Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 3

Black Rock Desert

Well, here we are again, traveling from Winnemucca, NV, to Highway 395 north of Susanville, CA, and we’ve just made it to the west end of the Jungo Road where it intersects with NV S.R. 447 (formerly S.R. 34) just south of Gerlach. You’ve probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much recently. I'm not really sure why. Sometimes the work I do takes the writing right out of me, partly because I do enough writing many days that I'm totally done with that by the end of the day; also, I don't really have much time after work before I have to do dinner, then get ready for bed—at least if I want to get enough sleep, which I do want (I don't always succeed). Another thing contributing to the recent spate of sparse blogging—besides taking care of personal things that have been taking a lot out of my energy during my days off—is that my writing effort during the fall and winter months has been going toward writing bits of fiction (a novel?), which I've been working on intermittently during the last two years.

Anyway, all of that—work, trying to get enough sleep, personal issues, and writing fictional to non-fictional stories—has placed blogging low on the list.

Now I'll upload the photos for this post, and we'll go from there. Just like a real journey, we’ll see how far we get!

Smoke Creek Desert

At the end of the last post, we'd driven quickly through Gerlach and had reached the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert. I hadn't taken any photos while zipping through Gerlach, but I often stop, and I've even stayed overnight at least twice. So let's backtrack before moving on.

Gerlach is a small town that brags of several mottoes, including "Center of the Known Universe," "Where the Pavement Ends and the West Begins" and "The Time That Town Forgot." More can be seen on the town sign, above, or in this nicely enlarged version of the sign by the RGJ. As indicated by the sign, Gerlach is technically pronounced Grr-lack rather than the Grr-lock one hears so commonly these days. I shot these photos of Gerlach on a trip that FMOH and I took back in the spring of 2014. Like the June, 2018, trip that we—you and I—are reprising, he and I had just come into town from Winnemucca on the Jungo Road. We were bringing the motorcycle back from Nevada, mirroring this trip taking it out to Nevada.

While in town, we did the usual thing of stopping to eat at Bruno's Country Club, probably getting Bruno's Famous Homemade Ravioli. By 2014, Bruno was no longer making his ravs personally, so I don't think they were quite as authentic, nor were they quite as good.

Unlike many trips, this time we stopped at the bar for a couple beers; we weren't driving on that afternoon or evening, but were, rather, staying at Bruno's Motel. Bruno Selmi, the Basque owner of the cafe, bar, motel, and only gas station in town, died in May of 2017—he can be seen in the photo above the bar (the older man on the right).

After checking in to our room at the motel—and after duly going back to the bar to get a second room when the first smelled either of gas or dead mouse—we wandered out onto the far western edge of the Black Rock Desert, where we had a view somewhat atypical of most views of the desert. This section of the Black Rock is a section you don’t want to drive into: it’s usually muddy, and it’s very possible that you’ll get stuck. The getting stuck part typically happens at night when an unsuspecting traveler, one who is already out on the desert somewhere to the east, decides to get off the desert—and instead of driving to the usual take-out spot north of town, sets their sights on the lights of Gerlach and makes a beeline for town. The next thing our unsuspecting—or willfully ignorant—traveler knows, they are stuck, possibly axle deep, in the mud at the west end of the main section of the Black Rock Desert. Fortunately for them, they aren’t far from Bruno’s gas station. Maybe someone will risk a vehicle to come and pull them out!

It’s possible one could wend their way through the merely salty white section of desert to the pavement on the east edge of Gerlach, at least in the drier years, but I don’t recommend trying it. I personally know at least one person who tried this one night back in the 1980s; the getting stuck was epic.

The next morning after breakfast, FMOH and I headed west.

Now let’s get back to my June 2018 trip, which I was taking all by myself (cue pint-sized pity party). I had just made it to the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert and had taken the photo seen earlier and in my last post.

A ways farther down the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert, I pulled over for a quick examination of some tufa. There are many spots to see tufa domes, mounds, and hills along the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert; this mound, Hill 4081, was a new one to me.

I climbed up through the cheatgrass and scattered tansy-mustard tumbleweed and looked around. Here we’re looking off to the northeast, more or less back toward the Junction of C.R. 447 and the Smoke Creek Desert Road. The Granite Range, unsurprisingly underlain by granite, rises steeply beyond the distant Smoke Creek Desert playa. The foreground is green because...water. It’s a wet part of the basin, possibly because of the entry of perennial Smoke Creek into the desert just south of where we’re standing. It’s also more elevated than the playa, and covered with grass (at least cheat grass) and various scrub.

I love tufa mounds, so I stood looking around for a few minutes, taking lots of photos. This photo looks off more to the north. The distant bluish hills just right of the tufa dome are part of the Buffalo Hills, which are underlain by a pile of volcanic rocks.

More tufa! More volcanic rocks! The hills in shadow between the tufa masses are some volcanic flows forming the eastern foothills of Burro Mountain.

