American Canyon, NV



This is American Canyon in NW Nevada. It was
an active placer mining area in the 1890's.



The canyon is full of these Chinese shafts to
bedrock.  They can be from 40 to 80 ft deep.
I spent some time detecting here and found
the tailing piles to have lots of square nails.



The Chinese would work in pairs one on top,
rocking a rocker and one down at the bottom,
 filling buckets. They say around 2-3000 Chinese
 worked in the area. Here we had to be very
careful, if any of us fell in it could
 really be bad news.



I don't think there would be any way to get out
if you fell into one of these.   Good chance it
would be all over anyway when you hit bottom.



They were all over the place. Wish I could travel
back in time and see the Chinese working here
long ago.



Another shaft.



I dug hundreds of targets but found little gold.



An old cabin up the canyon.



At the upper end of the canyon there's a large
mining operation going on.



They're moving lots of material up there with
some very large machinery. Note all the plastic
lines running back and forth and up and down.
I think this will be a leaching operation to get
that last bit of gold from the rock. This was a
very interesting place to visit,  just wish the
Gold Gal would of lowered me down into
one of those Chinese shafts. I know
there's more gold down there!


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