Historic Resource Evaluation Project - Tuolumne Utilities District

Placer gold was discovered in the limestone belt around Columbia as early as 1849, but
water was needed to work the placers during the dry seasons. In order to work their
claims, the miners in Columbia formed a company to bring water to the area, and on July
1 st of 1851 the TCWC began digging a ditch from the South Fork Stanislaus River to the
district to supply the mines and communities in the area. System water first reached
Columbia through Five Mile Creek in May of 1852, and by August the entire ditch and
flume system was completed and has been in continuous use since.
In addition to Columbia, the ditch supplied Shaw’s Flat, where placering had begun as
early as 1848; Springfield, at the head of Mormon Creek; Matelot Gulch, named for the
French sailors who mined there in the 1850s; Martinez, for Doña Martinez, where gold
was discovered in the 1850s; Knapp’s Ranch on San Diego Hill; Knickerbocker Flat;
Sawmill Flat at the forks of Wood’s Creek, where Mexicans, Chilenos, and Peruvians
mined; Yankee Hill at the head of Wood’s Creek; Squabbletown; Douglasville; Gold
Springs; Union Hill; and numerous other camps whose names have been lost to history.
Depicted on the map drafted by John Wallace in 1853, a veritable spider web of ditches
and flumes radiated around Columbia, bringing water to each and every mine, claim, and
gulch throughout the district (Figure 10). Numerous other unmapped ditches carried
water through privately owned ditches from the company system to individual claims and
reservoirs. TCWC reservoirs depicted at that time included Matelot, San Diego, Gold
Hill, Byrd’s, Copeland’s, Deadman’s, Summit Pass, and others (Wallace 1853, 1861,
1863).
By the time Wallace completed his next map of the district nine years later, over 12
reservoirs were depicted surrounding Columbia, and in the ensuing years he designed the
Saw Mill Flat Flume; a pipeline across Yankee Hill Road; a reservoir in Hardscrabble
Gulch; flumes across Experimental Gulch and Summit Pass; a flume from the End of
Pipe to the Head of Negro Gulch; the Union Flume; and probably many others for which
no plans are extant (Figures 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23; Wallace 1862; Wallace Plans n.d.,
various).
The 1870 GLO Plats for T2N, R14E and 15E, depict the Columbia Ditch in
approximately the same location as the present alignment, as do the Dart (1879),
Beauvais (1882), and Barton (1896) maps. The 1907 Thom Map and 1909 Tuolumne
Water Power Company Map reflect the same alignment, and depict Matelot, San Diego,
Gold Hill, Copeland, Byrd, Deadman, and Race Track reservoirs.
Ditches no longer in operation that were connected to the Columbia Ditch at the top of
Big Hill include the Bald Mountain Branch (1.42 miles long), which connected to
Sawmill Flat and vicinity and to the reservoirs of the Electric Light and Old Miner’s
Reservoirs, providing water to a power generating station in Sonora (Deed Book 46:417,
520; Grunsky 1896; Rhodin 1916). Other branch ditches carried water to the Old Smooth
Bore and Hardscrabble mines (Barton 1896; Dart 1879), and as far south as the Radovich
and Belmont mines in Section 24, T2N, R14E, near Brown’s Flat (Figures 24, 25; Barton
1896). The Dondero Ditch carried water from about one mile below Big Hill Camp and
Foothill Resources, Ltd. 4.12 TUD Ditch Sustainability Project
Francis Heritage, LLC
Historic Resource Evaluation Report