 Gold Country |  Malakoff Home |
Who the first men were to mine this region is not known for certain, but legend has it that
among the earliest were members of Stevenson’s Regiment who chanced upon the diggings in 1848.
They found the placers exceedingly rich, averaging $100 a day per man, with some spots yielding
up to $500. The claims in Soldiers Gulch were paying so well that no one took the time off from
mining to build any kind of permanent shelter. So when the first snows began to fly, most of the
men packed up their gear and headed for friendlier climes.A few of the soldiers; however, decided to dig in for the winter, undoubtedly hoping to
continue working the rich placers and build up their stakes. But the winter proved cruel, and
without substantial shelter from the storm or adequate supplies, the soldiers perished. Their
bodies weren’t discovered until several years afterward, at which time they were buried on
Graveyard Hill.With the melting of the snows and the opening of the trails, it wasn’t long before the
diggings at Soldiers Gulch were once again jumping. An immigrant named Jacob Cook came upon the
valley in 1849, which he described as “a natural beauty spot, covered with leafy white oaks of
immense size, and carpeted with grass, three to five feet high, having the appearance of an old
English park.” While the miners may not have noticed the natural beauty of the spot, blinded by
their search for gold, they did notice the strange, burnt-looking rock formations and the fact
that the camp seemed to be located in the crater of a huge volcano. Someone dubbed the place
Volcano and the name stuck.The surface gravels paid handsomely, and to the miners’ surprise, the claims seemed to get
richer the deeper they went. Men picked out large nuggets with only their fingers as tools; the
diggings were easy. Until they hit a layer of disquieting yellow clay. Sure, there was gold in
the clay, but it was almost impossible to get out. Discouraged, several claims were abandoned
which later turned out to be worth fortunes when methods of separating the gold from the clay
were discovered. Boiling was found to disintegrate the clay, so boilers were built to steam out
the gold. Another method was to let the clay dry in the sun, afterwhich it was an easy matter to
pound it to dust and extract the gold. One miner is reported to have taken out $8,000 in only a
few days, another took out twenty-eight pounds from a single pocket. With returns like these,
it’s easy to see how the region produced the $90 million credited to this area.Volcano was an election precinct as early as 1849 and within two years a post office had been
established. The town really came into its own in 1852; however, when the Volcano cutoff off the
Carson Route was completed. John Doble relates in his diary, “The Emigration is coming in rapidly
at the rates of 10 to 20 waggons a day & every two or 3 waggons a family sometimes two or
three...Many of them are stopping here & going to Mining so our town is now quite lively.” Before
the year was out, some three hundred clapboard and pine houses were scattered about the
hillsides, and the population was nearing two thousand. The following year Doble reports,
“...There is now in this Town Eleven stores 1 Restaurant 3 Bakeries 6 Hotels 3 private Boarding
Houses & 3 Bars & Gambling Houses one of the Bars is in an Apothecaries shop which leaves only
two Gambling Houses.”The town was becoming quite civilized; as early as 1850, Robert Beth attempted to bring about
a public library but his efforts didn’t amount to much. In the autumn of 1854; however, the
“Miners’ Library Association” was formed. Admission fees were $1 and monthly dues 25 cents. This
entitled members to participate in weekly meetings, where social, political, and scientific
questions were heartily debated. When $100 had been collected, a list of books were ordered and a
significant library formed. After three or four months, the weekly meetings began to lose their
interest and a rumor began circulating that the society was finished. This prompted a wild grab
for the books and the Library Association dissolved a day or two later. The year 1854 also saw
the organization of a Masonic lodge in Volcano, which held their first five meetings in a cave.When the easily mined placers of Soldiers Gulch began to give out, hydraulic mining came into
favor, enabling the town to continue to thrive and prosper. Ironically, the destructive forces of
this form of mining, which tore the soil away from the bedrock and sent the paydirt running
through the sluices, almost wiped out the town. Many of the buildings were undermined; dirt,
sludge and debris washed into homes and gardens, and the town was in danger of being swept away
in the miner’s hydrophilic quest for gold. A good illustration of the amount of land washed away
is the St. George Hotel. Seemingly located on the outskirts of town today, old photos show it
originally being near the center of the community.By 1865, most of the gold was gone, and so were most of the people. Volcano had suffered its
share of fires over the years, and in 1868 the problem seemed epidemic. Property values had been
dropping steadily since the end of the Civil War, but many of the businesses were heavily insured
from earlier, more prosperous times. Numerous fires broke out that year, prompting a rumor that
the property owners may have had something to do with them. The buildings which burned were not
rebuilt, the owners simply left and the town slowly settled down to a more prosaic way of life
that it still experiences today.
Gold Country | Malakoff Home |