Tag Archives: hiking

The Diggins is my favorite place to hike. The century old mining site makes for an enchanting and sometimes spooky outing, particularly when the air is still and quiet.

Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park is nestled amongst the pine-studded chaparral forest of the Sierra Nevada Foothills and is home to California’s largest hydraulic gold mine. The 3,000-acre park encompasses the town of North Bloomfield and the historic Diggins site, which allows visitors to step back in time and experience the boom and bust of the California Gold Rush. Visitors can see huge cliffs carved by mighty jets of water, results of the gold-mining technique of washing away entire mountains to find gold. Legal battles between mine companies and the downstream agricultural towns of Marysville and Yuba City ended this particular method of mining, and was the first environmental lawsuit in the United States.  

Trail markers are replaced regularly as the old ones are buried in gravel from the eroding cliffs.

I’m sure this old mining equipment was left here for educational purposes.

I can fit in there… I could have fit in further but there was a large spider spinning a web and I didn’t want to disturb her.

It seems we are not the only visitors at the Diggins today.