Andrea Franzius
River damming was the most advanced mining technique that also required groups of men to work together. The miners either stopped part of a river with a u-shaped dam, a so-called wing dam, or they led the whole river into a neighboring river or a valley. While the first technique was easier, both methods dried out the river bed to process its dirt in long toms. The miners had to wait until the water level of the rivers was low enough, at the end of June, before they could build the dams, a process which took until September. Soon, the seasonal rains would break the dams, leaving the miners only a few weeks to wash gold.
As a big investment in time and labor force, river damming required larger groups of miners, thus leading to formation of companies that bore a striking resemblance to the joint-stock companies. Probably already existing in 1849, these mining companies established rules and laws and executive institutions that dealt with the miners´ legal and social concerns.
Bibliography
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Andrea Franzius
(agf2@acpub.duke.edu), November 1997
in collaboration with The Digital
Scriptorium, Special
Collections Library, Duke
University
http://web-directory-where-this-project-lives/