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Amador Canal & Mining Company $5 Gold Note

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Exonumia - Scrip Start Price:2,000.00 USD Estimated At:4,000.00 - 8,000.00 USD
Amador Canal & Mining Company $5 Gold Note
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Dated Nov. 3, 1874, serial number 55. An extremely rare California scrip item which is as close to a true obsolete note as exists from California. This note is payable for water used by the bearer and is "an equivalent for a Five Dollar Gold Note," a clear reference to the then current National Gold Bank. Signed by the President, J. S. Emery, and Secretary, A. M. Brown. A vignette at left shows a miner operating a water canon in a hydraulic mining scene with another two miners below working near a tunnel. On the right is a second vignette of Mercury standing with an open safe with piles and sacks of coins and ingots. The back is in ornate gold-orange I color and features a portrait of Neptune, appropriately god of the sea. Printed by Britton, Rey Co., S. F. Extremely Rare; not in the John J. Ford collection. A few specimens of a $1 dollar note are known by the same company and one.is listed in the Holabird Kagin Gold Rush catalog Summer 2008 (item #72) at a price was $12,500. Only one unissued $5 note is known in much less condition than the item listed here. (From the Horwedel Collection, item # 15431 in the Heritage Auction No. 354 on Sept. 8th, 2004.)

“The Amador Canal and Mining Company had its roots as the Sutter Canal and Mining Company, which began in 1870. They had purchased the rights of the Butte Ditch Company, a company formed to acquire and supply water to hydraulic mines and a few quartz mines. Their work was under funded, and the Amador Canal and Mining Company was formed and purchased the assets in 1873. The new company completed the ditch, providing water to mills which greatly lowered their operating costs. It remained in operation until well after 1881.” [Ref: Mason, J: History of Amador County; 1881, pg 266-267] Ross Raymond, U.S. Mineral Commissioner, stated in 1874 that this company was one of the most important of the region: “This canal is intended to supply with motive power the hoisting works and mills of the various mines on the Mother Lode in this country . . . for sixteen months, the work was prosecuted steadily, until the canal was completed to its junction with the old Butte ditch, a distance of thirty five miles from the reservoir at Sutter Creek.”

Unfortunately, the Butte ditch portion suffered losses of water by evaporation that were unacceptable, and a new ditch to the Mokelumne River had to be dug. The ditch was designed to be full at three feet, five feet wide at the bottom, eight feet wide at the top, with a grade of eight feet per mile, set to deliver 55 cubic feet of water per minute. Sherman Day was the mining engineer in charge of the project in 1873-74. Day consulted with Henry Knight, superintendent of the successful Natoma Canal at Folsom. (Sherman Day had been previously superintendent of the New Almaden Quicksilver Mine [Mercury} near San Jose). In the field the company was run by General Alexander. The company had drawn contracts with many of the larger gold producing mines, such as the Amador, Oneida, Maxwell, Keystone Mining Companies, and hoped for contracts with the Kennedy, Downes, Mahoney and Summit Mining companies. [Ref: Raymond, Mines and Mining West of the Rocky Mountains, 1875, pp. 69-71] Additional references: (1.) Mitchell vs. Amador Canal & Mining Company, Case No. 12,387; March 30, 1888 in the Pacific Reporter 1888 p. 246-58. (2.) Holabird-Kagin Gold Rush Catalog Summer 2008. Approx 3" x 6.25". Date: 1874 Location: Amador, California HWAC# 60836