From this point on Hill 4081, I got back on the Smoke Creek Desert Road, went south a short distance, and then turned west on what Washoe County considers the continuation of the Smoke Creek Desert Road, and what Google Maps refers to as the Smoke Creek Road: a dirt road that heads west up Smoke Creek.

to be continued...

Google Maps location map.

Related Posts:
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 2
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1
Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur
Blue Mountain (2012)
Pulpit Rock (2012)
Smoke in the Black Rock & Smoke Creek Deserts (2102)
Where in the West: Black Rock Desert (2008)
Where in the West - June: A Second Look (2008)
Where in the West - June (2008)
Name That Place (2008)

Titus Canyon Road: A Little History and a Few Maps

Now that we've arrived at Red Pass, and we've even taken a little hike, let's stop, absorb the view, and reminisce a bit.

The view west from Red Pass.

My experience with Titus Canyon probably dates to the early or mid 1980s when I was working for Former Mining Company down in the Mojave Desert of California. At that time, my minerals exploration work consisted of operating and running reconnaissance and project work, the latter of which generally consists of geologic mapping, surface sampling (rocks, soils, stream sediments), an occasional geophysical survey or two, and drilling (back then, all the drilling I did as part of gold exploration and evaluation was RC drilling, see more here).

Over the years, I've used the road into and through Titus Canyon mostly to get from here to there by way of a more scenic passage, a route that runs close to the geology (sometimes within arms reach). This alternative course can't really be called a short cut because the main roads into the Mojave, 95 and 395, are usually more direct and almost always much faster. Because of Titus Canyon Road's relative inefficiency in getting me to my destination, I haven't driven it more than a handful of times over the past three-plus decades, and two out of those maybe 5 to 6 total times have been within the last ten years. Back in the day—when I took this out-of-the-way "short cut" mostly from Beatty, Nevada, to Baker, California, when I was likely heading for Baker (yikes!), Barstow, or Ridgecrest—I generally drove the road alone in a half-ton, 4WD Ford pickup truck with a regular cab and full length bed. (I may have driven the road once or twice with a field assistant as passenger...maybe.)

“Short cuts make long delays.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

My present-day impressions of the road and canyon are probably heavily biased by whatever state the road was in back then, and perhaps they are affected by the relatively long wheelbase of the truck I was driving. At least in my imperfect memory, Titus Canyon Road (the TCR) was largely untraveled back then, meaning that on the entire one-way trip (which, like I said or implied, I usually made as quickly as possible with very few stops because I was on my way to a destination still a few to several hours distant) I doubt that I saw as many as four vehicles—and I really don't remember seeing more than one or two. In other words, the TCR was a back road that few people knew about, or if they did, they didn't bother to use it. The road was only for true Death Valley or Saline Valley aficionados (the road to Saline Valley is a real 4WD road, one not to be scoffed at, while the TCR rarely requires 4WD, depending on one's vehicle and off-road skill level).

As you know if you've been reading my recent Death Valley blog series, the last time I went down the TCR was with MOH back in late February of this year. There were several vehicles parked at Leadfield when we arrived, and there were many more vehicles quite a ways behind us (I was driving relatively fast on the road, once again trying to make it through to reach a particular destination: the superbloom down near Badwater). I just don't recall the road being so heavily traveled back in the 80s, when I probably would have been on it mostly in December through May at the latest.

“I met one other fella' on the trail...”
– Ronald Swartley, 26 'spilling' miles to Death Valley, Am Motorcyclist (1978)

Note: I would personally hesitate to drive the road from mid May through sometime in October, November, or December (depending on the local weather) without a SPOT, which of course we didn't have back in the 80s. An equivalent type of safety backup back then might have been a car phone, although I personally had very poor luck with such a device in the late 80s down near the fairly populated (by Nevada standards) area of Victorville, Apple Valley, and (ugh!) Lucerne Valley (link to a great description of the seedy place at the Urban Dictionary; matches my remembrances of that sh**hole to a T).

My memories of the TCR center mostly around the awe-inspiring views from the heights of Red Pass and the incredible twisting, winding, and dropping of the road into the valley at Leadfield. The curves seemed tighter in a full length pickup than they do in a Jeep (or the current road is wider). My clearance over the rocks on the final steep pitch approaching Leadfield has always been fairly good, but I may have had to dodge them a little more assiduously back then (I wonder if the road was maintained as frequently?). Most recently, I've been surprised both times at the length of the first section of the trip, from the pavement of Nevada S.R. 374 to the apex of Red Pass. Oh, and of course the slot canyon near the end has always been fun. It's become quite a popular hiking area, something I don't really recall from earlier days, either. Another Note: the NPS say the Titus Canyon road is the most popular backroad in Death Valley National Park.

A cabin at Leadfield.

I regret, once again, that I haven't ever stopped to get a photo of the worst section of the road, the bedrocky part where you have to dodge a few rock masses sticking up out of the road in quite an inconvenient fashion, but I'm usually too busy driving...and dodging...and then it's over.

