Lo Que Vi: Bear River

Low river levels in the Sierra from the drought are drawing people in search of gold. The section of the Bear River by Bear River Campground in Placer County is a popular spot, for access is easy, and anyone can bring a shovel and a bucket and a pan to this public land. The gravels, for the most part, were not here prior to the Gold Rush. They are what is known as Tertiary gravels, deposits from rivers that flowed in the ancestral Sierra some 25 million years ago. The miners quickly found these ancient riverbeds, many hundreds of feet above the present-day riverbeds, and took to them with giant hoses called monitors, and massive sluice boxes, for in these ancient gravels was gold, and lots of it. They washed away entire hillsides. Indeed, entire landscapes. The debris went into the modern riverbeds. Walls of gravel and mud made their way downstream, leaving an environmental catastrophe in their wake. Farmland and towns in the Sacramento Valley were flooded. Sediment affected navigation in San Pablo Bay and San Francisco Bay. A court decision in 1884 effectively put an end to this hydraulic mining.

I went to Bear River today to see what I could see. A handful of casual prospectors were about. The holes they dug in the gravels brought to mind photographs of France from the Great War. I had no gold panning gear, only a digital camera and a video camera. Shooting from a distance is no problem, but it's best to strike up a conversation and get permission before taking close shots of prospectors, for they tend be wary of strangers. I talked with a man digging in a large hole. He works the gravels of the Bear and Yuba and Feather rivers. He's never worked the North Fork American, so I told him about Stevens Trail and Euchre Bar Trail.

When the storms again come, the Bear will rise, mixing the gravels all about, and when the waters drop it will look like nobody had been here at all.