Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: James King
Taken: January 25, 2014
Caption: Tailings Wheel #1 Information Sign
Additional Description: You are looking at Wheel #1. It is the first of four similar buildings in the photo. Wheel #2, which fell to the ground in 1970, is on the hilltop eighty feet behind this wheel. Access to Wheel #2 is from Jackson Gate Road. The wheels are all 58 feet in diameter and have 208 buckets. Each wheel lifted the tailings 42 feet in order to clear the two hills before depositing the tailings in the impound area. This wheel is being supported by cables. It was last restored in 1971-1973 and stabilized in 1995.

This tailing wheel system was built in 1914 to fulfill conditions of an agreement with county and valley agricultural interests to impound mining waste rather than allow it to flow onto farming lands below in the Dry Creek drainage area.
Submitted: February 3, 2014, by James King of San Miguel, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p265709
File Size: 4.582 Megabytes

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