Gold transformed life in California during the Gold Rush. In 1860, Andrew Kennedy and three partners filed four mining claims of about 600 feet long, and two shafts were started near what is now Highway 49, eventually becoming the North and South Shafts. The East Shaft, a vertical shaft with a 135 foot steel headframe, replaced an original wooden headframe that burned down in 1928. Two large wheels fed cables to skips that lowered and raised miners, ore, mules, and water. The headframe had two triangular hoppers where the skips dumped their loads: the bottom hopper stored waste rock until it could be removed, while the upper hopper received gold-bearing quartz rock. Smaller rock fell through a grizzly into the ore bin, and larger rock went into a jaw crusher in a room at the second level of the headframe; once crushed to the proper size, it fell into the ore bin until it could be taken by mule and ore car to the 100 Stamp mill. The Kennedy Mine became famous as the deepest gold mine in North America at 5912 feet until it was closed in 1942 by the U.S. Govt.