Gold Districts of California
FRENCH CORRAL
Location. French Corral is in northwestern Nevada County about nine miles
northwest of Nevada City. Much of the gold production came from hydraulic mines between
here and Birchville to the northeast.
History. The town was named for a mule corral erected by a Frenchman, who was
the first settler in the area. The principal period of gold mining was from the middle
1850s to the 1890s; there has been minor work since. Sometime before 1867, a 7 V2 -carat
diamond, the largest known to have come from California, was found here in a sluice box.
French Corral was the terminus of one of the first long-distance telephone lines in the
United States. Installed by the Edison Company about 1878, it connected Birchvillc, North
San Juan and North Bloomfield to Bowman or French Lake, in the high Sierra Nevada some 58
miles east. It was used primarily to send messages about the delivery of water to the
hydraulic mines, but it also was used by Western Union to send other messages.
The total production of the district is unknown, but it has been estimated to be valued
at between $3 million and $4 million. Lindgren, in 1911, estimated that 32.5 million yards
of gravel had been removed and that 20 million remained; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
in 1891, estimated that the same amount had been removed, but that only 10 million yards
remained.
Geology. A major channel of the Tertiary Yuba River entered the area from the
northeast. It extends southwest for a distance of about four miles in this district. The
gravels deposited by this channel are 150 to 250 feet thick and 600 or more feet wide. The
gravels have yielded gold throughout, but the quartz-rich lower gravels were the richest.
Bedrock is granodiorite with greenstone to the north. Also there are some gold-quartz
veins and bodies of mineralized granodiorite and greenstone.
Excerpt from: Gold Districts of California, by: W.B. Clark, California
Department of Conservation, Division of Mines and Geology, Bulletin 193, 1970.
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