Water-Power with High Pressures and Wrought-Iron Water-Pipe

For the purpose of supplying the placer mines in California with water, many ditches were built on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, taking their source high up in the mountains, and delivering the water on the tops of the foot hill ridges, at elevations from 1,000 to 3,000 feet above the great valley of California, formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. In many cases, the mines for which these aqueducts were constructed have been exhausted or abandoned, and their water is now largely used for power for quartz ruining and milling, and for other purposes.