Unusual Geological Site

 geology, mine

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This is a bench on the canyon wall, about 50 feet below the plateau. The dark spot at the east end is a pond that fills with runoff. There are also other, smaller depressions between hillocks on the bench that fill with runoff at times, but most of the bench drains either into the pond, or westward, over a waterfall, and into a steep draw.

Just above the waterfall, I found river-bottom sand with freshwater clam shells in it, as if this were once the path of the South Fork Pit River until it eroded further down into the canyon.

When the pond and other depressions were dry, I found the exoskeletons of very small water creatures, about the size of nail heads.

Just above and to the north of the pond is an old mine or quarry. Papers stored in a claim stake said the claim was for gypsum. A once- or twice-graded road follows a draw up the southern face of the side of the canyon to the pond, across it, and to the mine. A jeep trail follows the drainage and crosses hillocks and depression to locations where a woodcutter took out old-growth junipers that grew on the hillocks.

Later prospectors tried to divert the pond so that it would drain down the side of the canyon to the southwest, and it seems that their efforts may have cut off the source of the draw that used to drain it.