Fair Play, from where we had started. We stayed there until November. The weather kept dry – had no rain, so Uncle Joshua came to us and wanted us to work for him on a ranch in the Sacramento Valley, above the city of Sacramento something like three hundred miles, between the towns of Tehama and Red Bluffs. We worked for him ten months at fifty dollars a month.

My brother got sick and went to the mountains and I worked one month for a man by the name of David Jorden and his partner, Joseph Moran, in a brick yard, for fifty dollars. When uncle paid us, and I received my pay for working at the brick yard, I went to my brother, sixty miles southeast of Sacramento, to a mining town called Volcano.

We remained in Volcano for about two weeks. We then went to Sacramento. From there we took a steamboat to San Francisco, where we stayed for two weeks. We then got on a steamship and sailed for Panama. We landed once at a town in Mexico, called Acapuco, to take on beef cattle. We were fourteen days on the way from San Francisco to Panama. We remained in Panama one night, and then took a train and crossed the isthmus by railroad, which was the first railroad train I ever saw.

The next day we arrived at Aspinwall, now called Colon, where we stayed until the next day, when we boarded a ship bound for New York. We were nine days on the way from Aspinwall, or Colon, to New York City. We then took a steamboat and went up the Hudson River to Albany, where we took a train to Buffalo; from there to Cleveland, Ohio; to Indianapolis, and then to LaFayette, Ind. I then went to my home in Fountain County, and later came to Cheney's Grove, Illinois, on horse back. I landed at Cheney's Grove on New Year's Day, 1856.

APPENDIX

The foregoing chapters conclude the excellent narrative concerning the remarkable trip of Mr. Bailey to California from 1853 to 1856. Mr. Bailey also kindly consented to give for publication in the LeRoy Journal, a description of the gold regions and the crude methods of mining practiced in that early day, which is placed in this volume as a brief appendix. His comments were as follows:

I will now give you a description of the gold region where gold was found, where I traveled and where I mined.

The McCosma River headed up toward the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains toward the northeast and runs a little southwest until it empties into the Sacramento River. Gold was found in what were called bars, that is, where rock, gravel and sand had lodged on either side, or across the river. Some of these bars would be very rich in gold.

There were, also, what were called gulches, running out from the river on either side. They often headed the valleys. These gulches ran out between mountains and when they headed pretty well up toward the top of a large mountain, that divided the rivers, into what were called ravines. All of these ravines would have gold in them. The bed rock would raise up on both sides and the lowest place in this bed rock, was called the lead. Some would be richer in gold than others, taking the name of rich lead or poor lead. Often there were places up on the sides of the mountains where the bed rock was almost bare, and in these places were cracks or seams down in the bed rock, where the gold would be found mixed with sand and dirt.

When the first miners came, they did not know how to save the gold and they had no tools to work with. They used their jackknives to dig the gold out of these crevises and carried it in their pans to where there was water and washed out the dirt and sand. When the miners had picks and shovels, they made rockers. They were made just like the rocking beds of the old fashioned kind to rock babies in, only one end was out, except about two inches at the bottom, for what they called a riffle, to lodge the gold against. They put another of these riffles up higher in the rocker for the same purpose. They made a box four square that set on top of this rocker with a sheet iron bottom with round holes punched in it to let the gold and sand through. They would then fill this box with pay dirt, dip water from the creek or river, and pour it in on the pay dirt with one hand and rock with the other. They would then gather up the gold and what little sand remained from behind the riffles, place it in their pans and wash it out, leaving nothing but the gold and some black sand.

Another plan used and a better and faster method, was to use what they called the long tom. This was made of plank on the sides about six feet long and three feet wide. The planks were cut curved on the lower end, so that the sheet iron with the holes in it, would turn upward. The upper end of the tom, was made of planks sawed sloping and drawn in until it was wide enough to lay their water hose in, which furnished the water for washing.

When they washed the gold with pans, they would throw all the top dirt away until they got down deep enough to find it sufficiently rich to pay, then they would pan out the rest of the dirt to the bed rock.

When we mined in California, we washed with sluice boxes, whenever we could get plenty of water. Sluice boxes were made by sawing the bottom board two inches narrower at one end than at the other so we could place the end of every box in the upper end of the next box. We had slats nailed across the top of the boxes to keep them from spreading. There were slats for riffles, two and a half or three inches wide, fitted down tight on the bottom, for the gold to lodge against. The gold, with the sand and dirt would then be removed and panned out as in the other methods mentioned above.