found old chinese gold mines but not much else plus pics

[tinpan]

hey everyone ,started my easter break at lunch time.i went for a walk along a local creeks . i have never been to before.i didnt md but went to see what i could find.i found a couple of broken bottles and bits and pieces and these old chinese gold mines.

tinpan

 

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[tinpan]

morepics

 

[Bavaria Mike]

Must be some Chinese coins there somewhere! HH, Mike

 

[Gypsy Heart]

I would be hunting that site heavy...they had to miss something!!! Nice find!

 

[Southcacalaky]

Seems like you have some detecting to do, HH Art...

 

[gldhntr]

where there are chinese gold mines, there are chinese camps close, and very high chance of chinese gold caches in area........look hard........gldhntr

 

[Jeffro]

The Chinese didn't miss much, if anything, when they mined. The Americans back in the day wouldn't let them work fresh diggins. While the 1872 mining law says "Public lands are open to mineral exploration and claiming by American citizens or those who intend to become such" in practice, Chinese were discriminated against. They would be run off the claim if it was good diggins.

So they worked what they could, which was mostly poorer ground, or ground that had already been worked by others. The Chinese were forced to develop more efficient methods of mining, and subsequently were not apt to miss much. I have heard that gave rise to the saying, "A Chinaman's chance".

When they hit a good pocket, after cleaning it thoroughly, they would sometimes leave a coin or two where they found some good gold. Superstition, kharma? I dunno.... but I have found a few chinese coins in my days dredging.

Checking for their camp would be a good spot to metal detect, and also along the rows of cobblestones you will find in the area. Caches of gold are not uncommon in Chinese camps, remember they were persecuted pretty good. They had no idea when the camp might get raided and so tended to cache valuables frequently.

 

[trk5capt]

TINPAN, Looks Like A Great Site, Best of Luck & Good Hunting. trk5capt...

 

[tinpan]

hi every one, the chinese worked this area from 1855 to 1920 and their camp was to the right of the pics. this was more like a chinese town and in its hay day as many as 5000 chinese. after a few years many chinese moved too other old rushes.the chinese town was removed in 1942 to build a factory that made bombs for the war effort and still stands there today. cannot take pics of bomb factory could get in trouble.the chinese where very good at prospecting and left little gold behind. CHINESE TAKEWAY and thats what they did, took all the gold away.like in the states the chinese where treated badly and the gov made a whole lot of silly laws ,on what the chinese could or couldnot do.i never have much luck in old chinese diggings because they where very good at prospecting and i take my hat off to them
tinpan

 

[SHERMANVILLE ILLINOIS]

T,

interesting post, thanks for posting.

You would think there might be some
interesting dumps in the area.

Planning on going back?

have a good un.................

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI: As you say the were highly discriminated against, and forced off of any claim that was fairly good.
In California they finally hit back, heheh.

It seems that as usual they were only allowed to work claims that no-one else wanted. A group were working on just such a claim. in a communal effort. Each month at clean up time they sent a small bag of gold via the local Wells Fargo stage to the banks in Sacramento.

The other miners naturally kept a close eye upon this. As the production increased monthly, the Chinese were sending bigger bags of gold down to Sacramento. This was making the America miners uncomfortable, why should they have such a good claim. There was considerable grumbling and some of the rougher elements commenced to hassle the hard working Chinese in their camps. The Chinese never complained, just kept on working, and the shipments grew in size.

The size of the shipments finally grew so large that the greedy American miners tried to buy their claims, but the Chinese refused to sell, claiming that the properties were too poor. so the Americans commenced to physically abuse the Chinese and their families to force them to sell..

Finally the Chinese could no longer stand the abuse and agreed to sell the claims. Since the Claims were extensive, being supposedly useless ground, the overall price was high. The American miners decided to pool their capital in order to buy the Chinese claims. The Chinese kept insisting that the properties were every poor, but the miners knew better, having seen those bags of gold steadily increasing in size and amount each month as work progressed.

Finally the agreed amount of money etc was exchanged for the titles of the properties and the Chinese moved out overnight.

The miners then set up a lottery system according to the amount of money each had put into the pool. After things had cleared up, they started to work the claims and found that the Chinese had not lied, they were almost worthless .

Investigation showed that Chinese did indeed send a bag of gold each month to Sacramento, but it was never banked, just sent back to them, so they had just added the next months production to the previous amount until it had apparently reached a very high showing for a monthly production, when in fact, it was the result of months of hard work.

Vengeance is mine saith the LORD, but the Chinese had their on rules hehehee.

p.s. The Chinese were fanatical gamblers, so eventually one or more, ended up with large amounts of money which they hid, so look carefully around the old camps.

Till Eulenspiegle de la Mancha

 

[Nana40]

Looks like that could be a good site Tinpan! Good luck with it!

Nana

 

[gldhntr]

the thing about chinese gold miner camps is that the chinese were considered much as the american indian, '' expendable, disposable'' and were killed quite often for no other reason than their heritage, along with many other reasons.....most never used banks, except the kind you dig......buried caches, dead cachers = lost treasure !!!!.........gldhntr

 

[Ray-King]

Go for it Tinpan,
All the very best of luck with that site.!!!!
Ray.

 

[southbound]

Nice pics and great story.
Vern

 

[Dave N Japan]

Nice ...Makes me think when I was in Arizona and I panned a little for fun while I was home on leave.. The had the piles of rocks and sand near the creek that the old timmers there called China Tailings!
Anyway, good luck...No telling what you may find! Should be some old bottles around there too!