Dredge Tailings

enterprising placer miners do just what you describe. They build traps out of rocks in the stream bed. My experience with it is the flow rate of the water has to be steady. Too much flow and it washes everything out. too little and the trap fills with sand. Just like a sluce.  This is what happened with our trap. We panned it twice and got black sand both times then we had a big rain and it washed everything out of the pipe. If you've got a trap you got to keep checking on it.

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Gambol,

I don't doubt it, the Chinese were quite meticulous by all accounts I have heard.

I've seen a whole mountain side washed away to nothing but those boulders by hydraulic mining. It looks quite strange. That is up in Oregon above La Grande. Much of it is quartz boulders. It requires a little hiking/climbing but it's nothing most people can't handle.

The Chinese up around the Warren area built some interesting rockwork houses and terraces. They were quite industrious and made as much from gardening and laundry as mining I have heard.

As for gold traps the road crews put in many of them for you... Sometimes there is a lil treasure in those corrugated drain pipes

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Camp Carson is exactly where I was talking about Arfie. I used to camp there every year and scout around in the 90s. Still drop by when I am in the area.

If you take the road past the big pit up through the trees to the tee intersection and turn left. You have to walk or perhaps 4 wheeler it. About a quarter mile (or less) there is a gully on the left at the center of which is an old hardrock shaft. At the head of the gully is the remains an old flume. If you turn left at the flume and work your way through the trees and earthworks you come out on the barren hillside of quartz boulders. You are right it is an amazing example of how much earth was moved with hydraulics and why it's banned today.

Somewhere in that area is an old dredge as well. I came on it rotting in a meadow when we were riding 4 wheelers on an old road. I was certain for years it was near Camp Carson, then maybe out on the tailing piles, but I'm thinking now it's on around on the other side of the ridge since I never could find it again. Looking on Google Earth I see a lot of tailings on the back side of the ridge from Woodley. I didn't remember riding there but we were all over those mountains exploring in those days.

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Cursed tailings.  I've sprained a muscle in my back giving a shovel a big heave-ho.  And then when that started getting better I sprained one in my inner thigh when I slipped wrong on a rock and tried to catch myself.  Beware the tailings!  They are evil. 

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The wife and I are planning on hitting the dredge tailings in Colorado in late September.  Needless to say the anticipation mounts daily.

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