8-mile Gin Lin National Recreation Trail near Applegate Lake. During his time in Oregon, Gin Lin reportedly took out over $2 million in gold from his various mining claims and had an account worth over $1 million in Cornelius Beekman’s Jacksonville bank- that’s over $30M by today’s standards!Explore the Palmer Creek Diggings site by following the. Through hard work, ingenuity, and social prowess, Gin Lin and his mining company began to play an important role in Southern Oregon’s economy. Hydraulic mining required a constant source of water so Gin Lin and his men dug ditches spanning dozens of miles long- many of which can be explored today. In order to extract gold from the slopes above the Applegate River, he introduced hydraulic techniques which at the time, was relatively unheard of in Southern Oregon. In 1881, he purchased the Palmer Creek Diggings in Applegate Valley, which had been worked decades earlier. Here, he found great success which lead him to lease and purchase other “played out” placer mines in the vicinity from white miners who’d already taken out the easy gold. Despite Oregon’s exclusion laws, a mining boss named Gin Lin was able to purchase a claim on the Little Applegate near Sterling Creek in 1864. Rich claims were taken by white Americans, while poor and “picked through” ones were sold to Chinese mining operations. News of the West’s Gold Rush reached China in the fall of 1848 and with the promise of the “golden hills” along with the social unrest in China, thousands of Chinese men left behind their wives and families and made the long journey across the Pacific. In fact, nearly half of Southwestern Oregon’s miners were Chinese throughout the 1860s. When gold was discovered in the hills, not only did it attract Americans, but fortune-seekers from around the world.
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