Pock pile alongside the Merced river in Snelling

This is a picture that brings back a lot of memories for me. This picture was taken in 2009, in a place called Snelling. I used to go here a lot when I was a kid.

Do you see all these rocks? This is on the banks of the Merced River. If you've ever seen those pictures from Yosemite of big waterfalls, those waterfalls feed into the Merced River, empties out of Yosemite, and down through the foothills.

That's how the city of Merced got it's name, from the Merced River. A Spanish Army officer named Moraga was going thorough the foothills with some soldiers in 1806. They came across a river that had very cold water from melting snow. After drinking the water, the Spanish Army officer proclaimed it a river of "mercy". In Spanish, "mercy" is "Merced".

Anyways, back to all the rocks in this picture. Back in the gold rush era, they just used this machine that was basically a gigantic shovel. They went to rivers and "scooped" the floor of the river, rocks and all, into a gigantic machine.

The gold was filtered out, and what was left - rocks - were just dumped on the river shore.

That's what you're seeing here. Industrial waste from like 1880. It goes on like this, for miles.

See why environmental regulations are kind of important?