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Hanging Flume
The Hanging Flume was an open water chute (known as a flume) built over the Dolores River Canyon in Colorado. The Montrose Placer Mining Company built the flume in the 1880s to facilitate gold mining. Some sections of the flume remain attached to the canyon wall, although much of the wood has vanished. Background The Montrose Placer Mining Company was formed to mine gold from placer deposits along the Dolores River. Hydraulic mining, a popular method of exploiting placer deposits, required water to be efficiently transported, often using wooden flumes to maintain the necessary volume and pressure. Cliffside flumes were developed in California, using trestles and brackets (called ''bents'') at regular intervals to support the flume box. The flume connected with a long ditch, both designed to provide water for miners in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Construction Construction of the Hanging Flume took three years, beginning in 1887. Approximately 24 workers most being Asian im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uravan, Colorado
Uravan (a contraction of uranium/vanadium) is a former uranium mining town in western Montrose County, Colorado, United States, which still appears on some maps. The town was a company town established by U. S. Vanadium Corporation in 1936 to extract the rich vanadium ore in the region. As a byproduct of vanadium extraction, small amounts of uranium were also produced, at the time mostly used as a yellow pigment for ceramics. The town was located approximately south-southwest of Grand Junction along the San Miguel River. At one time, over 800 people lived in Uravan, and the town housed a school, a trading center (store), medical facilities, tennis courts, a recreation center, and a pool. The school and some other facilities remained operational until at least 1983, however Uravan was shut down by mid-1985, and no trace of its former buildings remain. Uravan is now an uninhabited, undeveloped Superfund site. Prehistory There are several prehistoric sites near Uravan on th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chute (gravity)
A chute is a vertical or inclined plane, channel, or passage through which objects are moved by means of gravity. Landform A chute, also known as a race, flume, cat, or river canyon, is a steep-sided passage through which water flows rapidly. Akin to these, man-made chutes, such as the timber slide and log flume, were used in the logging industry to facilitate the downstream transportation of timber along rivers. These are no longer in common use. Man-made chutes may also be a feature of spillways on some dams. Some types of water supply and irrigation systems are gravity fed, hence chutes. These include aqueducts, puquios, and acequias. Building chute Chutes are in common use in tall buildings to allow the rapid transport of items from the upper floors to a central location on one of the lower floors or basement. Chutes may be round, square or rectangular at the top and/or the bottom. * Laundry chutes in hotels are placed on each floor to allow the expedient transfer and col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flume
A flume is a human-made channel for water, in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch. Flumes are not to be confused with aqueducts, which are built to transport water, rather than transporting materials using flowing water as a flume does. Flumes route water from a diversion dam or weir to a desired materiel collection location. Flumes are usually made up of wood, metal or concrete. Many flumes took the form of wooden troughs elevated on trestles, often following the natural contours of the land. Originating as a part of a mill race, they were later used in the transportation of logs in the logging industry, known as a log flume. They were also extensively used in hydraulic mining and working placer deposits for gold, tin and other heavy minerals. Etymology The term ''flume'' comes from the Old French word ''flum'', from the Latin ''flumen'', meaning a river. It was formerly used for a st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dolores River
The Dolores River is a tributary of the Colorado River, approximately long, in the U.S. states of Colorado and Utah. The river drains a rugged and arid region of the Colorado Plateau west of the San Juan Mountains. Its name derives from the Spanish ''El Rio de Nuestra Señora de Dolores'', River of Our Lady of Sorrows. The river was explored and possibly named by Juan Maria Antonio Rivera during a 1765 expedition from Santa Fe. The mean annual flow of the Dolores prior to damming was approximately , but due to diversions it has been reduced to about . Course The Dolores River rises in a meadow called Tin Can Basin, near Hermosa Peak in the San Miguel Mountains, in Dolores County, Colorado. The headwaters are located about south of Lizard Head Pass in the San Juan National Forest. The river flows southwest in a canyon past Rico, receiving the West Dolores River, then flows into McPhee Reservoir near Dolores in Montezuma County. Formed by McPhee Dam, the reservoir is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The 2020 United States census enumerated the population of Colorado at 5,773,714, an increase of 14.80% since the 2010 United States census. The region has been inhabited by Native Americans and their ancestors for at least 13,500 years and possibly much longer. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route for early peoples who spread throughout the Americas. "''Colorado''" is the Spanish adjective meaning "ruddy", the color of the Fountain Formation outcroppings found up and down the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28, 1861, and on August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulyss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Placer Deposits
