China Ditch

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

From the record

“The China Ditch in Douglas County, in the U.S. state of Oregon, was a 30-mile (48 km) canal built in part by Chinese laborers to supply water for the hydraulic mining of gold. The Myrtle Creek Consolidated Hydraulic Gold Mining and Manufacturing Company began purchasing land for the ditch in 1890 and was bankrupt by 1894.”
Wikipedia article China Ditch, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 47 National Register listings published here for Douglas County · listed in 1991 · category: Structure.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Upper reaches of N. Myrtle Cr., Myrtle Creek
When was it listed? May 1991
Category. structure
Census division. Myrtle Creek-Riddle
National Register reference number. 91000616 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

37 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 37 fires within 5 miles of China Ditch between 1992 and 2019, burning about 36 acres in total. 21 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	21
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4
Recreation and ceremony	2
Other causes	2
Debris and open burning	1
Smoking	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
4 September 2005	Other causes	under an acre	Douglas Forest Protective Association	NORTH MYRTLE # 1
28 September 1994	Natural	under an acre	Roseburg District	WEAVER CR.
28 September 1994	Natural	under an acre	Roseburg District	RISERBUTTE
28 September 1994	Natural	under an acre	Douglas Forest Protective Association	RISER BUTTE #2
28 September 1994	Natural	under an acre	Roseburg District	LANE MTN.
28 September 1993	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Douglas Forest Protective Association	NORTH MYRTLE ROAD
26 September 2003	Smoking	under an acre	Fremont-Winema National Forest	TIPSOO
22 September 1993	Other causes	under an acre	Douglas Forest Protective Association	ROCKVIEW LANE

Every fire recorded in Douglas County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 10 workings within 5 miles of China Ditch: 7 past producers, 3 occurrences. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Gold. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Buck Fork Placers	Gold	Occurrence
Buck Fork Placers	Gold	Past Producer
Dieckman Placer	Gold	Past Producer
Dieckman Placer	Gold	Past Producer
Jew Gulch Placer	Gold	Past Producer
Jew Gulch Placer	Gold	Past Producer
Martin Placer	Gold	Past Producer
Martin Placer	Gold	Past Producer
Overman Lode	Gold	Occurrence
Overman Lode	Gold	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Douglas County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 91000616 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Douglas County	All 47 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.