While doing a little research for this rambling post, I stumbled across a factoid previously unknown to me. As recently as 1978, Red Pass was known by some, including the National Park Service, as Bloody Gap—presumably because of the red color of the rocks rather anything because of anything nefarious in its history. I first noticed Bloody Gap being used in the caption of this old postcard [no longer available]. It was mentioned in this descriptive bit about Leadfield in Desert Magazine (1968), in this L.A. Times article (1969), and in this American Motorcyclist story (1978). The USGS, however, doesn't list Bloody Gap as an alternate name for Red Pass.

On my way to finding every mention of Bloody Gap that I could (including a few more links to selling old postcards on Ebay or what-have-you), I looked at old maps to find Bloody Gap, and also to see if another old name for part of the canyon, "Lost Canyon," was ever published.

By 1954, the TCR was shown as one way.

1954 Death Valley 1:250,000 sheet, courtesy USGS

And in 1961 and 1964, Titanothere Canyon was shown as "Titanother Canyon."

1961 Death Valley 1:250,000 sheet, courtesy USGS.

In 1985, the 30x60 Saline Valley map showed Titanothere Canyon (with an "e" at the end) and Red Pass. No Bloody Gap. No Lost Canyon. There was, however, quite a gap in map making between 1964 and 1985!

1985 Saline Valley 1:100,000 sheet, courtesy USGS.

For reference, here's a bit of the most current 7.5' topo map with everything as we know it today:

1988 Thimble Peak 1:24,000 map, courtesy USGS.

We'll be dropping from Red Pass into the eastern branch of Titus Canyon next time.

Related Posts:

Beatty: Old Buildings, A Fold, and Onward toward Titus Canyon

The Approach to Titus Canyon: Amargosa Narrows, Bullfrog Pit, and the Original Bullfrog Mine

Mineral Monday: Close-Ups of Bullfrog Ore from the Original Bullfrog Mine, Nevada

The Approach to Titus Canyon: Tan Mountain

The Approach to Titus Canyon: Up and over White Pass

The Approach to Titus Canyon: To Red Pass

The Approach to Titus Canyon: Just Below Red Pass

A Hike at Red Pass, Titus Canyon Road, Death Valley, CAcu

My Travels in 2013 (A Belated Travel Summary)

I apparently haven't participated in the Year of Travel Meme since 2010, possibly because I traveled back and forth across the same old roads in 2011, 2012, and 2013 -- or possibly I was just too busy at the holiday time of year to get that kind of blog post together. This year, Evelyn Mervine got her Year of Travel 2013 post up right at the end of the year; I'm getting mine up before the end of January, 2014. What follows is a brief summary.

January: Returned from a trip to Alaska.

Spruce on snow.

February: Visited Unionville, NV, in scenic Buena Vista Valley, stopping to take a photo of a cabin that purportedly once belonged to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).

Old cabin.

March: Visited Leach Hot Spring in Grass Valley, NV, and Kyle Hot Spring in Buena Vista Valley.

Leach Hot Springs.

At Kyle Hot Spring, looking across Buena Vista Valley toward Unionville.

April: Drove within sight of Wheeler Peak in eastern NV.

Wheeler Peak seen from Highway 50.

May: Drove by and contemplated the badlands near Rye Patch Dam several times.

Looking west from I-80 just south of Rye Patch Dam.

June: Drove several parts of old Highway 40 in Nevada, including this one near Humboldt House:

Old 40 looking northeast between Humboldt House and Imlay.

July: Crossed the Humboldt River, drove on the Applegate Trail past Haystack Butte, and visited Sulphur, NV, host to large piles of sulfur and scattered old junk.

Sulfur at Sulphur.

August: August was the month in which MOH and I rapidly toured parts of five western states. I blogged about the trip a little, but not as much as I hoped. Besides places already mentioned, we stopped briefly at the North Rim.

Distant view of the San Francisco volcanic field from the North Rim,
with the cherty Kaibab Limestone in the foreground.

After so much travel in August, I apparently didn't go anywhere until the last day of October.

November: Family matters took me to Alaska, where I took very few non-family-related photos.

Mt. Susitna. A little more about the "Sleeping Lady," as she is often called here,
and a bit about the Sleeping Lady brewpub here.

December: Another trip to points north.

Mt. St. Helens, Spirit Lake, and the Toutle River.

It is, perhaps, a little too late for this post to be considered part of a 2013 travel meme, but if you haven't posted a travel compilation for the year yet, feel free to take my cue and give yourself til the end of January!

Highways 8, 8A, and 8B

While already busy on the Tuscarora Loop series, which I hope won't be posted in too sporadic a fashion, I noticed that I'm practically living on old Highway 8A!! (How did I not notice this before now??)

Nevada state highways 8, 8A, and 8B used to be a semi-contiguous set of routes that ran from Tonopah to Austin (8A, now S.R. 376), Austin to Battle Mountain (8A, now S.R. 305), Winnemucca to McDermitt (8, now U.S. 95), Winnemucca to Paradise in Paradise Valley (8B, now S.R. 290), and all across northwest Nevada: from between Paradise Hill and Orovada to Denio on what is now S.R. 140, part of the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, and then from Denio or Denio Junction to the California state line near Vya, on what is partly S.R. 140 and mostly an unmarked but possibly still locally signed portion of 8A. This latter portion of 8A, located almost entirely in northern Washoe County, has not been numbered on state roadmaps since 1981.

