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Site History Extensive placer and underground lode mining occurred in French Gulch from the late 1850s to the 1960s when mining became uneconomical. Lode mining was concentrated on the fairly steep valley sides where lead, zinc and silver sulfide ores and gold ores were extracted through an extensive network of adits and tunnels. Floating dredge boats were used to placer mine the valley floor for gold. The placer dredging left large deposits of dredged material covering the valley floor from the over a mile east of Wellington-Oro Mine, to Blue River. There are several abandoned underground lode mining sites in French Gulch. The Wellington-Oro mine and mill complex was the largest mining operation in the valley. The mine underlies the north side of the valley, and runs essentially parallel with French Gulch trending from southwest to northeast. Information about the mine system is available from a detailed report prepared by the United States Geological Survey (Lovering, 1934). From this evaluation (completed before mining ceased) the mine apparently produced approximately 1,000,000 tons of ore, most of which was concentrated on site and shipped for smelting.
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