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CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH]. DELAVAN, James and Philo MICKLES. Rocky-Bar Mining Company, California. Circular, Articles of Association, Resolutions, etc. [New York,] 1850.
CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH]. DELAVAN, James and Philo MICKLES. Rocky-Bar Mining Company, California. Circular, Articles of Association, Resolutions, etc. [New York,] 1850. 12 o (209 x 123 mm). 12 pages. Original dark blue wrappers lettered in gold on upper cover. Folding box. A superb, virtually mint copy. FIRST EDITION OF THE SECOND CALIFORNIA MINING PROMOTION. "The Rocky-Bar Mining Company was organized in July 1849 as a Labor Association and was primarily composed of only forty miners, who had been engaged in 1848 and 1849, in digging gold on the Big-Bar, contiguous to the Rocky-Bar, near the geographical center of the gold-region in California, and on the middle fork of the American River, about seventy-miles from Sacramento City" (p. [1]). According to Kurutz, "over 100 pounds of gold were taken out of the river in less than three weeks. President Philo D. Mickles and Secretary James Delavan wrote the first segment. It is dated November 4, 1850. Delavan, author of Notes of California and the Placers (New York, 1850), contributed the remainder of the text. Included are two resolutions, dated July 22, 1850, from Big-Bar, and July 29, 1850, from Sacramento City." Carl Wheat, in an article about the Rocky-Bar Mining Company in the California Historical Society Quarterly (March 1933), called it "the first organized project for mining quartz in California." Only the report of the American Quicksilver Company of California preceded this as a published California mining promotion. Byrd Illinois 68; Cowan II, p. 539; Eberstadt 114:135, 136:117; Howell 104; Randall 413; Rocq 1797; Sabin 72456; Streeter V:2645; Vail Gold Fever , p. 22; Wheat Books 58 note.