From "The Foundations of Placer County Horticulture 1850 - 1900
Thesis by Samuel Evans Gittings
During the 1870's, hydraulic mining proved an irritant to fruit growers and farmers along the Bear River, as well as to all those using ditch water for irrigation purposes. It was the Bear River Ditch that served most of the orchardists in Placer County and the condition of its water was of vital concern to the users. Hydraulic mining dirtied up the water to such a degree that orchardists found it necessary to build "settling tanks" before being able to use their ditch water. In addition, large acreage of agricultural lands adjacent to the River was being ruined by this type of mining, which was a problem to the fruit growers until it was regulated by act of California Legislature in 1888. Much of the tailing from the extensive mines at Dutch Flat and Little York were run into the Bear River and carried through the mountain gorges, down the valleys, and deposited on alluvial flats " once so famous for their rich production of fruit and different cereals". Owners of land along this stream found it costly to continually build and rebuild levees to protect their property. An Article in 1874 stated that the bed of the Bear River, in many places was actually above the level of the land, a phenomenon resulting from levees being continually elevated and continually filled by sedimentation. A meeting was held in San Francisco in 1878 by a committee of the California Legislature, appointed to investigate the amount of injury caused by hydraulic mining to agricultural districts and navigable rivers. An engineer testified that an estimated fifty thousand acres were liable to be affected by the debris carried by the Bear River that the old channel of the Bear River had been filled since 1851 and had no channel, the water just spreading aimlessly, and "the land covered at the mouth of the Bear River was entirely ruined, being nothing more than a barren sand bank."
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