Includes: "The Historic Blue Ridge Flume of Shasta and Tehama Counties, California" and" Historical and Archaeological Investigations of the Horsetown Mining Complex, Shasta County, California."
Management responsibilities on public lands involve a diverse array of resources. Among these resources are vestiges of the post-contact period when exploration, trapping, gold mining, lumbering, homesteading, livestock ranching, railroad construction, agriculture and other aspects of historic life were undertaken by the Euroamericans, Chinese, Indians, and others. Relatively early in the historic period came the Gold Rush and the attendant need for lumber for various mining features. As mining waned and settlement expanded an even greater need for lumber arose, lumber mostly available in largely undeveloped tracts quite distant from population centers and economical transportation networks. Flumes temporarily helped overcome these logistical problems. In this regard these two papers are related, although they deal with features and locations not directly intertwined.
The first paper in this volume is an archaeological study of mining features with historic documentation. These features are located near the Gold Rush community of Horsetown in Shasta County. This study was precipitated by a modern-day miner's patent application under the 1872 Mining Law for a piece of public land thought to still contain mineral values. Historic mining activities and what seemed to be unique mining features were found here. As the Bureau of Land Management's local archaeologist it was my opinion that mapping and a brief historic study were in order. Such a study would also help the Bureau to define the historic record of mining on the property necessary for the patent application mineral report. The study resulting in the first paper was conducted cooperatively between BLM and archaeologist Trudy Vaughan of Coyote and Fox Enterprises of Redding, California.
The Blue Ridge Flume has been a largely forgotten enterprise of major proportions by late nineteenth century northern California standards. Traces of this flume were discovered in the mid 1980s by this writer during a field survey of newly acquired public lands in the vicinity of the mouth of Inks Creek in Tehama County. With my curiosity whetted, I sought more information on this enterprise's remnants, seeking its history and historical significance and believing that remnants of the flume retained public interpretive value as local trails are scheduled to be developed along portions of its course. Dottie Smith, a Shasta County historian and BLM volunteer gladly contributed her assistance to the Bureau in this study, resulting in the second paper in this volume.
These two papers are published here to bring the studies' results to a wide audience. By doing this, the publication represents a component of the Bureau's Heritage Education Program.