
The California Gold Rush
In Our Time
00:00
The Early Days of Placer Mining
In the early days, mining was done by individuals with a wash basin and a sieve. As time progresses, they begin to alter the course of rivers. They put up dams, create flumes and so on. And you get a kind of river mining is what emerges. That gradually evolves into hydraulic mining when they're using water to wash away hillsides. When that isn't sufficient, they start to conduct what's called quartz mining. So they're extracting ore and then using quicksilver or mercury to extract the gold from it.
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