How did they mine at the California gold rush?

Answer 1

There were several methods to mine for gold. The easiest way was to look for gold in the rivers. This was done through panning for gold, using a sluce box ( this is a box where dirt is shoveled into and then washed out with water. The gold is heavier than dirt so it would fall away from the dirt) and using a rocker. This is the same idea as the sluce box but it rocks. The next method was to mine for the ore. This required digging a mine and looking for a vein. Finally, hydronic mining. This is literally washing away whole mountainsides with a powerful water hoses. This does a lot of damage to the enviroment and the damage can still be seen today. Gold mining is still done by people because there is still gold.