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    Hydraulic mining is another kind of surface mining.  This was used in the 1800s to find gold after placer mining had already been used.  After the gold was gone, miners would make channels where water under pressure could be sprayed on the rock or gravel hillsides.  The water pressure broke down the rock and washed large hunks of it downhill.  The miners wanted to find the gold in a quicker way than panning, so they used sluices.  Like the picture to the right, the water was sent down sluices where the gold, rocks, and gravel dropped to the bottom.  The gold was separated from the rock and gravel there.  
     One of the big problems with this kind of mining was what it did to the environment.  It took a mountainside and broke it into chunks of rock and pushed it into other areas and bodies of water.  This wrecked the mountain and the land at the bottom of the mountain.  It blocked rivers when the combination of water, rock, and gravel ran into them.  Even though a few mines kept working until the 1960s, hydraulic mining was stopped because it hurt the environment.

Sluice box
 courtesy of "© Photographer: Amy Green | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Kinds of minerals mined this way:

Gold

Kind of machinery used:

	Sluices
	Giant pressure hoses

Citations:

“Hydraulicking.”  28 Oct. 2005.  <http://www.digistar.mb.ca/minsci/surf/hydraulic.htm>.