Quot. 1832 furnishes the probable (Dutch) origin of this word.
1832. He saw a beautiful meadow, and flourishing grass cut on the declining hill back of the City Hall towards the Kolch.—Watson, ‘Historic Tales of New York,’ p. 92.
1850. The word gulch denotes a mountain ravine,… steep, abrupt, and inaccessible.—Bayard Taylor, ‘Eldorado,’ p. 87. (N.E.D.)
1851. By the time you have finished … building a Mint, the gold mines in California may be as dry as the gulches from which the gold is gathered in midsummer.—Mr. Thompson of Pa., House of Repr., Jan. 31: Cong. Globe, p. 399.
1854. I was obliged to deviate from a straight line to avoid the gulches.—Putnam’s Mag., iii. 26/1 (Jan.). (Italics in the original.)
1862. Discovery of a New Gulch.—Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Nov. 20.
1869. I eyed with no great cheerfulness the unrailed, rough, rickety-looking bridges, over “gulches” seventy feet deep in some places, while I reflected that I had no companions but those rude pioneers and the driver, of whom I knew nothing.—Atlantic Monthly, xxiv. p. 333/2 (Sept.).
1890. As winter drew near, however, it was evident that other means of shelter would be necessary, consequently log cabins were constructed around among the ravines and gulches in all suitable localities convenient to a spring of water.—Haskins, ‘Argonauts of California,’ p. 58.
1909. It was a settlement of log cabins and rough board shacks in an opening between two mountain peaks, too narrow to be called a valley and too wide to be called a gulch.—N.Y. Evening Post, Feb. 22.
