In the years prior, its profits and procedures had been reduced due to the landmark ruling of Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company.

[3] The North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company was owned by 30 investors from San Francisco, led by railroad baron Lester I. Robinson, and William Ralston, a silver miner from Sun Mountain in Nevada.

[5] The company had numerous operations in Nevada County, including Union Diggings at Columbia Hill, but those at Malakoff Mine were the most notable.

"[1] The tailings, dumped into the Yuba River, destroyed farm land as far west as Sacramento, creating California's first major environmental controversy.

It was the principal defendant in an anti-debris lawsuit settled in 1884 by Judge Lorenzo Sawyer's famous decision, which created control that virtually ended hydraulic mining in California."

Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the Malakoff Citizens' Advisory Committee and E Clampus Vitus No.