Remington Hill, California

Remington Hill
Former settlement
Remington Hill is located in California
Remington Hill
Remington Hill
Location in California
Coordinates: 39°16′43″N 120°47′38″W / 39.27861°N 120.79389°W / 39.27861; -120.79389
Country United States
State California
CountyNevada County
Elevation
[1]
4,052 ft (1,235 m)

Remington Hill is a historic mining camp in Nevada County, California which prospered in the second half of the 19th century.[1] It was named for Caleb Remington, a prominent local miner who lived mostly in neighboring Little York, where he died in 1865.[2] It lay at an elevation of 4052 feet (1235 m).[1] It was situated around present Chalk Bluff Road about one mile south of Highway 20 and about 5.5 miles southeast of the town of Washington and 6 miles northeast of Dutch Flat, as the crow flies.[3]

History

Little is known about its history. In 1854, it is described as a prosperous mining camp.[4] Its population in 1855 was recorded as 75.[5] By 1858, it was connected by stage to Nevada City.[6] In early 1859, a snowstorm crushed a number of homes and businesses, including a hotel, stable and slaughterhouse.[7] It did not have a school house or a post office. Residents got their mail at Red Dog, until that post office closed in 1869,[8] and sent their children to the Liberty Hill school district schoolhouse, located in neighboring Lowell Hill.[9]

Its leading citizens included Caleb Remington, who owned a number of local mines and mills, was active in politics and ran unsuccessfully for county sheriff in 1854,[10] and John Timmons, one of the builders of the Remington Hill and South Yuba ditches, who became a millionaire, lost it all and died in the poorhouse.[11]

Remington Hill was almost destroyed by fire in 1902. The fire burned for about two weeks over an area six by seven miles, destroying much timber and a number of homes before it was brought under control.[12]

Mining

Remington Hill lay on a gold bearing gravel channel on the Chalk Bluff Ridge, which lies between Steep Hollow and Greenhorn Creeks, tributaries of the Bear River. As the channel runs southwest, it joins a major channel running from the San Juan Ridge easterly through Red Dog and You Bet into Placer County.[13] Remington Hill became a center for both hydraulic and drift mining.[14] Water for hydraulic mining was brought from Steep Hollow Creek by a 16 mile ditch constructed between 1854 and 1857.[15] One of the town's claims to fame was that large gold nuggets or gold bearing boulders were found in the vicinity.[16]

Hydraulic mining came to an end in the early 1880s as a result of legal rulings banning the discharge of "tailings" (gravel which had been stripped of its gold) into the Bear[17] and Yuba Rivers.[18] It was later estimated that 1,750,000 cubic yards of gravel had been excavated from Remington Hill.[19] Drift mining continued profitably in the area into the early 1900s and sporadically thereafter.[20] Today, there is nothing left of the town, but Remington Hill can be located on many digital maps.[21]

References

  1. ^ a b c U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Remington Hill, California
  2. ^ Gudde, E. G. (1975) California Gold Camps, p. 288; Nevada Gazette, October 19, 1865.
  3. ^ Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 545. ISBN 1-884995-14-4.
  4. ^ Gudde, id, p. 288, quoting the Daily Alta California, February 27, 1854; Sacramento Daily Union, February 27, 1854.
  5. ^ Janicot, Michel (1994) A History of Nevada County Post Offices, p. 33.
  6. ^ Nevada Democrat, November 3, 1858.
  7. ^ Nevada Journal, February 25, 1859.
  8. ^ Janicot, ibid, p. 33.
  9. ^ Thompson, Thomas H. and West, Albert A. (1970 ed.) History of Nevada County -1880, p. 215 (Cooper).
  10. ^ Comstock, David A., Lives of Nevada County Pioneers, p. 359.
  11. ^ Los Angeles Herald, March 23, 1895.
  12. ^ San Francisco Call, October 3, 1902; Madera Mercury, October 18, 1902.
  13. ^ MacBoyle, Errol (1918) Mines and Mineral Resources of Nevada County, pp. 30-33;Thompson and West, ibid, p. 179; Lindgren, Waldemar, (1911) The Tertiary Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California, p. 147.
  14. ^ Gudde, ibid, p. 288; Sacramento Daily Union, May 16, 1856.
  15. ^ Thompson and West, ibid, p. 179; Sacramento Daily Union, November 28, 1857.
  16. ^ Lindgren, ibid p. 67; Nevada Journal, October 12, 1855; Nevada Democrat, July 27, 1859; Nevada Democrat, January 4, 1860.
  17. ^ Keyes v. Little York Gold & Water Co. which explicitly applied to Remington Hill; text of ruling reported in Pacific Rural Press, March 22, 1879.
  18. ^ The Sawyer decision, as it is commonly known, is reported as Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Co., 18 F. 753 (CCD Cal. 1884).
  19. ^ Lindgren, ibid, p. 147.
  20. ^ Greenland, Powell, (2001) Hydraulic Mining in California, p. 259; Daily Alta California, August 13, 1888; Sacramento Union, October 4, 1907.
  21. ^ David Comstock, a resident of Chalk Bluff and a prominent local historian, informed the author that he visited Remington Hill in the 1970s and found no remains of the town.