Industry
Forest City’s early placer gold claims were worked out by 1865, leaving the town “busted.” In 1870, a company of local miners and businessmen located a lost section of “The Great Blue Lead,” a 60 million year old north-south running gravel channel beneath Bald Mountain. Eventually 30 miles of drifts, or horizontal tunnels, were run to remove the gravel with the help of the first underground steam locomotive on the Pacific Coast. Sluices for washing out the gold stretched over a mile downstream. Ten years as the state’s largest drift mine, employing up to 250 men, fueled the town’s second boom. By 1887, the mine’s production totaled 150,000 ounces of gold.
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