|
|
|
|
|
The First People
The Yuba watershed has sustained people for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found stone tools over 4000 years old attributed to people of the Martis tradition who lived on both sides of the Sierra crest. More recently, the Yuba watershed was inhabited by the Hill Nisenan, a group of Southern Maidu who arrived approximately 1500 years ago. The Nisenan spent the fall harvesting acorns—their major food source—in the foothills and stayed on in large community settlements for the winter. Each spring, smaller family groups moved up to higher elevations in the river canyon following the migration of deer and runs of salmon and steelhead.
European Settlement
The Emigrant Trail, one of the routes traveled by California's early settlers, follows the course of the South Yuba for 10 miles near its headwaters. The first pioneers' wagons crossed the mountains from the east along this route in 1844. In 1846, 500 wagons followed the same trail, including the ill-fated Donner party. Life changed dramatically for the Nisenan when white settlers arrived bringing new foods, new diseases, and very different ideas about how to live on the land. According to the Nevada County census, there were 3,226 Nisenan in 1852; the census of 1870 counted only 9. One of the major causes of their decline was the gold rush.
The Gold Rush
In 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's mill on the American River. By the following year, thousands of miners had flooded into the Sierra. In 1848 there were 2000 Americans in California. By 1850 the population in Nevada and Placer counties alone was 35,107 people! The Yuba was the most heavily mined basin in the Sierra Nevada. Mining camps lined the river's banks, and the towns of Nevada City and Grass Valley were among the largest in California in those days. The prospect of gold brought together a diversity of cultures. Chileans and Mexicans arrived in the early years of the gold rush, followed by a wave of Chinese immigration. There were 3,000 Chinese in Nevada County alone by 1852, and in 1870 Chinese made up 25 percent of California's population.
By the 1870s, the most accessible gold in the riverbeds was gone, and panning was replaced by hydraulic mining. Water diverted from high in the watershed powered giant water cannons which blasted the ancient river deposits that formed the steep canyon walls. The gold washed into miners' sluice boxes; the rest of the sediment went straight into the river. For decades, the Yuba ran thick with mud, silt, and rock as whole mountains were washed downstream. Ditches provided the water to blast the hillsides; by 1879, Nevada County alone had over 900 miles of ditches! The world's first long-distance telephone line was installed in 1878 to enable ditch operators to communicate with one another.
On the South Yuba at Malakoff Diggins, one of the largest hydraulic sites in the world, some 700,000 cubic feet of earth washed into the river. The total amount of material washed into the Yuba was more than triple the volume of earth excavated during construction of the Panama Canal. The deposits raised the riverbed by as much as 80 feet in some places causing major flooding on the main Yuba. In 1884, Judge Lorenzo Sawyer brought an end to the destruction in a historic ruling that prohibited further hydraulic mining.
As mining waned, dams were built to trap the remaining debris. On the Yuba's main stem, Daguerre Point Dam was completed in 1910, and the 260-foot Englebright Dam was completed in 1941. There are 18 other significant dams in the watershed; the Yuba is among the most dammed and diverted rivers in the state. Meanwhile, other industries such as agriculture and logging grew. The region's population also grew. Old mining ditches were converted into irrigation ditches, and dams were retrofitted to produce electricity. Today, our watershed still bears the scars of its past. Arsenic and mercury contamination from mining days threaten water quality. Flooding continues to be a problem in the lower watershed. The salmon and steelhead runs that once teamed in the upper watershed are now halted below Englebright and are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Despite these challenges, the Yuba remains a treasure well worth fighting for, and SYRCL has its own nearly 20-year history of working to preserve, protect, and restore the river.
|
|
|
|
