A technique used in the nineteenth century in which miners would use a strong blast of water through a large hose to strip away soil, rock, and other material from an area to bare a vein of gold or silver.
An effective but destructive method of mining. Water under pressure was directed at hillsides of soft gravels through a hose with a nozzle called a monitor or giant, causing mud to run down into long lines of sluice boxes and causing banks to disintegrate. The incoming water often ran for many miles from the higher mountains in flumes that were costly to build, but water reached the mining site with enough force to shoot 400 feet into the air after it was dropped from hundreds of feet almost vertically down to the mining site. The by-product of hydraulic mining, thick mud and silt called slickens, ruined farm land downstream and caused navigation hazards in major rivers and San Francisco Bay, which led to its prohibition.
a method of mining in which a bank of gold bearing gravel is washed away by a powerful jet of water and carried into the sluices where the gold separated from the gravel by its specific gravity.
uses water under great pressure to wash away soil from underlying mineral deposits
Extraction of minerals from the surface using water pressure to move earth into large sluices.
In hydraulic mining, water under great pressure was discharged through monitors against a gold-bearing hillside. The force of the water would wash away the hillside, flushing the silt and gravel through sluices where it could be separated and the gold recovered. Hydraulicking could-and often did-completely ruin the landscape.
A process of washing ore from its bed with powerfull jets of water.
(Hydraulicing) A method of above water gold mining in which a large volume of water is directed at gold bearing streambed, so its materials can be washed down through sluice boxes, where the gold can be recovered.
Hydraulic mining, or hydraulicking, is a form of mining that employs water under pressure to dislodge rock material or move sediment. This form of mining was used in the region around Nevada City, California, c. 1853 to exploit gold-bearing upland paleogravels. Previously hydraulicking had been invented by the Romans, the ruina montium, to find gold using high-pressure water jets from a tank situated from 400-800 feet above the ground as in Las Médulas of Spain.
