During her visit in May, Jujube (my daughter’s nickname) suggested a visit to a gold mine in Julian, a historic community in the mountains of East San Diego County, at about 4,200 feet elevation. Julian is an official California Historical Landmark due to its role in the 19th century California gold rush.
Our guide at the mine said Julian in 1869 was site of the last of the “gold rushes” in California, with the first being THE California gold rush of 1848, when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, 35 miles northeast of Sacramento. That discovery brought about the largest mass migration in U.S. history.
Parking in “downtown” Julian, we walked up to the Eagle Mining Co., which offers tours of its mine and gives an orientation to panning gold.
Guests can pan for real gold, but you don’t get to keep what you find. Best anyone can do is find a few flakes, which Winter and I found. Jujube’s pan, however, was a little better.
Then we entered the mine, which had been created in 1870, for a tour of about an hour’s duration. You don’t do down into the mine, you enter directly into the side of the mountain at what the guide was the seventh level of the mine, with six levels below and at least one above.
The guide warned tour participants that some might feel claustrophobic because of the narrow and low tunnels. (Post tour, we all agreed we didn’t feel claustrophobic, but did occasionally wonder what would happen if there was an earthquake while we were there.)
This video gives a “hint” of what it was like in the mine.
At one point, the guide lit a candle that had been put along the tunnel wall, and then turned off the electric lights, to show us something like the condition for mine workers in the 1800s. Then he extinguished the candle and we were in darkness as total as I had ever been in.
At the end of the tour, we went up one level to exit from higher up on the mountain side.
The guide, as I recall, said the value of the gold extracted during the active life of the mine was several million dollars in today’s currency.
