The City of Six property is 60 acres of unpatented placer mining claims. It is located in Sierra County, CA approximately two miles south of the old gold mining of Downieville. The famous Ruby Mine property adjoins the claims to the south and numerous other mines are in the near vicinity.

The claims are at an elevation of 4800 to 5200 feet. Roads lead directly to the claims. The best way to access the property is to drive from the west from Henness Pass Road along Pliocene Ridge.

Gas, lodging, and other amenities are available in Downieville.

The City of Six mine lies along the Eastern Melones Fault in an area known as the Downieville gold belt. The auriferous quartz veins lie in Calaveras slate and extend in a northerly orientation. They are usually from one to ten feet thick and carry about ¼ to a ½ ounce per ton. The veins can extend underground for thousands of feet and are well known for their bonanza ore shoots which in some cases have yielded hundreds of ounces of gold over just a few feet.

The numerous veins at the Ruby property lie along the belt as does the neighboring Carson Mine. The historic Triple Pocket Mine about a half mile away is a northern extension of the City of Six vein.

The tertiary channel known as the Great Blue Lead or Bald Mountain Channel occurs at the property at the base of andesite and basalt. The channel is about 500 feet wide and composed of mostly metamorphic rock and quartz. The gravels are cemented in some areas. The channel’s course is north to south and continues north to the Monte Cristo and White Bear Mines and south into the Alleghany area.

The channel was the richest one mined at the adjacent Ruby property. Gold is predominantly concentrated in the lowest 10 feet of the channel and has worked its way into the first several inches of bedrock in places.

The claims extend for a little over a half mile along the channel. Unworked portions of the ancient channel are exposed along the walls of the mined area and at least 20 acres of the property appears to be unmined. Further exploration should be conducted to determine exact yardage of channel that remains on the property but certainly there appears to be a substantial amount of gravel available. At the Ruby Mine geologists estimate that around four miles of channel remain.

Grades in the lower parts of the channel are usually from around .15 ounces per cubic yard to .3 ounces per cubic yard the average being .2 ounces per cubic yard. By conservatively using the lowest grade and assuming that a quarter mile of channel remains unmined the property would have a gold resource of 8,800 ounces or over $10 million.

Another ancient channel parallels the Bald Mountain channel at the City of Six mine which also traverses north to south and into the Ruby property. It is known as the Deep Rock Creek channel and likely originated after the Bald Mountain channel stopped flowing. This channel was found to be rich in gold by the early miners at the City of Six site and represents another substantial exploration target in addition to the Bald Mountain channel. The southern part of the claim represents the potential for a large deposit of this channel that appears to be mostly untapped in this area. It is also possible that previously undiscovered lode deposits may be found in the process of mining the gravels. Such discoveries have been encountered numerous times at the Ruby Mine and other tertiary gravel mines in the district.

The property is suitable for open pit mining or underground tunneling. There is plenty of space to deposit tailings in the already mined pit area. Overburden should be cleared away to gain access to the richest portions of the gravel.

There is a year round pond on the property at the pit area where water could be used and recycled for mining.

The mining season usually ends in the winter months on the account of snowfall but generally lasts from April to November.

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In 1849 a party of the prospectors led by Major William Downie made their way up the North Fork of the Yuba River. They settled at the confluence of the Yuba and the Downie Rivers and set up the camp that would turn into the town of Downieville which rapidly become the 5th largest city in California.

The surrounding claims proved to be hugely rich. At Tin Cup Diggings miners would fill a cup with gold each day and all around the district finding over a pound of gold per day was not uncommon. During the next several years prospectors moved from the streams to the mountainsides where they discovered ancient river channels also immensely rich in gold and the quartz veins that were responsible for enriching the placers.

The City of Six was one of the most well-known mountaintop deposits. After discovering the ancient channel there in the 1860s miners began to sink shafts through the gravel to reach the bedrock where much of the gold had accumulated. Many nuggets weighing over an ounce were taken out and soon hydraulic mining commenced which washed the tailings into Slug Canyon. However, development was hampered by a lack of water.

It was in the process of washing over the ancient river channel that gold bearing quartz veins were found in the bedrock. At first there were no means to process the ore so the mine owners merely stockpiled it beside the mine for years before constructing a small mill. In the early twentieth century the mine was owned by two men named Hodgkinson and Henderson who encountered bonanza ore. It was roughly around the 1920s when mining ceased at the City of Six. In 1990 a mining company purchased the property along with the neighboring Carson Mine for over $2 million.

Together with the Golden Bear mine to the south, the City of Six is estimated to have produced 96,000 ounces of gold.