California Gold Production 1848-1995

[OwenT]

I was at the CA state mining and mineral museum in Mariposa (well worth the $4 btw) on Friday where I saw this graph of gold production by year and I was honestly blown away just looking at the first few years. Based on my limited knowledge and the graph, it seems like for those first few years there wasn’t much of any hydraulic or dredge mining so that means that a huge portion of the gold recovered in California was just with shovels, pans, and rockers/sluices. So either during the initial rush there was just an astronomical amount of gold seekers all finding their bit of gold, or they really were just picking nuggets from the rivers left and right. Probably both?

 

[mytimetoshine]

My family was camping (without me, had to work) last week in Jamestown near woods creek. They texted me that there was 150lb specimen taken out of the creek during the gold rush. They were blown away when I told them it still has nuggets to this day. They were about to dive in with shovels hahaha.

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/...-gold-nugget-in-tuolumne-county/103-315687554

 

[Denny45]

Were there any big nuggets on display there? Last time I was there earlier this year they didn't have any. Just little tiny specimens.

I think they were stolen or removed.

 

[OwenT]

The story is written exactly as Goldwasher first posted in the display at the museum.