An interview with...

Glenn Jones
Curator, Grass Valley Mining Museum

 

When did mining get started here and when did it peak?

Mining didn't really start anywhere in California until gold was discovered in 1848 in Sacramento. That started the drift of miners coming not only worldwide, but they would head for the rivers. Northern California has all the rivers in California. So it was a natural place for the migration to take place. Now, this went on for a few years. By 1850 quartz gold was discovered, which means the gold was encapsulated in ore, normally quartz. And that was discovered a couple hundred yards of here, at the mining exhibit. Now, mining then really started to move because if you work the rivers, as soon as the water comes up in the winter you no longer can pan in the rivers, and of course they would have to leave the area. But with shaft mining, they now could go underground and work all winter and then either stay there or they could go back to the rivers in the springtime.

Now this continued to grow. There are about 2,500 mines within 45 miles of where we are right now. Every place that there looked like there possibly could be gold, somebody dug a hole there, and that's what happened. Now as the larger mines -- say, fifteen of the largest mines that would employ hundreds of people -- they work 24 hours a day with three shifts and that was an ideal situation for a town to start to grow. So by the early 1900s the town would double or triple almost every single year, until it got up to about 5,000 people. By then, the silver was discovered in Nevada and many people went to Nevada. But they found out that working underground the temperature was over a hundred degrees, where here it would be ideal: 65 to 70. So many of them migrated back and stayed for the rest of their lives. This, of course, grew up till World War II. And World War II stopped all mining, because what they did, you could not buy supplies whether it was a motors or steel or whatever; there's no way you could operate. And besides that, shipyards paid more money than was paid to the miners in this area. At that time a miner was making about $9.28 per day. Well, he could make that in a couple of hours in the shipyards so the mines were forced to close down.

By 1950, after the war, a couple of the mines tried to open again, but they only stayed open a very short time because of the price of gold. You realize the price of gold stayed the same for 150 years worldwide until 1932, during the Roosevelt administration, they raised from $20 an ounce to $32 dollars an ounce. That at least kept some open for awhile. But as the inflation continued throughout the 40s, and 50s, and 60s there was no way that the mines could stay open. We only have about two mines in this area now that are actually operational, and that has to be done by three or four people. It's just not enough that you can hire entire crews. So that about peaked out as far as gold mining was concerned.

Fortunately the town was lucky enough to have the Silicon Valley start to move up here. It started with Grass Valley Group, which eventually was the largest employer in this area. So when that broke down into smaller units, some of these people were forced to go back to the Silicon Valley. But they found out up here they could be to work in twenty minutes, the weather was better, it was better living conditions, less traffic… There was many, many advantages. So as fast as these people could think of something to do in the electronic field, they would come up here, rent a house or garage, and they would go into business. Then as soon as they wanted to expand, they would call their friends from the Silicon Valley and they started moving back. Until now, there are over a hundred, in this area, businesses that are strictly electronic. So it is a large part of our population.

At its peak, how many people were employed in the mines here?

Several thousand. The Empire and the Lavocat, through their systems -- which was one or two or even three mines, in some cases -- each of them could employ anywhere from three hundred to a thousand.

What was the biggest mine?

The Empire, in their system, because they tied underground. Just in Grass Valley alone there are over 400 miles of tunnels and drifts underground. We have models over here that would show that. And a mine, once it expands to the limits that it owns property -- now by property, I mean mineral rights. You realize you can own a home in the middle of town but you don't own below a hundred feet: the mineral rights At that point whoever owns that can mine it.

How much came out of the Empire mine?

In the Empire system up until the end of WWII, or when they actually had to close down, they mined and sold $130 million in gold. And it was flown from our airport here to the mint in San Francisco. In the early days it had to go by train, started by wagon. That's why they have one ingot of gold here that weighs over a hundred pounds. Because if you put it on a wagon and you were 50 miles up the river from here, or in a hydraulic diggings, you had to get it to Colfax the first railhead. Well, how are you going to rob the person if the thing you want weighs over a hundred pounds? You don't just put it on your back or on your horse and drive away.

Could you paint a picture of what life was like here in Grass Valley in the 50s when the mines started shutting down?

Well, not an awful lot changed because many of those people immediately went into the woods. And then of course, the harvest of forests became very big business -- and all of my relatives came out of the mines, picked up their chainsaws, and went out in to the woods. And we have many, many sawmills in this area that processed everything here into finished lumber…so that didn't change very much.

Tourism is a big industry in Grass Valley; how much of a draw does this museum provide for Grass Valley's economy?

Everyone in Grass Valley wanted a mining museum and no one did anything about it. In 1967, the Rotary Club decided to use it as a community project. They tied it in immediately with the Nevada County Historical Society and this property was available. There was nothing here; this was completely dynamited to scrap out every piece of equipment that was in here: no floors, no walls. In fact, we have a picture of it here that you might be interested in. Then when we started the museum, that started a tourism [industry]; it was a key they could come to. Because, as you probably have read in your AAA magazine, it is one the best mining exhibits in Northern California. And it also states that in Europe, and they publish it in 17 different countries. Now, far as attendance, we hit just about 20,000 people. We just don't seem to get over 20,000 because we are only open during the peak seasons, which would be May through the middle of October. But the drawing card is there, and I just finished a tabulation: there were 33 countries that visited this museum this last year.

Where do you see Grass Valley in ten years?

It is going to continue to grow in this area because the more congested it is in Southern California, and the bad air… We continually hear people that are moving here that say, "My doctor told me I had to get out of the Valley," and so forth -- where you have an ideal situation up here. We have very little snow, very little freezing really, so our summers could start anywhere from now and can go on through almost Thanksgiving. So it makes an ideal living condition, especially if you've been in an area that's foggy for several months out of the year. We rarely have fog up here.

Have you ever thought about living anywhere else?

No, I've traveled all over the world and I never find any place that would be better on a year-round basis than what I find right here.