Total cost, including Glen Beatson ditch and Oregon Gulch ditch, $136,150.*
La Grange.—The La Grange ditch,f including the Patricksville branch, is over twenty miles in length.
Size,
nine feet on top, six feet at the bottom, four feet deep; grade, from
seven to eight feet to the mile. The greater part of the ditch is cut
in granite, and in places there are solid stone walls fifty to seventy
feet high. It discharged 2,400 miner's inches at the date of last
measurement, and its cost was over $450,000. Its capacity was formerly
larger, but the ditch is now in a bad condition.
FLUMES.
In
general, the use of flumes is to be avoided where-ever possible, long
experience demonstrating that they are not economical, being too liable
to destruction from fire, wind and snow storms, and by decay. Hence
they are a source of continuous expense.
Flumes vs. Ditches.—There
are instances where the formation of the country requires the use of
flumes rather than ditches; for example, where the water must be
conveyed along the face of vertical cliffs, as in the case of the
Miocene Gold-Mining Company in Butte County. There are also certain
conditions of the formation of the ground, independent of the
topography, where a ditch cannot be employed so economically as a
flume—viz., when the ground is composed of either very hard or very
* See Raymond's Report, 1873, pages 73 and 74.
+ The original ditch, about nineteen miles long, is said to have cost $375,000. Since its completion the Patricksville ditch and reservoir have been built at a cost of $75,000.
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