Adventures at Malakoff Diggins

This writing is a bit out of sequence. I visited this area with Sean several years ago and never got it posted to this blog. Mainly, because I could not find the pictures that I had saved. I finally found them and decided to write about this adventure.
Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park is located in the northern part of California's Mother Lode country. Gold was discovered here in 1851 and hydraulic mining began in 1853. As the North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company grew, so did the town of North Bloomfield. By 1884, when the Sawyer Decision made large scale hydraulic mining difficult, people began to move away and the town slowly died. A picture of one of the hydraulic 'cannons' is included.
Malakoff Diggins had become the largest and richest hydraulic gold mine in the world. Millions of dollars worth of gold had been recovered, and 41 million cubic yards of earth had been excavated, leaving an open pit well over a mile in length and as much as 600 feet deep. You will see part of that in several of the pictures.
Sean and I stayed over night in what we believe was one of the miners cabins. (picture included) If it was not the original cabin it may certainly be fashioned like one. It was very rustic and Sean did everything to make me comfortable. I really did enjoy the stay there. We even did some panning for gold....no luck, but we did try.