18.2.08

F I R S TP R E V705NEXTLAST

Ocean Beach's Golden Past
While nearly all the gold taken during the Gold Rush was found 400 miles away in the Sierras another source of gold was actually found in San Francisco. In 1851 Abraham Wellington Birough dug along southern Ocean Beach, from Ulloa Street down to Lake Merced. He was able to extract $6 of gold for every ton of sand treated. Other gold miners such as William Patterson and Edward Hawthorne improved and reduced the costs of the ocean mining by introducing sluice boxes fed by water cisterns. In fact gold mining on Ocean Beach did not end until 1895 when construction of the Great Highway caused the gold camps to be struck. Symbolically by then the developers of a new San Francisco were more powerful than the miners of the city's past.
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2 Comments:

Blogger AphotoAday said...

Well I had no idea -- I'll have to investigate this further -- very interesting.

6:24 PM  
Blogger FogBay said...

Source: The Old Town, Real Life in Early San Francisco - by Matthew Brady, 1992, Independent Books, publisher

9:41 PM  

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