1929 Nevada Highway Map,
with the first appearance of S.R. 8 and S.R. 8A.
1932 NV Highway Map,
with the first appearance of S.R. 8B.

Highway 8B is shown with varying lengths, sometimes not making it quite to the town of Paradise, sometimes making it to Paradise, and sometimes making it some undefined or variable short distance beyond Paradise.

1939 NV Highway Map,
the last year S.R. 8 was shown for what is now U.S. 95.
1967 NV Highway Map,
the last year S.R. 8A was shown for what is now S.R. 140.
1978-79 NV Highway Map,
showing old and new numbers for 8A, 8B, and 140.
1980-81 NV Highway Map, showing old and new numbers for
8A and 8B, but S.R. 140 is back to it's usual self.
1982 NV Highway Map: all the old numbers of our favorite
roads are gone, replaced by the new ones.
2011-2012 Nevada Highway Map,
the current map.

As far as the maps go, rather than just the highways, a few things are noteworthy: at least one Indian reservation has shrunk over the years, according to these maps, and "DANGER" areas (military bases or withdrawals), which were shown as zero on the 1929 map, have increased over the years, including an increase in the Fallon area on the 2011-2012 map as compared to the the 1982 map.

Oh, and the last time Winnemucca Lake was shown on these highway maps (instead of Winnemucca Dry Lake), was in 1940, though elsewhere it is said to have dried up in the 1930's, more specifically, by 1938. The lake dried up as a result of the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, specifically the building of Derby Dam in 1905, which diverted water from the Truckee River into the drainage of the Carson (to irrigate Fernley and Fallon). Additionally, at some point after the lake dried up, Mud Lake Slough, the spillover to Winnemucca Lake from Pyramid Lake, was blocked, reportedly by Highway 34, now S.R. 447, an assertion confirmed rather obliquely here in Note 29, giving no timeframe for the action.

Links to all Historical Nevada Highway Maps.

Early Morning View of the Midas Trough and Jake Creek Mountain

Just a quick post showing a photo I took about two weeks ago at 5:50 am, on my early morning ride to work. We're looking easterly at a broad, generally flat-topped sloping part of the southern Snowstorm Mountains. The entire mesa-like, gently north-dipping hill may be called Jake Creek Mountain, or perhaps only its highest peak, barely visible from this angle, is called Jake Creek Mountain. Part of the abrupt slope to the south is called the Owyhee Bluffs.

The low area immediately south (right) of the central flat-topped mesa or mountain is at least locally called the Midas Trough. Tectonically, the trough is a somewhat complex graben, sharp edged on its north and south sides, bounded by ENE-trending faults (MSRMaps topography showing the Midas Trough; also see this Google Maps image). References to the Midas Trough are mostly found in the gold exploration literature and on related company websites, but was referenced in the tectonic literature at least as early as 1980. I also found a Santa Fe Pacific Mining Company reference to the fault along the north edge of the Midas Trough, which was called the "Midas road fault," presumably because it more or less follows the graveled road to the tiny berg of Midas (the date on the map says 2005, but mapping was done in 1988-1991, and Santa Fe Pacific Gold was bought by the "Evil Empire," Newmont Mining, in 1997). I'll visit Midas (the town) someday, and report back about whether Kirby's Midas Bar is still in business, the way it was during the boom days of the 1980s.

North (left) of the mesa-like Jake Creek Mountain, the next low spot is referred to as the Jake Creek graben, at least in the report accompanying Santa Fe's map. Farther north, the next hill -- also part of the Snowstorm Mountains, which trend NNW parallel to the Northern Nevada Rift, even though its southern sub-parts trend ENE parallel to the Midas Trough -- is called Kelly Creek Mountain (or at least its high point is called that; I can't get on MSRMaps at the moment to check the old topos for names).

A couple references:
Laravie, J.A., 2005, Geologic Map of the Kelly Creek Area, Humboldt, Elko, and Lander Counties, Nevada: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Open-File Report 05-1 -- Text, Plate 1 with the Midas road fault, Plate 2, with a more readable map explanation.

Zoback, Mary Lou, and Zoback, Mark D., 1980, Faulting Patterns in North-Central Nevada and Strength of the Crust: Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 85, p. 275-284.


Location shown below is the west end of the Midas Trough.

De Re Metallica

A—Twig. B—Trench.

Prospecting by twig and trench, as shown in one of my favorite books, De Re Metallica by Agricola. Source of image: Wikimedia.

Therefore a miner, since we think he ought to be a good and serious man, should not make use of an enchanted twig, because if he is prudent and skilled in the natural signs, he understands that a forked stick is of no use to him, for as I have said before, there are the natural indications of the veins which he can see for himself without the help of twigs. So if Nature or chance should indicate a locality suitable for mining, the miner should dig his trenches there; if no vein appears he must dig numerous trenches until he discovers an outcrop of a vein.

