The Flat itself was described as about "one hundred and sixty acres, resembling in outline an irregular gibbous semi-circle.

"[6] Orleans Flat lies on a part of the auriferous [gold bearing] channel which runs the length of the San Juan Ridge.

In such channels, the gold lies under layers of gravel, with the richest deposits being close to the bed rock.

[8] The Flats became an early adopter of hydraulic mining, which boomed with the arrival of ditch water.

[11] One authority claimed that the gravel at Orleans was very rich, and the flats pay better returns any of the other deposits in this vicinity.

"[12] In the 1850s, Orleans was the leading town of the Flats, once described as "the most prosperous mining camp" on the Ridge.

J. S. Diehl organized a Sons of Temperance branch and a Sabbath school, but where those meetings were held is not recorded.

Townspeople, alerted by the suspicious conduct of his clerk who "rode furiously" out of town, confronted Dr. Kittredge, who admitted that he had removed the body ostensibly for the purposes of scientific inspection.

In many of these endeavors, he was assisted by his brother Anthony, a resident of Moore's Flat, who went on to found what became the Crown Zellerbach Paper Company.

A few Mexicans and Chinamen make a precarious living in working around the abandoned claims, but with this exception mining is suspended, and now there are not more than half a dozen American residents at the place.

Among the last residents were the four Buck Brothers, all born at Orleans Flat, who mined, farmed and ranched into the 20th century.

[37] Today, apart from the Buck ranch house which sits on a hill overlooking the old townsite, nothing remains but lots of rock piles. '