Location: County: Nevada. Nearest City: Grass
Valley.
Campsites, facilities: No campsites. Point of interest
to visit while on tour.
Reservations, fees: Call park for information.
Contact: Phone the park at 1-530-273-8522.
Operating hours, seasons: Open year round - call the
park to verify.
Directions: Drive 24-miles north of Auburn on Highway
49 to Empire Street exit in Grass Valley. The park is located
in Grass Valley at 10791 East Empire Street.
Weather, clothing: Summer and spring are warm; fall
and winter can be cool. Layered clothing is advised.
Trip notes: For more than 100 years, Empire Mine in
Grass Valley was one of the largest, deepest, longest operating
and richest gold mines around - producing nearly six million
ounces of gold. The park contains many of the mine's buildings,
the owner's home and restored gardens, as well as the entrance
to 367 miles of abandoned and flooded mine shafts. There are
eight miles of trails in the park.
Within two years of James W. Marshall's discovery of gold
in 1848, great hordes of '49ers had panned out most of California's
gold-bearing streambeds. Only a few miners had any real idea
of the quantities of gold that were locked beneath the surface
of the Sierra in sheet-like veins of quartz. But in June 1850,
George McKnight discovered a gold-bearing quartz outcropping
about a mile from here (near St. Patrick's church in downtown
Grass Valley). Then, in October of 1850, a lumberman named George
Roberts found flecks of gold in a surface outcropping of quartz
where the park's main parking lot is now.
The Empire Mine's prosperity continued until World War II,
when the War Production Board halted nonessential industries,
such as gold mining. The mine reopened in 1945, but the price
of gold remained fixed at its 1934 level of $35 an ounce, providing
little profit. By the early 1950's, inflation had driven the
cost of mining to $45 per ounce of gold. The company could not
pay the miners enough to feed their families. Consequently, on
July 5, 1956, the miners went on strike. For several months thereafter,
while the strike continue, the big underground water pumps remained
in operation in anticipation of the miner's return. The removal
of underground mining equipment began in January 1957. On May
28th, the last pump was shut down and the mine finally closed.
Its equipment was sold at auction in September 1959. By then
total gold production had reached nearly six million ounces.
(More than two billion dollars worth of gold in 1994 prices.)
© 2001, Miwok Lodge 439, Order of the
Arrow, Santa Clara County Council Inc., BSA
Revision 1.2
