January 9 (1977, 1979, 2001) Hayden Hill Mine

Toyon or ”Christmas Berry”
(Heteromeles arbutifolia)
January 9, 2001

“1/9/77 ~ sunset, sunday, winter. [...] yesterday i felt that i have overdone the angular complexity of my cabin, that it comes off too busy. very visual. how to ‘feminize’ it? whether to panel diagonally as planned on the interior walls? remove the x-brace between the rafters to open up the space more? i'm realizing i don't have to rush my cabin.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“1/9/79  A curious coincidence ~ rode down to Auburn with Jon and Melody ~ we had found a book in Colfax with pictures of the old mining camps. On one page was a picture taken from Casa Loma in 1867 showing the railroad cut in the foreground and Green Valley below. I was quick to note that the hydraulicking of Hayden Hill across the canyon had not begun.

The next day (yesterday) I went down to Auburn again and picked up an old man hitching rides. As it turned out, he had been mining gold on Hayden Hill ten or fifteen years ago. It was his cabin that Steve & Jerry & I found up there last summer.

It's supposed to snow to low elevations tomorrow. [...]

! haven't been writing on my [“Polar Zonohedra”] book lately at all. Skiing has been too tantalizing.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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Topo map section showing the location of Hayden Hill (above
the "NAT" of Tahoe National Forest)
Click to enlarge

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The following snippet from an unidentified source, found on Russell's computer, contains a very interesting reference about Chinese miners working at Hayden Hill:

7. Weimar resident F.A. Partridge credited Chinese with establishing hydraulic mining. “It has been my impression that the first hydraulic mine was at Hayden Hill, on the Foresthill divide, and that it was done by a group of Chinese miners,” he wrote. “They had been working in Canyon Creek, on the other side of the river, and had been operating by ground sluicing. After much trouble with the white miners in this district, they moved to Hayden Hill. Ground sluicing did not work there, because of the difficulty of getting the water high enough, so they put in a head-gate in their ditch and carried the water under pressure in a hose to the foot of the gravel. This hose was made from sails from ships lying in ‘Frisco,’ and the nozzle was handcarved from wood. They later sold out to a syndicate....”

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