For a miner must have the greatest skill in his work, that he may know first of all what mountain or hill, what valley or plain, can be prospected most profitably, or what he should leave alone; moreover, he must understand the veins, stringers[1] and seams in the rocks[2]. Then he must be thoroughly familiar with the many and varied species of earths, juices, gems, stones, marbles, rocks, metals, and compounds. He must also have a complete knowledge of the method of making all underground works. Lastly, there are the various systems of assaying substances and of preparing them for smelting; and here again there are many altogether diverse methods.

[1] Fibrae—"fibres." See Note 6, p. 70.

[2] Commissurae saxorum—"rock joints," "seams," or "cracks." Agricola and all of the old authors laid a wholly unwarranted geologic value on these phenomena. See description and footnotes, Book III., pages 43 and 72.

Quotes are from De Re Metallica at Project Gutenburg,
Book II and Book I, respectively.

Read De Re Metallica at Project Gutenburg.
Read De Re Metallica at Internet Archive.

This post has been submitted to Accretionary Wedge #43 at In the Company of Plants and Rocks.

UPDATE: Geologic Illustrations Galore -- Accretionary Wedge #43 is now up!

The Lincoln Highway: Quotes and Links

"The Lincoln Highway was built during the early 1900's as the country's first transcontinental highway. This now long overgrown dirt surfaced road passed through the Pony Express trail, down to Ely, then to Kimberly, across Jake's Valley to the Moorman Ranch, and followed the present US Highway 50 for several miles before passing through Hamilton. BHP has recently marked the old Lincoln Highway through their property that can be accessed just a mile or so before reaching their administration building off County Road 44 just past Ruth, NV. This section of the Lincoln Highway comes out at the Moorman Ranch."

Originally from: Interesting Places in White Pine County, now cached here. Moorman Ranch location: Google Street View.

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"Much of the road between Ely and Eureka was completely relocated northward during the early 1920s to follow the current alignment of US 50. As a result, an array of lonely places listed in the 1915 and 1916 Complete and Official Road Guide of the Lincoln Highway were absent from the 1924 edition, including Reipetown, Kimberly, White Pine Summit, and Six-Mile House."

From Lincoln Highway in Nevada, Chapter 16 of The Lincoln Highway Resource Guide.

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The Lincoln Highway
The Lincoln Highway Association
The Lincoln Highway across Eastern Nevada, 1924 map

Things You Find in the Field: Broken Fire Assay Crucible

When wandering out and about in the field sometime back in April, when the air still had quite a chill, and the snow had not completely gone, I came upon some bits and pieces of history: a few remains from fire assaying. This was a small site, not necessarily the location of an actual assay lab, maybe just a place where someone had dumped some miscellaneous debris.
Here's the biggest, most distinctive chunk I found: part of the bottom of a fire assay crucible, a crucible used in fire assay for gold and silver.
The inside has a thin coating of what was once fused ore and flux, now cooled to a greenish glass.
I think the bottom of the crucible holds a vague clue to the manufacturer of the crucible, and hence to its age, but not one I know how to decipher.

Fire assay / cupellation at Wikipedia - a fairly abbreviated description of the fire assay process.

What is Fire Assaying? - a more complete description.

A Textbook of fire assaying - by Edward Everett Bugbee, the classic and complete text on fire assaying. I used a 1933 edition of Bugbee when doing fire assays for my thesis.

Yuba Dredges No. 17 and 21

I read with great interest of Andrew Alden's visit two weekends ago to the Yuba Goldfields [dead link], where he saw Yuba Gold Dredge No. 17 in operation. UPDATE (29Oct2015): Unfortunately, Andrew's original post was eliminated by about.com, but his photo, and some info, still remains.

Yuba Dredge No. 17 was built in 1917 and was rebuilt twice, in the 1930's and in 2006. During it's first operating period, it shut down in 1966; it came back into operation in 2008. (The dredge did nothing for the two years from 2006 to 2008, it took two years to rebuild it, or is one of the dates incorrect?) It was described here (USBM, 1935, p. 4) as "the world's largest gold dredge."

The Yuba Goldfields on Google Earth

I visited the Yuba Goldfields back in 1981, when I went with a company engineer or oceanographer on evaluations of placer gold deposits and submittals. I was assigned this outreach project (outreach to another part of the company) by my boss, primarily because he thought it was a waste of time, because I was one of the most junior geologists around (going into my fourth year of exploration), and because it would give me a chance to learn something new (well, at least let's hope that last was one of his motivations!). I think we went to three prospects; the Yuba Goldfields in the Hammonton mining district of Yuba County, CA, on the Yuba River was probably our first stop. The property, a large one, was then being run by Yuba-Placer Gold Company. Gold was being recovered by reworking the extensive gravel fields, and sand and gravel products of various kinds were being produced.

