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Old gold diggings win listing Photo by Jim Craven Laura Anderson, left, and Peggy Thompson take a walk on a trail near the Rich Gulch Diggings, which was recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The girls, both 11, were part of the community effort to create a trail system around Jacksonville. Park Service puts Rich Gulch area on national register By MELISSA MARTIN JACKSONVILLE -- Rich Gulch Diggings, a canyon carved out by miners with giant water cannons, was named recently to the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service selected the 24.6 wooded acres for its evidence of mining activity at the turn of the century, when hydraulic "giants" sprayed water across a quartz hillside to loosen the soil and make it easier to find gold. "This is a prime, cultural resource," said Larry Smith, a Jacksonville retired teacher. "It's the only place in the city you can go and see an old gold mine." Visitors reach Rich Gulch Diggings by foot or bicycle on a three-mile looped trail that starts above the Britt Pavilion. Hikers can see the canyon, the rock tailings and glory holes, which are caved-in mining shafts, some 20 feet deep and some showing the remains of a swallowed car. "I bet there is still some gold up here," said Laura Anderson, a Jacksonville sixth-grader who hiked the trail Wednesday with her former teacher. The most gold that 86-year-old Fred Coffman ever found in one day near Rich Gulch Diggings was $28 worth, which would equal about $300 today. "We found one pretty good-sized nugget, but we had to sell it because we had two car payments and groceries to buy," the Jacksonville resident said. Coffman said he learned to swim in the reservoir, which was built by the French family who lived at Rich Gulch for three generations. The reservoir was fed by a mile-long ditch, hand dug by Chinese workers who were paid $1 a day, plus any gold their shovels uncovered. "The water separated the gold from the dirt," said Coffman, who remembers watching the hydraulic giants blasting the hillside with water when he was about 8 years old. "The water ran through a set of boxes with ripples in the bottom; the gold hung up in the ripples. You would run clear water through it to clean it up," he said. "Men would stand by the boxes picking out the big rocks and throwing them in the big pile to the side." When the water stopped flowing, miners would scoop out the mud at the bottom of the flumes and pan out the gold. The turn-of-the-century miners worked much harder than the men in 1852 who discovered placer gold, called free gold, because it was easier to extract. In the 1890s, the Petard family bought Rich Gulch. "My family was heading for (the Klondike) in Alaska when we came to Jacksonville and ended up staying here," said August Petard, 75, of Phoenix, who lived for 35 years at Rich Gulch. The Petards were known for the concords and other table grapes they grew at Rich Gulch and sold at local markets, including the Groceteria in downtown Medford. Hikers can see the hillside where the vineyards were planted when they walk the Rich Gulch trail. It's near the viewpoint that offers a striking frame of Mount McLoughlin, the rim of Crater Lake and the historic rooftops of Jacksonville. Rich Gulch Diggings remains a public hiking and picnic area because of the efforts of the Jacksonville Woodlands Association, a nonprofit group of residents dedicated to preserving land, said Smith, one of its founders. In the past decade, the association has created 6 miles of free, public hiking trails on 300 forested acres of land. The Woodlands group will work with the city to create viewpoints and interpretive signs that explain the mining history along the Rich Gulch trail. It will be similar to the Gin Lin Trail in the Applegate, said Paul Wyntergreen, city administrator. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA