The La Grange Mine

All that’s left of it now are scarred hillsides, and huge mounds of low-grade gravel called tailings; waste-rock left over from the process of extracting valuable ore from its surrounding soil. But at one time, the La Grange gold mine was the largest hydraulic mine in California, processing more than 100 million yards of gravel to produce $3.5 million in gold. 

After the initial gold discovery at Coloma in January 1848, treasure seekers spread out in all directions, looking for new gold fields. Pioneer settler Pierson Reading, who owned a ranch in what later became Shasta County, found gold along the Trinity River, in almost entirely mountainous topography. Undeterred by the daunting terrain, others established the settlements of Big Bar and Big Flat the following year.

In 1850, when California was admitted as the 31st state of the Union, Trinity was one of its original 27 counties. In the summer of 1850 Weaverville, founded in the county’s eastern regions at the foot of the Trinity Alps Wilderness, was designated the county seat.

Hydraulic mining (initially a variation on the technique of ground-sluicing) began in 1853, in Nevada County; a system in which water traveled through miles of man-made flumes to a site where it rushed through canvas hoses, and spurted from metal nozzles at high pressure, blasting away tons of dirt to expose hidden gold deposits. Around 1862, in Trinity County, a mine four miles west of Weaverville in an area then known as Oregon Gulch, adopted the method. Hydraulic mining required vast amounts of water, so in 1873 a group of miners formed the Weaverville Ditch and Hydraulic Mining Company. Six years after that, the Trinity Gold Mining Company acquired the mining property.

In 1892 the French baron Ernest de La Grange purchased the mine at Oregon Gulch and its holding companies, paying $250,000, and changing the name to the La Grange Hydraulic Gold Mining Company.

Over time the nozzles, called monitors, had grown bigger . . . and bigger . . . and more powerful. In 1870 the first “Giants” were introduced in Trinity County: huge, canon-like, high-pressure monitors up to 16-18 feet long—big enough for more than one man to sit on at the same time, yet easily maneuverable—and with the capacity to blast water hundreds of feet. Knowing he needed to increase the water supply to run three hydraulic monitors simultaneously, Baron La Grange brought water from Stuart’s Fork 29 miles away, though a system of siphons, ditches, tunnels, and flumes.

Between 1893 and 1915, the La Grange mine was the largest hydraulic mine operation in California, and by the early 20th century one of the largest gold mines in the world. Sadly, the driving force behind this success died too young. Ernest de La Grange drowned on August 23, 1899, aged 44, at his family home in France. His wife Clémentine, from the start of the couple's California venture a hands-on partner, ran the business until rising costs at the end of World War I prompted the mine’s closure in August, 1918.