BIOGRAPHIES & PROFILES
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Charles Scott Haley
Introduction by Brian Haley Dean, Library/Learning Resource Center My father, Charles Scott Haley, was a native Californian who was born in the Victorian age. Throughout his life, he kept the quiet and courteous dignity that was the hallmark of the Victorian gentleman. He never boasted about himself or his family and he rarely lost his temper. I was the youngest of his six children, and, as he had delayed marriage until the age of fifty, by the time I was born he was retired from his profession of mining engineer and consultant. He used to take care of me while my mother, twenty three years younger, taught first grade at Nevada City Elementary School. I remember his serving me exactly what he ate, so early on I became an aficionado of tamales, codfish cakes, and bacon. He loved to read and always had books around him, probably the reason I ended up in my profession of librarianship. He used to tell me stories about his gold mining days and how much he enjoyed the thrill of discovering a rich placer deposit or a vein of pure gold in the pure white quartz of a hard rock mine. The summer during his college years he tried to find that same excitement in the gambling halls of the Alaska gold rush, only to lose all of his savings amongst the flashing lights, music, and clicking wheels of the "mechanical bandits." He learned his lesson and stuck to the pursuit of legitimate gold after that. At the end of his life, the time that I knew him, he was pursuing the metaphorical gold of the philosopher in preparation for his own death. Like me, he loved Greek and Latin literature and poetry, and could still quote lengthy passages from the Iliad and Odyssey that he had memorized in high school sixty years earlier. There is a line from the end of a Plato dialogue (the Phaedrus) that sums up my father for me---he may have even quoted the original Greek to me, "May that amount of gold be mine which only the temperate man is able to bear and understand." Many years after his death in 1958, I found in a book of his a poem he had written as a young man of twenty-nine. Here is the last stanza of that poem: "Soft as the whisper of angels, Twilight steals from afar, Clear as our faith in our dreaming, Shines the evening star."
Geologists of California Series: Charles Scott Haley By From California Geology, (Sacramento: California Division of Mines and Geology, July 1988, pp. 157 – 159). INTRODUCTION Charles Scott Haley, who is perhaps best known as the author of Gold placers of California (California State Mining Bureau Bulletin 92, 1923), possessed a brilliant mind and keen observational powers which contributed to his establishment as an expert in the field of placer gold deposits both in California and abroad. FAMILY HISTORY Haley was a descendent of Scottish and English immigrants who came to California in the 1850s. His grandfather, Ebenezer Haley, and his father, Caleb Scott Haley, were sea captains. After hearing reports of the gold strikes, the family decided to settle in California. Shortly after arriving in California, they tried their luck mining in the Sierra Nevada at the newly founded gold mine camp of Goodyear Bar near Downieville. Although the mining venture was unusually successful, Haley's grandfather decided the bawdy gold mine camp was not a good environment in which to raise a family. Using profits derived from the mines, he moved his family to a large farm tract in the Irvington district of Alameda County. CHILDHOOD Charles Scott Haley was born in Alameda County in 1884. Coincidentally, during that same year the United States Circuit Court issued the Sawyer decision, which banned widespread hydraulic mining in California. As a youngster and teenager young Charles was considered a prodigy; he rapidly mastered his assignments in school and was a voracious reader. His mother recognized his potential and wanted her son to become a professor of Greek and Roman classical literature at the University of California, Berkeley. However, early in his life Charles had developed a fascination with mining, possibly from learning of his grandfather's and father's exploits in the gold camps or from reading about rich gold strikes in such papers as the Mining and Scientific Press. This fascination ultimately led to his decision to choose a career in mining instead of classical literature, although he was well versed in the classics. By 1907 at the age of 23 he had completed a Bachelor degree at the College of Mining, University of California, Berkeley. This was the most advanced degree available at that time in the College. EARLY CAREER During the next five years (1907-1912), Haley gained professional experience in mining and milling operations by undertaking about 30 different jobs as a miner and millman, including the position of assistant superintendent at the Big Flat hydraulic mine in Trinity County. Much of his early mining experience was derived from knowledgeable Cornish miners working in the lode mines of the Grass Valley district. His acute field experience and practical working knowledge of placer deposits assisted him in rapidly gaining expertise in the diversified field of placer gold recovery. Several major British companies sent him to Columbia and Peru in South America and Honduras in Central America to evaluate placer deposits. Other major American companies retained him to examine placers in California, Oregon, and Alaska. Shortly after opening a consulting office in San Francisco in 1917, he joined the U.S. Army and served with the engineering corps in France during World War I. He attained the rank of major in the corps. Even during the war Haley continued to have an interest in mining- related matters. Much of his free time during active duty was spent on formulating proposed plans