Mining Scars

[California Condor]

Here are some tailings from the gold dredges near Folsom California.

[TugBoat]

Can you provide any additional information about this? it is certainly a very strange 'landform'.

I was wondering exactly what caused the ripple shapes? It looks like the ripples are a combination of a physical ripple and possibly the material itself being banded (see bottom left of first image).

I assume a 'gold dredge' is open cut mining with a large bucket on a chain being pulled along and across the ore body.

I just don't quite understand why this leads to such a regular tailing structure - or perhaps the tailings came from a moving conveyor belt that was moving side to side as the tailings were deposited. (It sounds like I may have answered my own question at this point...) Although the ripples don't look like that are on an arc...

It looks like the mine is no longer active - or is it still active and just out of shot?

Very interesting,
Tim

[Tom Harper]

Condor,

Those sure make great targets for AP.

When I was a wild youth (1948) I had a Hiawatha Doodle Bug motor scooter. We lived in Galt. For 10 cents worth of gas I could travel all day in the Gold Country. Once I went to a contro line contest in Placerville. I remember seeing the sign to Folsom and then passing miles of gravel from placer tailings.

Is that stuff still there? May just be a faulty memory.

Tom

[California Condor]

Tom, your memory is fine.
These tailings are from a dredge which was a floating ore gather which scoops up the ore, extracts the gold and dumps the tailings off the back. There are none operating here now, but I believe there is one about 50 miles north near Marysville.