In geology, a placer deposit or placer is an accumulation of valuable minerals formed by gravity separation from a specific source rock during sedimentary processes. The name is from the Spanish word ''placer'', meaning "alluvial sand". Placer mining is an important source of gold, and was the main technique used in the early years of many gold rushes, including the California Gold Rush. Types of placer deposits include alluvium, eluvium, beach placers, aeolian placers and paleo-placers. Placer materials must be both dense and resistant to weathering processes. To accumulate in placers, mineral particles must have a specific gravity above 2.58. Placer environments typically contain black sand, a conspicuous shiny black mixture of iron oxides, mostly magnetite with variable amounts of ilmenite and hematite. Valuable mineral components often occurring with black sands are monazite, rutile, zircon, chromite, wolframite, and cassiterite. Early mining operations were likely a result ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydraulic Mining
Hydraulic mining is a form of mining that uses high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material or move sediment.Paul W. Thrush, ''A Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms'', US Bureau of Mines, 1968, p.560. In the placer mining of gold or tin, the resulting water-sediment slurry is directed through sluice boxes to remove the gold. It is also used in mining kaolin and coal. Hydraulic mining developed from ancient Roman techniques that used water to excavate soft underground deposits. Its modern form, using pressurized water jets produced by a nozzle called a "monitor", came about in the 1850s during the California Gold Rush in the United States. Though successful in extracting gold-rich minerals, the widespread use of the process resulted in extensive environmental damage, such as increased flooding and erosion, and sediment blocking waterways and covering farm fields. These problems led to its legal regulation. Hydraulic mining has been used in various forms aroun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Juan Mountains
The San Juan Mountains is a high and rugged mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. The area is highly mineralized (the Colorado Mineral Belt) and figured in the gold and silver mining industry of early Colorado. Major towns, all old mining camps, include Creede, Lake City, Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride. Large scale mining has ended in the region, although independent prospectors still work claims throughout the range. The last large scale mines were the Sunnyside Mine near Silverton, which operated until late in the 20th century and the Idarado Mine on Red Mountain Pass that closed down in the 1970s. Famous old San Juan mines include the Camp Bird and Smuggler Union mines, both located between Telluride and Ouray. The Summitville mine was the scene of a major environmental disaster in the 1990s when the liner of a cyanide-laced tailing pond began leaking heavily. Summitville is in the Summitville caldera, one of m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derrick
A derrick is a lifting device composed at minimum of one guyed mast, as in a gin pole, which may be articulated over a load by adjusting its guys. Most derricks have at least two components, either a guyed mast or self-supporting tower, and a boom hinged at its base to provide articulation, as in a ''stiffleg'' derrick. The most basic type of derrick is controlled by three or four lines connected to the top of the mast, which allow it both to move laterally and cant up and down. To lift a load, a separate line runs up and over the mast with a hook on its free end, as with a crane. Forms of derricks are commonly found aboard ships and at docking facilities. Some large derricks are mounted on dedicated vessels, and known as floating derricks and sheerlegs. The term derrick is also applied to the framework supporting a drilling apparatus in an oil rig. The derrick derives its name from a type of gallows named after Thomas Derrick, an Elizabethan era English executioner. Types ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ponderosa Pine
''Pinus ponderosa'', commonly known as the ponderosa pine, bull pine, blackjack pine, western yellow-pine, or filipinus pine is a very large pine tree species of variable habitat native to mountainous regions of western North America. It is the most widely distributed pine species in North America.Safford, H.D. 2013. Natural Range of Variation (NRV) for yellow pine and mixed conifer forests in the bioregional assessment area, including the Sierra Nevada, southern Cascades, and Modoc and Inyo National Forests. Unpublished report. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, Vallejo, CA/ref> ''Pinus ponderosa'' grows in various erect forms from British Columbia southward and eastward through 16 western U.S. states and has been successfully introduced in temperate regions of Europe, and in New Zealand. It was first documented in modern science in 1826 in eastern Washington near present-day Spokane (of which it is the official city tree). On that occasion, David Douglas misidenti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Miguel River (Colorado)
The San Miguel River is a tributary of the Dolores River, approximately long, in southwestern Colorado in the United States. It rises in the San Juan Mountains southeast of Telluride and flows northwest, along the southern slope of the Uncompahgre Plateau, past the towns of Placerville and Nucla and joins the Dolores in western Montrose County approximately 15 miles (24 km) east of the state line with Utah. Geography and protected areas The San Miguel is more or less free-flowing; however, diversion dams dot the river and alter flows. In some parts it is however one of the few remaining naturally functioning rivers of the West. The San Miguel varies in gradient, from extremely steep in its upper reaches (forming a shallow, rocky, unnavigable stream) to more mellow in the lower sections ( of drop, which offers the whitewater boater a variety of runs all within the class II+--III range). All told, the San Miguel drops over from an alpine ecosystem to the desert. The ave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
