Hydraulic mining is a form of mining that uses high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material or move sediment. In the placer mining of gold or tin, the resulting water-sediment slurry is direc
A miner using a hydraulic jet to mine for gold in California, from The Century Magazine January 1883
Gold miners excavate an eroded bluff with jets of water at a placer mine in Dutch Flat, California sometime between 1857 and 1870.
A man leans over a wooden sluice. Rocks line the outside of the wood boards that create the sluice.
The Malakoff Diggins, California, showing the effects of hydraulic mining on a hillside over a century later. Much of the effects of the mining was beyond the hills themselves, on the areas downstream of the water and sediment flow they produced.
Hushing is an ancient and historic mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploita
Hydraulic mining
…used in various forms around the world. Hydraulic mining had its precursor in the practice of ground sluicing, a development of which is also known as "hushing", in which surface streams of water were diverted so as to erode gold-bearing gravels. This technique was developed in the first centuries BC and AD…
Small tank A near north opencast at the Roman Dolaucothi Gold Mines in Carmarthenshire, Wales: the person is standing within the reservoir bank, which has eroded over the years
Tank C above main opencast at Dolaucothi