Yuba Dredge No. 21 was in operation when I visited, despite several online histories stating that all dredges ceased operation in 1968. Dredging operations did end in '68, with Dredge No. 21 being the last dredge to shut down, but No. 21 was refurbished or reconstructed and placed back into operation sometime in 1981, where it was in operation at least through 1988. I don't know if it operated continuously from 1981, when the price of gold was going up, through 1988 and beyond into the early nineties when the parent company of Yuba-Placer Gold Company, Yuba Westgold Inc, filed for bankruptcy, but this article states that it shut down (the second time) in 1999. It sank in 2003.

While at the Yuba Goldfields in 1981, we were given a tour of Dredge No. 21. A tour of a dredge is basically a tour of a floating mill. The dredge was huge and loud, and it had low lighting except where daylight shone through openings in the outer frameworks.

There are several nice online views of the outside of a bucket-line dredges, including this QTVR at the Oakland Museum of California, and this YouTube video of Dredge No. 17, from Andrew's post. The YouTube video shows nice stills of No. 17, and toward the end has the sound of an operating dredge, a noisy ruckus that could reportedly be heard for 20 miles around.

The following video shows the interior workings of the Sumpter Valley (Oregon) Dredge on the Powder River, after an ad that can't be skipped.

[X:]

[This video is no longer available, although the original article is here, and a few photos can be seen here Instead, you can now buy Grant's Getaways: 101 Oregon Adventures, a book, no video.]

Video about the Sumpter Valley (Oregon) Dredge from Grant's Getaways, KGW.com, NewsChannel 8, Portland.
[/:X]

I no longer have photos from my long-ago tour of Dredge No. 21, but found some interior photos of dredges scattered online here and there, listed below.

Photos of bucket-line dredges:

• Sumpter Valley Dredge, Oregon
• Sumpter Valley Dredge Images, Oregon
• Pedro Gold Dredge, Chicken, Alaska
• Gold Dredge No. 8, Fairbanks, Alaska
• ElDorado Dredge, Beechwood and Ovens goldfields, Australia
• Warren Dredge, Idaho
• The Bucketline Dredges of the U.S., Canadian Yukon & New Zealand, a Flickr group

A Few More Links:
California - Gold, Geology & Prospecting California Gold: Hammonton (Yuba River) District, how much it produced through 1968.

Placer Gold Recovery Methods Pictures and descriptions of Dredge No. 21 on pages 23-25.

Yuba Dredges were built by Yuba Construction Company, later known as Yuba Manufacturing Company, later a subsidiary of Yuba Consolidated Goldfields. A little history of the company and its many dredges can be gleaned here through careful searching and scanning; see especially the Historical Note from pages 1-2. Numerous dredges are mentioned in the list of documents that follows.

Also see Hammonton and Marigold, a book by Robert and Ruth Criddle (2007), which can be previewed here on Google Books and here on Amazon.com).

most recently updated on 6Nov2015

Deep Time

Deep time, geologic time, and the geologic time scale are intertwined concepts relating to the age of the earth, the long epochs, periods, eras, and eons of earth time, a time that is so long compared to our ordinary, everyday time, or even to historic time, that it took some number of years for it to be recognized. We in the west were formally introduced to geologic time by James Hutton, the father of geology. In Theory of Earth, published in 1788, he said:

For having, in the natural history of this earth, seen a succession of worlds, we may conclude that there is a system in nature; in like manner as, from seeing revolutions of the planets, it is concluded, that there is a system by which they are intended to continue those revolutions. But if the succession of worlds is established in the system of nature, it is in vain to look for anything higher in the origin of the earth. The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.

The Persian polymath, Avicenna, had come to a similar conclusion more than 700 years before Hutton:

Either they [mountains] are the effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft, some hard... It would require a long period of time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. [quoted by Toulmin and Goodfield, 1965]

John McPhee took us a little deeper in 1981, when he introduced the phrase "deep time" as a proxy for geologic time in his book Basin and Range. Prior to that, geologic time was the realm of geologists; since then, deep time has become a part of our everyday vocabulary. John McPhee, in essence, gave geologic time to non-geologists.

As a geologist, I've studied geologic time at least since high school, when I took Earth Science as an elective, extra science. I knew of geologic time prior to that, going back possibly into my early or middle childhood, when I became fascinated with rocks, minerals, volcanoes, trilobites, and dinosaurs, and when I probably learned some of the names of the geologic time periods and eras, such as Cretaceous. (Wikipedia shows the ages, epochs, periods, eras, eons, and supereons of the earth better than the geologic time scale linked to earlier; also see the ICS Geologic Time Scale). Did I understand the vast amount of time involved between trilobites and dinosaurs? I don't know.

I do know that thinking in terms of geologic time has become somewhat commonplace for me, and it seems to be primarily a matter of numbers and scale, and something that I visualize. My life fits inside a linear view, which runs from left to right in front of me: my birth being to the left, today being right in front of me, and my imagined latest years, even somewhat beyond likelihood, being to the right. When I think of history going back to the time change from B.C. to A.D., 1 A.D. is on the left, and everything else is relatively squished as it approaches today, which is still right in front of me. So, what about the 2 million years or so of Pleistocene glacial and interglacial intervals? Now, I've placed the beginning of the Pleistocene over to the left, our general time or the last century is right in front of me. At this point, I can't help but look farther left, beyond the beginning of the Pleistocene, where I can easily see the entire Tertiary back to 65 million years ago.

