All is rust
Bits and pieces from Empire Mine State Park in Grass Valley.
Farmhouse revisited
I’ve visited Anderson Marsh State Historic Park a few times now, usually during our springtime visits to Clear Lake. The park is located just off Highway 53 near the city of Clearlake. The old farmhouse was once part of a working ranch, and during normal times is often the scene of historic re-enactments and other events. Even though it was […]
Wheels
My entry for Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge this week.
The Adventure Continues… Big Things in the Desert
This week’s episode of California’s Gold sees Huell visiting two locations in the Mojave desert that are connected to both the past and the future. The history of borax mining in California goes back to the 1880s and the 20-mule teams of Death Valley (although, interestingly, the site of California’s first borax production was Clear Lake). But long after the […]
Gold dredger history
Back in the middle of last November I published a post about gold dredgers in Yuba County — but it wasn’t too many decades past that we had dredgers operating on the lower American River, including the area of what is now Lake Natoma. Along the river’s course, anywhere you find heaping piles of rounded cobble laid out in long […]
Heavy metal
Sewing is fun with a Singer
Through the wringer
All my life I’ve heard the expression of putting someone “through the wringer,” and while I knew what it meant and where it originated, I’ve never actually seen a clothes wringer in action. For several decades, wringers were standard equipment on washing machines, but the only place I had ever seen one was on the miniature red plastic washing machine […]
A blast from the past
A few days ago in a post, I mentioned that I wondered if the Orangevale Palisades had ever been the site of hydraulic gold mining. I’m now a bit embarassed to admit I must have at one time known the answer to that question and completely forgot. The information was right under my nose, posted clearly on a sign beside […]