Located
on a sloping hillside Alleghany developed from several mining settlements that
were begun in the early 1850’s. Alleghany became a town in 1853 when some of
the people of these earlier mining settlements gravitated to a location better
fitted for a larger community. These early settlements included Smith’s Flat ;
north of the site of the Sixteen to One Mine, Kanaka Flat; two miles southwest
of Alleghany, Cumberland; northeast of Alleghany and Kanaka City; a mile and a
half northeast of Alleghany. Before “Alleghany” became the name of the town the
settlement was called Jericho and Alleghanytown. The first miners to settle at
the location of the town were from the Allegheny region of Pennsylvania. In the
spring of 1853 several of these miners began the running of a drift tunnel
which they named the Alleghany Tunnel, spelling the name with an “a” instead of
an “e” to distinguish it from the region in Pennsylvania. This being one of the
first and most important tunnel workings the town dropped its earlier names and
adopted the name Alleghany.
Early
advertisers often embellished the size of a client’s establishment.
Alleghany
doesn’t have a large enough piece of flat ground to accommodate this structure.
Smith’s Flat; later to become part
of the town of Alleghany, was quite possibly the earliest area mined at
Alleghany. Starting sometime in 1851 the hydraulic and ground sluicing workings
were yielding gold and quartz nuggets ranging in value from $1000 to $5000.
Drift tunnels were run from Smith’s Flat underneath the ridge between Alleghany
and Forest City during 1853 to reach the ancient river channel to further
exploit this gold bearing region. From the mid 1850’s to the beginning of the
1860’s the placer deposits around
Alleghany were becoming worked out and attention turned to the discovery and
development of lode mines.
By the late 1850s’ Alleghany had become
a full fledged town with all number of business houses. Hotels, general
merchandise stores, saloons, a bank, attorneys and an express office
run by Langton & Company were but a few of
the commercial enterprises in this gold rush town. The late 1850’s and through the 1860’s was a
time of limited production from the mines of the
Alleghany
area. Discovery and development of the areas hard rock mines was underway and
large amounts of capital was being invested in the various mining ventures but
gold production declined during this period.
Beginning in 1870 and continuing
well into the 1930’s mining activity “took off” with one discovery after
another of important mining properties. The Oriental, Kenton, Plumbago,
Rainbow, Osceola, Dreadnaught and Red Ledge were but a few of the mines
producing large amounts of gold. Then in 1907 the greatest of all mines in
Sierra County, The Sixteen-to-One, was discovered. The Sixteen-To-One has over
the years produced a conservatively estimated thirty six million dollars in
gold, over twice the production of The Sierra Buttes Mine, Sierra County’s
second greatest producer of gold.
Alleghany today has a population of
about one hundred and twenty permanent residents and only one operating
business, a saloon. The Sixteen-To-One Mine, in continuous operation since
1907, is still producing gold today.
Gold rush settlements
of the Alleghany - Lafayette Ridge area
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