If I think of all of geologic time — the time frame during which the Earth existed, the last 4.6 billion years — things get even more squished on the end towards our current time, and I've often at this point managed to seat myself firmly in the early Paleozoic, Cambrian maybe, about 600 million years ago. The Precambrian is off to the left, and everything else off to the right. Sometimes I look at this sliding geologic time scale from the end of the Paleozoic, toward the Mesozoic, knowing (even though the Paleozoic rocks and fossils didn't know) that dinosaurs and the massive intrusions of the Sierra Nevada will be coming along as geologic time progresses.

And so, viewing all of geologic time, or particular parts of geologic time, requires me to slide my view to the right and left — or to slide time itself — while expanding or contracting the detail of the time frame, depending on what I want to look at. And when I'm reading about a particular time — whether historic, pre-historic, or geologic — the view often shifts until that the particular time is right in front of me, with time after that, including present time, over to the right.

Another thing I find myself doing when trying to view geologic time — and possibly this happens because I've read so many science fiction books set in countless future timelines — is to include future histories and future geologic time frames in my view, way off to the right. I do this when thinking about the future of the Earth, Solar System, and Universe, and also when thinking about things happening on Voyager in the 24th century (Star Trek timeline), or on the planet Path (Ender’s Universe). Often, this future time looks dark, with a lot of scattered stars and star systems. Or, once again, if I'm reading or watching books or movies set in these future timelines, that present is right in front of me, and our current present — their past — is to the left.

Some time ago, I read In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee. Early in the book, he gets into a description of deep time, based in part on what John McPhee said in Basin and Range:

McPhee meant the term to refer to the immense intervals, measured in millions of years, disccussed as if they were days or weeks in the conversation of geologists: yet in reality, the intervals of geological time are too long to be readily comprehensible to minds used to thinking in terms of days, weeks and years--decades, at most.

He goes on, after showing a standard geological time chart:

But apart from telling you that Deep Time is long, conventional accounts never consider the implications of the scale of Deep Time on the way we think about evolution [I extrapolate, here, to include other geological occurrences and events]. If, as McPhee says, Deep Time implies intervals more or less incomprehensible to humans, we are entitled to ask whether it is valid to tell stories about evolution according to the conventions of narrative or drama. If it is not, then every story we tell in which causes are linked with effects, and ancestors are linked with descendants, becomes questionable: we can no longer use Deep Time as a backdrop for the stories we tell ourselves about evolution, and how and why we came to be who we are.

Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong. It is wrong because we want to think of the history of life as a story; but that is precisely what we cannot do. This tension--between Deep Time and the everyday scale of time--is the theme of this book. – Gee, In Search of Deep Time, Introduction

I didn't really find or feel much of that tension when reading his book, and was really looking forward to reading something deeper about deep time. The book, instead, is primarily about certain mechanical aspects of evolution (cladistics), which are really beyond me as a hard rocker, but which were nevertheless fascinating. I can't really comment as to their usefulness, but can refer you to this New York Times review of the book. As a geologist, I disagree that geologic time intervals are too immense to be comprehended. Perhaps it's a conceit for me to think so. Perhaps it's as McPhee says:

Geologists, dealing always with deep time, find that it seeps into their beings and affects them in various ways. ... In geologists' own lives, the least effect of time is that they think in two languages, function on two different scales. – McPhee, Basin and Range

Now, as an aside, I'd like to take deep time in literature farther back than John McPhee, to the "deeps of time" of J.R.R. Tokien.

Quotes from Tolkien on the deeps of time:
Out of the shadows the hobbits peeped, gazing back down the slope: little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn. – The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 3 [quoted here]

In this elvish sheath dwells the Blade that was Broken and has been made again. Telchar first wrought it in the deeps of time. – The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 6 [referenced here]

And She that walked in the darkness had heard the Elves cry that cry far back in the deeps of time, and she had not heeded it, and it did not daunt her now. – The Two Towers, Book IV, Chapter 9

As it drew near the great furnaces where, in the deeps of time, it had been shaped and forged, the Ring's power grew, and it became more fell, untamable save by some mighty will. – The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 1 [quoted here]

A Few References:
Al-Rawi, M.M., and Al-Hassani, Salim, 2002, The Contribution of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) to the development of Earth Sciences: Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, Publication 4039, 12 p.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina), c 1014-1027, The Book of Healing: editions of the Arabic text were published in Cairo, 1952-83, originally under the supervision of I. Madkour (list of works).

Gee, Henry, 1999, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life: The Free Press, New York, N.Y., 267 p.

