A rare collection from the series “Scenes in California,” published by Mains and Shippy, depicting gold mining operations in Sucker Flat, Yuba County, California. Included are nine stereoviews, some hand-colored, with the following titles: “Blue Point G.M. Co. Sucker Flat”; Union Claim Sucker Flat”; S.C.H.M. Co Sucker Flat”; “S.C.H.M. Co Sucker Flat”; “Blue Point G.M. Co. Sucker Flat”; “Rose’s Bar Claim Sucker Flat”; and “Pay Day at Sucker Flat.” There are also two untitled photographs showing a large safe filled with gold bars.

On the verso of one of the Blue Point imagines there is a manuscript credit along with a lengthy caption which reads, “this mine has just been bought by the Co. They owned half of it before. There is ground enough to last 30 years at present rates of washing and it has paid from $1200 to 2000 dollars a day, and the cream of it is all here.”

According to Peter Palmquist’s seminal compendium “Pioneer Photographers of the Far West,” the image titled “Pay Day at Sucker Flat” depicts the aftermath of a robbery at the Blue Point Mining Company in July, 1871.

In the 1870s, The Blue Point and Blue Gravel mines were two of the richest hydraulic operations in the state. The water for the hydraulicking came from Nevada City and Grass Valley in the Excelsior and Tarr Ditches. The slurry was carried out in long sluice tunnels carved at great expense through hard basaltic rock. By 1877 a reported $13 million in gold had been mined, but the vast amounts of rock and gravel washed into the river caused tremendous destruction downstream. In 1884 the Sawyer Decision, supported by the valley’s farmers, stopped the thriving industry in its tracks.