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Subject: Discovery of Gold in Yolo County, California in 1859
Date: 15 Sep 2004 12:40:32 -0600

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The following history of gold discovery in Yolo County, California, is an excerpt from “The Western Shore Gazetteer and Commercial Directory, For the State of California…, Yolo County,” compiled and published annually by C. P. Sprague & H. W. Atwell, Woodland, Yolo County, 1870, pp. 32-33.

Discovery of Gold in Yolo County, California in 1859

“…In November or December of this year (1859), some parties discovered gold in considerable quantities in several gulches emptying into Putah Creek, in the southwest part of the county. A sufficient supply of water could not be obtained to work the mines to advantage, and not sufficient to work them at all, except whilst it was raining. There is no stream that can be conducted to the head of these gulches and made available for washing gold there found. After the discovery, miners from different parts came to the newly-discovered gold-field, and found the gold in such quantities as to afford them very fair wages – sometimes making as high as eight dollars per day with the old-fashioned rocker. Several hundred miners congregated there with their equipage, and remained until the rains of that season had ceased. No attention had been paid to the workings of the mines there since, yet, it is almost certain that, if means could be devised by which wat!
er could be obtained without great expense, in sufficient quantities to wash the earth by means of sluices or hydraulic power, as it is called, large fortunes might be taken from these ravines.”

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