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F .: ~ -. P H ~~ E `` N O M E N A Vv G COMMENT 6r NOTES III Iiillllii llll 111 999 Turning Water to Gold CONFRONTED WITH A HILL FULL OF GOLD, MINERS REMOVED THE HILL AND THE GOLD-AND LEFT A MESS BEHIND BY EDWIN KIESTER, JR. .~ ,~ T MICHT BE BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL t'A RK IN Utah, or perhaps Colorado's Garden of [he Gods. The eerie landscape, tucked into the (uothills of Calif~r- nia's Sierra Nevada, boasts specrtcular wpugraphy. Cali- fornia park ranger Ken Huie hashes an ironic smile. "Isn't nature wonderful?" he says jokingly. In fact, the striking sculptures of Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park are not the handiwork ul Mother Nature, but of her children. Dating back a mere too years, their haunting if hideous beauty testifies to an early case of envi- ronmrntal assauh-but one in which the good guys final- ly wan Here was fought one of the first successful envi- ronmental lawsuits in U.S history. When [he cry' of "Cold!" went up in California in tB.{ii, the pionrermg prospectors had htde to du but pluck hakes and nuggets of gold out of streams Those ctsy pickings M I 1 H didn't last long. Miners then moved un w panning, in which gravel and water are gently rocked in a handheld pan until the water gradually carries away the gravel and leaves the heavier gold behind. Placer mining, panning un a grand scale, uses sluices and fiwnes w separate gravel and gold Hard-rock mining tunnels inw the earth to extract gold ore from buried veins. Eventually, miners hit upon the cheapest way uI "getting gold out of the secret places," in Huie's words. Hydraulic mining applied a simple method familiar to all ~+'hu'.z used a garden hose. Direct a forceful stream of water at the earth, and it will carve a ditch and carry away the lo~s- ened soil. Harnessing water under powerful pressure thus cLLOUId blast away the hillsides concealing gold uro. Then CItC WflCCr eRd earth could be led through sluices and rd- fles to vetch the gold. In the lam ttliios, Juhuus Puyulllun V N 1 ~ N In California 125 years ago, high-pressure water jets turn a hill into a slurry containing gold ore.