This sawmill used a waterwheel for power and sat at the forks of Woodruff and Rock Creeks in Goodyears Bar. A log cabin used as the living quaters is along the mill. circa 1860. Saw mills were very important in the mining area. The main use for Saw Mills was to mill the lumber inorder to build houses, build rocker and sluce boxes to wash the gold out of the gravel, and to build flumes. Miners flumed the rivers and creeks for water which was the controlling factor to wash out the gold or hydrolic the gravel hillsides with a monitor. In one of the earliest pictures of Goodyears Bar, A saw mill complete with water wheel to run it is shown. Winches were used to lift rocks that were too big to move by hand. Rock cars were used to wheel heavy rocks out of mine tunnels. Note: the 'large rock' in front of this 1860 lithograph copy of a Goodyears Bar Saw Mill. To shape the neccesary mining tools, anvils were needed and used. Slice boxes and monitors completed the mining tool set. Being a miner was hard physical work and labor intensive.

Pelton wheel was invented by Lester Allen Pelton of Camptonville, California. Allen designed the wheel after seeing water splash off of the nose of a cow in a field. The most efficient form of water wheel is a pelton wheel or water turbine. Pictured is a Pelton wheel which is owned by the author. Nozzles direct forceful streams of water against a series of pairs of buckets. The buckets are mounted around the edge of a wheel. Each bucket forces a flow of water to completely reverse its direction. Usually, the buckets are mounted in pairs, to keep the forces on the wheel balanced.

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www.GoodyearsBar.com is where the North Yuba flows. We love the history and the life in Sierra County, California