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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

for "Big Peak") is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Imperial County Imperial County is a county located on the southeast border of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 179,702, ranking as the least populous county in Southern California. The county seat and largest city is ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is located on the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

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

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

, was an early

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

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 The Imperial Reservoir is an lake, artificial lake formed by the construction of the Imperial Diversion Dam across the Colorado River in the Lower Colorado River Valley of Imperial County, California, and Yuma County, Arizona. It is northeast ...

, but remains of some of the ore mills are above the lake level. The area is within Picacho State Recreation Area. The site is now registered as

California Historical Landmark A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in the U.S. state of California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance. Criteria Historical significance is determined by meetin ...

#193.

History

Spaniards probably mined placer

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

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 espec ...

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, w ...

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

steamboats A steamboat is a boat that is marine propulsion, propelled primarily by marine steam engine, steam power, typically driving propellers or Paddle steamer, paddlewheels. The term ''steamboat'' is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels worki ...

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 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 frontier ...

’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