An early-1900s vintage picture postcard shows five different methods of mining gold: quartz stamping, hydraulic, dredging (with an old-school bucket-line dredge), use of a doodlebug, and panning. Postcard Provided
In the years that followed the American Civil War, the American federal government was gasping for cash.
The war had been largely financed by borrowing huge sums of money from abroad, mostly from England. There weren’t many other options. America’s two main export crops, cotton and…
