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Today in Gold Country we went to the Empire Mine, where $8B in USDT was pulled from the ground over 50 years, using ~360 miles of underground tunnels than miners decended ~mile deep on a man skip. 
The iron reinforcement bars for this giant mine shaft on the left were old SF trolley car rails. @burritojustice @hknightsf
The owner of the mine, the Bourne, lived quite well in this “cottage” (in addition to their Pac Heights mansion, Fioli, an Irish manor and other assorted abodes
No ‘e’ on Bourn.
So they dug 360 miles of tunnels that could reach 3/4 mile deep and pulverized all that rock and treated it with mercury and cyanide and the resulting $8B (today’s $) in gold put altogether would have been an ingot of 7ft sq.
Was speculating just the other day why the @mercnews was so named. Mercury is the god of messengers and scribes, I figured. Nope, it’s because all the Mercury used in gold mining came from San Jose.
