This series of pictures of old Southern California were made by Thomas Milholland using the technology of the 1880s in which the photographer had to mix all his own chemicals and prepare the glass plate negative in a dark room on his wagon.

Milholland lived in Valle Vista and traveled on many five-day trips to various areas to ply his trade.

He traveled to the gold fields near Perris to make this week’s picture.

The cast lettering on each of the mills says, "UNION IRON WORKS SAN FRANCISCO CAL. 1894."

The stenciled lettering on the middle mill says, "GOOD HOPE M.C. --- --- RIVERSIDE C. CAL. ------"

The mills were quite new, for there is no buildup of grease and dust, so the picture must have been taken soon after their delivery in 1894.

I wrote about the Good Hope mine in March and did not realize that I had a picture of its stamp mills, which could have been heard in Hemet 20 miles away.

In 1894 Good Hope installed a new 20-stamp mill, so this is probably it.

The stamp mills used a steam engine to drive the camshaft that lifted the heavy stamps one at a time and dropped them onto the ore waiting to be powdered.

When a batch was ready, the door would be raised. The powdered ore was then pushed onto the sorting tables in the foreground, where it was separated from the rock dust.

The remainder was treated with mercury which formed an amalgam with the gold. The mercury was then boiled off in a retort to leave pure gold, which was then cast into ingots for sale to the mint.

The cams were arranged on a shaft so the weights were dropped in a pattern like the firing sequence in a gas engine so the power required from the steam engine was evened out.

The picture shows the heavy weights through the windows of each battery of stamps. It shows three mills with four stamp-weights each, showing three-fifths of the total 20-stamp operation.

Union Iron Works was the precursor of Hunters Point Navy Advertisement
Shipyard, where I spent several weeks in overhaul during my Navy career.

It was built on a swamp southwest of San Francisco in the 1870s near the powder works that furnished the blasting powder for the gold rush.

Union Iron Works made compressors, pumps and stamp mills for the mining industry with a small forge until the 1890s, when the owners decided to make themselves into the West Coast shipbuilders for the US Navy, which was expanding into steamships to replace the sailing ships used through the Civil War years.

They were quite successful in the venture, building several of the ships in The Great White Fleet.

Soon hard times came upon them and Charles Schwab was able to buy the Union Iron for $1,000,000 in 1905. By the time of WWI, they had expanded greatly as Bethlehem Steel and made lots of ships.

When WWII came along, labor troubles closed the plant, so the US government bought the Bethlehem shipyards and put the Navy in charge of the Navy Shipyards at Hunters Point and Oakland.

Two of the ships I served on were built at the Bethlehem shipyards.

If you have pictures such as this or if you recognize the site, please call Bill McBurney at (951) 304-3417 or e-mail billmcb2@msn.com.

The Temecula Valley Historical Society (TVHS) will award a copy of their new DVD, "Early Boom Town Temecula," to the person who best identifies the subject of the picture.

The TVHS meets the second Monday of each month from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Pujol schoolhouse on Santiago St. in Temecula. The public is invited to attend.

The May 11 speaker will be Bill Irwin, who lived in Murrieta Hot Springs when Alive Polarity owned the property.

McBurney is also interested in helping people to scan and preserve their old pictures. "History should be saved," he says.

He sends his thanks to all who have responded to the past articles.

Bill McBurney is a retired Navy Commander who was born in Hemet in 1928 and raised in the Auld Valley, Winchester and Fallbrook.

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