to dam several California rivers to retain hydraulic mining debris. Even though he was partially handicapped by exposure to mustard gas during World War I, after the war he returned to South America for two years to conduct geologic evaluations for both gold and oil properties on behalf of Sinclair Oil Company. The fieldwork at high elevations in the Andes agreed with him, and he was fortuitously cured of the respiratory problems caused by exposure to mustard gas. POST-WAR YEARS Soon after returning to the United States in 1921 from conducting a comprehensive evaluation of numerous placer de- posits in British Columbia, Haley was retained by the California State Mining Bureau to write a detailed report on the gold placers of California. Haley was considered a placer deposit expert par excellence by his peers and was wisely chosen for this task. His years of field experience evaluating placer deposits in North America and South America provided him with a broad understanding of genetic and depositional processes under a variety of environmental conditions. His exceptional memory helped him to systematically compile the occurrences of different types of placer deposits in California. In addition, such noted contemporaries as Henry Bradley, Mark Alling, Clarence Logan, E. C. Uren, and James Hill provided him with accumulated data for the project. During the next two years (1922-1923) he was engaged in the preparation of Bulletin 92, Gold placers of California, which encompassed all economic occurrences of alluvial gold deposits known in the entire state. This was the first comprehensive study of Tertiary fluvial (river) placers, dredge fields, and dry placers on a statewide basis. The work, particularly that done on Tertiary placers in the northern Sierra Nevada and in the Klamath Mountains, still serves as a standard reference today. Haley directed part of his investigation to formulating a feasibility plan so large scale development of placer deposits could resume under the provisions of the Caminetti Act of 1893. Haley thoroughly understood both sides of the sensitive issue. On the one hand, he believed that hydraulic mining interests had violated the rights of farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys by allowing an estimated 600 million cubic yards of mining debris to destroy valuable farmlands and alter formerly navigable rivers -- thus, precipitating the closure of the hydraulic mines by the famous Sawyer decision of 1884. On the other hand, he calculated that nearly four billion cubic yards of minable placer reserves were available for economic exploitation if hydraulic or dredge mining was restored under the proper conditions. Therefore, he outlined a comprehensive plan of debris control in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys that postulated future benefits for farmers and miners alike. Many of his debris control recommendations were subsequently adopted by state and federal agencies (although not entirely implemented for the same reasons). LATER CAREER During the 1920s Haley's consulting business continued to boom with various types of mine evaluations and development projects, culminating in his position as chief engineer of a major sulfur operation located in Nevada. After he worked there nearly two years getting the mine into production, the stock market collapsed, causing funds from the mine's Wall Street financiers to rapidly dwindle. In vain, Haley spent considerable amounts of his own funds in an attempt to put the mine into production. During the 1930s Haley continued a busy career as consulting engineer and consulting geologist on both placer and lode gold properties located throughout the western United States. He devoted much time to the Bunker Hill mine project, a drift placer mine located in the Sierra Nevada near Johnsville in Plumas County. Being an outdoor enthusiast, he would often snowshoe into the remote mine area in the dead of winter to the dismay of the local United States Forest Service officials, who knew the danger posed by winter storms in this region. In 1940 Haley returned to Honduras to work on several large placer projects for a major British company, even though his Honduran mine development plans were severely curtailed by the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. He regarded the curtailment of these proposed mine projects as one of the major disappointments of his career because he was not able to fulfill his objective of involving major mining interests in this production program. RETIREMENT Haley became semi-retired from an active consulting career in the mid-1940s. Between short-term consulting jobs, he devoted lime to writing humorous mine accounts for a biweekly column in a Grass Valley, California newspaper. He wrote an account (never published), which chronicled many of his life experiences in a humorous light. In addition to keeping current on geological and engineering matters, he retained an active interest in academic pursuits. Throughout his career he was still considered an expert in classical literature and could recite the Iliad in Greek or Latin at will. In 1958 after routine surgery, he was given a transfusion of mismatched blood; and he died. This fatal mistake ended the long and successful career of one of California's most eminent placer mine experts. HALEY'S PHILOSOPHY As a scholar and intellectual, Haley believed that the ability to critically analyze a geologic problem was paramount to success in applying earth science principles to practical mining problems, such as predicting the location of previously undiscovered buried placer channels and lode deposits. Speaking as someone who truly loved his work, Haley felt no one should be compelled to work at a profession - that a person should love his work so much that he could hardly wait for the next workday to begin.
From Charles Scott Haley’s unpublished autobiography, written in 1957. Old Grass Valley A hot June afternoon in 1905. The little train, puffing prodigiously, had left the Colfax depot, wound round under the big Southern Pacific trestle, and come out on what was then one of the highest viaducts in the world, spanning Bear River. About five in the afternoon we stopped at Chicago Park, where was the only green area I had seen on the entire trip since leaving Berkeley. It looked good to me, and for a moment I wondered whether I had arrived in Grass Valley. I had left Berkeley that morning, after returning from summer surveying camp at Santa Cruz, in response to a telegram from Brick Walker, telling me that he had rustled a job for me. I knew it was authoritative because Brick's father was at that time underground superintendent for the North Star and Central shafts. Also, I needed the job because when I arrived in Grass Valley, I had just ten cents in my pocket. Arrived at the old depot in Grass Valley, Brick was there to meet me. He took me down to the old Fillmore Hotel, at the corner of Auburn and Main Streets--a filling station now occupies the site. There I was given room and board, with the understanding that was going to work next morning. I then went up to the Clinch Mercantile Company, and was introduced to Charles Clinch, one of the kindliest men I have ever met. His name and memory are still green among generations of college kids who, like myself, were unquestioningly given credit for clothes, lunch bucket, shoes for work--anything that they had reasonable need for. Next morning, at seven o’clock, I appeared at the Central headframe, and was assigned to work on 34 level by Dick Barry, the foreman at the Central.... Next morning I found that Dick had taken my partner away to another stope, so I was to work alone. I fell to work with a vim on the muckpile, trying to warm myself up, but about eleven o'clock I was halted by Mike Roche, who stopped his machine up at the head of the stope to yell down at me, "Hey, son -- taper now till noon. Don't ye know that ye've mucked more dirt already than two av ye did yester mornin’, all by yeself. That won't do, son--it's puttin' old John in wrong." I saw the logic of it, and sat down till lunch time. For a half an hour we all collected out in the incline which ran up from the Shaft to 34 level and ate our lunches-- full, satisfying food. All of my companions were either "cousins" of the old stock or Irishmen. Pasties were eaten by the dozen, and how good they were. The scraps were thrown in a heap and a ring of candle snuffs lit around, them. We sat and watched the great grey rats hungrily sniffing round the circle, but drawing back from the candle flames in terror. Finally a leader, bigger and bolder than the rest, leaped over to the food, breaking the ring of snuffs as he did so. In a twinkling, dozens of others followed him and the pile of scraps had vanished. The show being over, we all ambled back to our various stations. The old time Cornish miner won my respect and liking from then on. There were no miners in the world who were better at breaking ground with a minimum of hole and powder. On coming to a face, the first thing they would do would be bar down and make everything absolutely sate; on that they needed no instruction from anybody. Then the machine man and his helper would sit down and smoke for half an hour while studying the face. Not a cross seam or cleavage escaped this inspection. Then they barred up and set the heavy machines--which in those days weighed from a hundred to a hundred and fifty pounds--and when they got their round in, it always broke every inch of ground -- no bootlegs and no missed holes, except once in a while from unseen defects in the fuse. They were indeed masters of their craft, and the world is the worse for their passing. Simple, kindly men, who made their heads save their hands, they taught an impressionable youngster many of the tricks of their craft with the greatest patience and good nature.... Grass Valley at that time was one of the most prosperous and democratic communities in the whole West. When the miner got off shift, he usually went home to his family, cleaned up and dressed in his good clothes and in the evening came down for a glass of beer. You could not tell by appearances which was the miner and which was the banker. Often, the owners of the North Star and the Empire would come down on the street and respond gladly to first name greeting from their employees, and be invited in for a drink. It was just as likely to be the employed as the employer who paid for the drink, for all men were equal once the shift was over. I have been in mining camps all over the world since, but I have never seen as much open good will displayed as there was between employer and employed. Later, in Nevada, I was introduced to the other extreme of bitterness, in the great strike of 1907. For the next two months, I learned much. I watched Ed Oliver installing his new-fangled filter at the North Star cyanide plant. I went on Sundays to all the old mines in the camp, and went down many of them just for curiosity’s sake. Everywhere I found kindly men who would go out of their way to teach a willing kid. The Brunswick, the Idaho -where I watched men sheet spiling through abandoned till at peril of their lives -the Golden Center, the Empire, the Pennsylvania, and the W. Y. O. D. -Work your own diggings. The old Hartrey, the Allison Ranch, the Sultana, all came under my observation. But college had its claims, and in September I took the same little puffing train back to Colfax on my way to Berkeley to commence my junior year. I had made many friends--some of whom are still living in Grass Valley and Nevada City--and I had many good times at picnics out at Olympia, but one of the outstanding memories I have is of that grand old, kindly gentleman, Charles Clinch, whom I was to know well in after years whenever engineering work called me through the town. I fell in love with the Twin Cities, and made up my mind that some day I would come back and live in the district. Little did I know that forty-two years later, I would come to Nevada City and live in contentment with my beloved wife and six children.  |