Hutton, J., 1788, Theory of the Earth: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. I, Part II, pp.209-304, plates I and II. Hutton's work is available online in several places (Univ Wisconsin, 1788 version with link to 1785 abstract, Project Gutenberg, 1795 version) and also for sale at Amazon.com.

McPhee, John, 1981, Basin and Range: Farrar; Straus & Giroux, New York.

Toulmin, Stephen, and Goodfield, June, 1965, The Discovery of Time. New York: Harper & Row. [Reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977, 1982.]

More Reading:
Mapping Deep Time (deep time, geologic time, and Hutton)
The "Army of Caterpillars" Tracked Down (Hutton and Dutton)

NOTE: You can now, starting today, follow @GeologicTime on Twitter to find out, "What would 4.6 billion years of Earth history look like [when] represented by one year's worth of tweets?" I suspect that @GeologicTime will be quite busy during the latter months of the year! Read a little more about that project here.

Related Post: Links: Deep Time and Time

Backroads: A Brief Stop in Ophir, NV

After driving up the lower part of Ophir Canyon, we finally came within sight of the ghost town of Ophir at almost 4:00 pm. MOH immediately jumped out of the truck to take photos of the old buildings, and I found a pullout for the truck
This must be one of the most photographed cabins in Ophir: it's the first one you come to from the downhill side, and it's right along the road. In fact, all the buildings we saw were right on the road, because we didn't take the time to walk around. There are, however, enough buildings, partial buildings, and old ruins that real exploration would take at least an entire day. (MSRMaps location; Google Maps route).
This multi-room sturcture is right on the road, not far past the first one.
We duly photographed the magnificent stonework, from several angles. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]
At least two sites report this as an old store front. After milling around outside a bit, we went inside.
I was fascinated by the rocks the walls were made of, especially this weakly foliated granitic rock. There are several granitic plutons in the region, including a small stock that crops out near the head of Ophir Canyon. Details about the various granitic rocks were hard to come by online, with suggested ages ranging from Jurassic to early Tertiary. The dark greenish gray slaty phyllite could be from one of several Paleozoic formations (see map below).

From the Geologic map of the Tonopah 1 degree by 2 degrees quadrangle, central Nevada by Whitebread and John (1992).

EXPLANATION (in part):

• TKg = Tertiary or Cretaceous granitic rocks
• Kd = Cretaceous dioritic rocks
• Kg = Cretaceous granitic rocks
• Mzg = Mesozoic granitic rocks
• Pd = Permian Diablo Formation
• PMp = ?? This is probably the Mississippian to Permian Pablo Formation, which was listed in the map explanation as Mp.
• DCsv = Cambrian to Devonian sedimentary and volcanic rocks

The main part of the Ophir mining district, including the Murphy Mine, which was the major silver-gold producer of the district back in its day, is in that structural mess where a couple north-south-trending thrust faults are shown.

The mines in Ophir Canyon are commonly listed as being part of the larger Twin River mining district, and the town of Ophir was once called Toiyabe City. Although almost all online references state that the Murphy Mine (or the entire Ophir Canyon district, or even the entire Twin River district) produced $2 million worth of silver and gold, Kleinhampl and Ziony (1984) report a much lower figure, something closer to $800,000 for the entire Twin River district. Most of the gold and silver production came from Ophir Canyon; most of that came from the Murphy Mine.
Back inside the stone store: While I looked at the rocks, MOH examined the walls and construction, noting the whitewashed plaster still left in a few places. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]
He also was intrigued by the rock and brick work near this door, with a piece of old stovepipe still remaining in a hole through the brick chimney. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]
And in this corner, you can see some remaining interior plaster, and also the rafters for the former roof. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]
Meanwhile, the sun was getting incrementally lower, and I was looking up the canyon, thinking about moving on.
This may be the largest structure in the old town of Ophir, again, right along the road. It's the remains of the old 20 stamp mill, located just below a large mass of mine dumps.
Here's another view of the old mill, this time looking back towards the east.
Part of the Toquima Range through old windows (I presume) in the Ophir Canyon mill.
At last, after less than 15 minutes according to the time-date stamp on my photos, it was time to head up the canyon.

A Few References:
Angel , Myron, 1881, History of Nye County, Chapter L in History of Nevada: Thompson and West, Oakland, California.

Kleinhampl, F.J., and Ziony, J.I., 1984, Mineral resources of northern Nye County, Nevada,: Nevada Bur Mines and Geology, Bulletin 99B. NBMG Bulletin 99B [first pages only].

Whitebread, D.H. and John, D.A., 1992, Geologic map of the Tonopah 1 degree by 2 degrees quadrangle, central Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey, Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-1877-A, scale 1:250000.

More About Ophir:
Ghost Towns: Ophir

Ghost Town Explorers: Ophir Canyon AKA Toiyabe City AKA Twin River, NV

Ghost Town Seekers: Ophir Canyon and the Murphy Mill!


Nevada Ghost Towns: Ophir Canyon Photos (historic), Page 2, Page 3

Nevada Landmarks: Ophir: Historical Marker 64

Nevada SHPO: Ophir: Nevada Historical Marker 64