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Amador Canal & Mining Company Five Dollar Note [166971]

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Mining Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:2,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
Amador Canal & Mining Company Five Dollar Note [166971]
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Incredibly rare. $1 and $5 denominations are known. This is the $5. 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 early 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 reverse is in ornate gold-orange color and features a portrait of Neptune, appropriately God of the Sea. There is a faint signature on the reverse; possibly Antonio Penning. Printed by Britton, Rey & Co., S.F. 3 x 6.25" Very fine.

Extremely rare; not in the John J. Ford collection. HKA sold a $1 note in the Rush for Gold! Sale in 2008 (listed for $12,500).

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 underfunded, 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 Natomas 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.

Date: 1874
Country (if not USA):
State: California
City: Amador County
Provenance: