Picacho (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

for "Big Peak") is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

Imperial County Imperial Count (german: Reichsgraf) was a title in the Holy Roman Empire. In the medieval era, it was used exclusively to designate the holder of an imperial county, that is, a fief held directly ( immediately) from the emperor, rather than from ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. It is located on the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...

south-southeast of Palo Verde, at an elevation of 203 feet (62 m). Picacho, now a

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

, was an early

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

town on the Colorado River. It was named ''Picacho'', Spanish for "big peak", after a nearby mountain of the same name. The original townsite itself is beneath Imperial Reservoir, but remains of some of the ore mills are above the lake level. The area is within

Picacho State Recreation Area Picacho State Recreation Area is a camping, boating, and general recreation area located on a 9-mile stretch of the lower Colorado river at the site of Picacho, a defunct gold mining town. Picacho is a popular wintertime/springtime destination ...

. The site is now registered as

California Historical Landmark A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance. Criteria Historical significance is determined by meeting at least one of ...

#193.

History

Spaniards probably mined placer

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

in the area as early as 1780. The area became very active when prospector Jose Maria Mendivil discovered gold veins in the nearby hills in the early 1860s. Prospectors originally used the dry placering method because the scarcity of water did not permit regular

gold panning Gold panning, or simply ''panning'', is a form of placer mining and traditional mining that extracts gold from a placer deposit using a pan. The process is one of the simplest ways to extract gold, and is popular with geology enthusiasts especi ...

methods. Dry placering consisted of shoveling sand and gravel onto a blanket and shaking the blanket until only the heavier gold particles remain. A "blanketful" of gold could yield over $20 in gold at 1860s prices. Mendivil laid out the townsite of Rio, which was soon renamed Picacho. During Picacho's heyday Mendivil sold his claims and homesteaded a section of land along the river bank where he laid out the town, naming the streets after his daughters. The town had a population of 2,500, three stores, three elementary schools, numerous saloons, and was served by

steamboats of the Colorado River Steamboats on the Colorado River operated from the river mouth at the Colorado River Delta on the Gulf of California in Mexico, up to the Virgin River on the Lower Colorado River Valley in the Southwestern United States from 1852 until 1909, wh ...

that connected the mining towns along the

. Besides mining, men were employed on the stages, as ranchers and cowboys on neighboring homesteads, and many men labored as woodcutters in the desert washes to fuel the boilers of the

paddlewheel A paddle wheel is a form of waterwheel or impeller in which a number of paddles are set around the periphery of the wheel. It has several uses, of which some are: * Very low-lift water pumping, such as flooding paddy fields at no more than about ...

steamboats that called at the town landing 48 miles up river from Arizona City. Richard E. Lingenfelter, Steamboats on the Colorado River, 1852-1916, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1978
/ref> The Neahr Stamp Mill ruin remains clearly visible on the shore. The huge building was constructed in 1877-8 of hand cut native rhyolite stone. David Neahr, a Yuma Businessman, enlarged an earlier mill to ten stamps, successfully crushing ore from Medivil's Apache Claim. Neahr expanded the operation and bought up additional claims but was forced into bankruptcy when his manager embezzled $7,000. the Neahr mill had subsequent owners but none of the operations there were overly successful or productive. Stephen A. Dorsey greatly exaggerated Picacho's productiveness. He formed the California King Gold Mines Co. with speculator's money and built a stamp mill. A narrow gauge railroad was constructed to haul ore from the mines at the peak to the mill on the river. The best years of production were 1904-1906 after which Dorsey left with his profits. The mine payroll peaked at 700 men. Declining ore quality and mill accidents ended most of the organized mining efforts by around 1910, and the filling of the lake behind

Imperial Dam The Imperial Diversion Dam (National ID # CA10159) is a concrete slab and buttress, ogee weir structure across the California/Arizona border, northeast of Yuma. Completed in 1938, the dam retains the waters of the Colorado River into the Impe ...

flooded what was left of the original townsite in 1938. A post office operated at Picacho from 1894 to 1926, moving in 1926.

Geography

The townsite is at , at an elevation of 203 feet (62 m) above sea level.

Picacho in fiction

Picacho was the setting of

Zane Grey Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author and dentist. He is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American fronti ...

’s 1923 novel '' Wanderer of the Wasteland'', later made into a silent film.

California Historical Landmark

number 193 reads: :''NO. 193 PICACHO MINES - Opened by placer miners after 1852, the gold mines expanded into hard rock quarrying by 1872. Picacho employed 700 miners at its peak from 1895 to 1900. Mill accidents, low ore quality, and the loss of cheap river transport with the building of Laguna Dam led to numerous periods of inactivity. With ores far from worked out, the Picacho Mines, using modern techniques, again resumed operations in 1984.''californiahistoricallandmarks.com Landmark chl-193
/ref>

References

External links

Picacho State Recreation Area

{{authority control Ghost towns in California History of Imperial County, California Unincorporated communities in Imperial County, California Steamboat transport on the Colorado River California Historical Landmarks Unincorporated communities in California