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Photographer: Douglass Halvorsen
Taken: December 25, 2013
Caption: Long Toms
Additional Description: "Long Toms", with their extended water troughs, were more efficient in separating gold from gravel than gold pans and rockers. Six miners could process 500 buckets of gravel a day through the "Long Tom" - twenty times as much as with a gold pan. Supplied with a continuous stream of water, the men shoveled gravel into the device's upper end, while one man at the lower end stirred up the dirt as it washed down, separating and discarding the larger rocks. The heavier gold dust settled out behind the wooden riffles. Some Jacksonville miners added a perforated false bottom to double sort the gravels.

Chinese miners, who often re-worked abandoned gold claims, were rewarded for their hard work by finding gold that had been left behind by careless miners racing on looking for even richer diggings.
Submitted: January 18, 2018, by Douglass Halvorsen of Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Database Locator Identification Number: p412969
File Size: 0.584 Megabytes

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