** Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine ** A Miners Journal **

[GhostMiner]

24 minutes ago, rvpopeye said:

 Resting in peace undah that tree or rock down yondah chummy  !         Sly ol' Jed didn't put that location down in the book I bet !    And no geologist report has the stash location charted. hmmmmmmmm, and were there 4 stash piles as per the original agreement ?????

And you asked a question about detectors finding large gold very deep..LOL 

I am somewhat telepathic , I can tell you what you're thinking .

If you tell me enough times...

Sure , I'll come help ya look , but can ya wait till my mom passes ? She's the only reason I'm up here hanging in this icicle land beyond september  ( I'm slowly being covered in white again as I type this)  she's 98 but still speaking what's left of her mind and firing the staff at the home on a daily basis usually for stealing her stuff ,,,,that she hides so they don't steal it and then can't find it herself..... so might outlive ME.             I guess !😜 

What is winter like up there ? can ya still push a shovel in the ground ?     Like that matters when you have an excavator ! 

I have a few ideas about site security though ,,,ya knowww a mine site is a dangerous place if ya don't know where to step....and have I got campfire tales about how to keep people away from the wiring. Did you know lots of times they have electricity in them ?

May I have my next installment now ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is a most interesting post. 

[EL NINO77]

I admit, that I also thought about it, whether Jed and his friends ... really took all the gold with them ... ???

  .... because, to go ... with all the gold at once can also be a great risk ... and also very dangerous ... even if they are experienced guys .... !!!

Like ... Jed and his group .. they managed to handle the "gold rush" ... even with the growing gold ... and also .. I work hard on the hot spot ......

  And ... now to Jed's story .... I'm looking forward to what's next .... and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the next days ....👍 ...

[GhostMiner]

18 minutes ago, EL NINO77 said:

I admit, that I also thought about it, whether Jed and his friends ... really took all the gold with them ... ???

  .... because eating all the gold at once can also be a big risk ... and also very dangerous ... even if they are experienced guys ....

Like ... Jed and his group .. they managed to master the "golden fever" ... even with the growing gold ... and that I continue to work hard on the hot spot ....

  And ... now to Jed's story .... I'm looking forward to what's next .... and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the next days ....👍 ...

Another entry coming. As far as the gold - there will be things revealed in the journal and things left to qustion. Jed did not post any locations in the jornal as to where any gold was hidden. The property is vast and thousands of places to hide jars of gold. I have found empty cans but no gold. However, I am not using any metal detectors. 

[GhostMiner]

     JULY 7   1936

   Yesterday we scraped bottom on the south side of the kettle. The take was huge. There was 129 ounces in the pan. We are all stunned. And we are not finished. I have made nearly 7 yrs of labor in less than three months time on my percentage. I couldn’t have done it without the crew. Once again we broke out the bottle and drank to the gold. Then we went back to work. We need to finish working the other side of the kettle and clean it out.

   We moved the stacked rock in the bottom over to the other side which took us most of the morning. We took our lunch break and returned to work in the extreme heat of 100 degrees. Jacob  and me worked the bottom while Will cranked the buckets up and set them on the truck 20 at a time and drove them down to John. I think we have a couple of days to work on this side of the hole before we reach country assuming the bottom is flat. We had to pry a lot of big rocks loose and clean them and carry them over to the low side for stacking. About mid afternoon Will gave a holler down to us. He said there was a stranger coming. Jacob and me got up to the surface and saw him walking over to our dig site.

   I asked him who he was and what he wanted. He said he owned a claim about a mile to our east along the lower creek on the mountain. He was doing ok he said but was looking for better ground. He had two more men working over there with him. He said he was contacting other claim owners in the area and trying to form a co operative  to pool their resources and  manpower as well as hire protection to guard the mines against thieves. It seems we aren’t the only ones dealing with hooligans.

   I told him I appreciated the offer but we were only going to be here short term and had no interest. He had to have noticed our large diggings but said nothing about any of our operations. He gave me his contact information before he left and told me to contact him if we wanted to join the group. We continued on with our labor and finished the day with 105 buckets. Our progress was a bit slow as we were all feeling the heavy work now.

   That night at camp we sat around the fire and talked about the co operative. John was afraid they would try to push everyone into this group and use some kind of tactics to get us to join as well as take a fee or gold percentage from us. I don’t know how many groups are actively mining in this area and really have no interest. My only goal is to get this gold out of the ground as quickly as possible. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ............

   

[Muppet]

5 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

   So I know that Jed was working with a prominant geologist. I have his name as it's in the report. Jed never mentions him but I bet he's getting something out of this operation. Let's assume 10% - just a guess. So that gives Jed 90%. Now John is hired for a 50% cut according to Jed. Now that leaves Jed 45%. Then he brings in his brother Jacob & Will for a small %. No idea what he considered small but let's say another 10% to them combined. John was contributing to Will's gold payday as well. So now Jed is down to 35%. I bet i'm close on that. So 35% of 581 ounces is 203.35 ounces to this date in the journal. Probably 4 or 5 yrs wages back in those days. Keep working Jed, you ain't retired yet. 

If I read correctly,

The first kettle was totally between Jed and John, something like 200+oz .So that beefs them up to start. then they had a period with Jacob before Will arrived , so its hard math , but I believe they all hide their split separate and makes me wonder if one dies his cut will be lost as the other have no clue where it is.

All this whiskey and provisions don't grow on trees. I believe they must have another party selling some gold to bank roll the dig.. maybe the geo ?

If they paid for whiskey, tools, clothes and food with gold surely they would be followed and watched.

[GhostMiner]

7 minutes ago, Muppet said:

If I read correctly,

The first kettle was totally between Jed and John, something like 200+oz .So that beefs them up to start. then they had a period with Jacob before Will arrived , so its hard math , but I believe they all hide their split separate and makes me wonder if one dies his cut will be lost as the other have no clue where it is.

All this whiskey and provisions don't grow on trees. I believe they must have another party selling some gold to bank roll the dig.. maybe the geo ?

If they paid for whiskey, tools, clothes and food with gold surely they would be followed and watched.

Good points. They are making plenty of gold to buy provisions on their own though so not sure about needing to be funded by a geologist. I do think the geologist may have gotten a cut of the gold. I am in the process of searching back in time to try & contact relatives of the geologist. However, even if I get to interview them they may not know anything about this project. There is more that took place afterwards as well and I am trying to work on that part of the story at present. The information trail outside of the report or journal has grown cold over the years. However, I am trying.

[GhostMiner]

58 minutes ago, GhostMiner said:

Good points. They are making plenty of gold to buy provisions on their own though so not sure about needing to be funded by a geologist. I do think the geologist may have gotten a cut of the gold. I am in the process of searching back in time to try & contact relatives of the geologist. However, even if I get to interview them they may not know anything about this project. There is more that took place afterwards as well and I am trying to work on that part of the story at present. The information trail outside of the report or journal has grown cold over the years. However, I am trying.

Here is something interesting - I have located the son of the geologist involved with Jed. I am trying to contact him via Facebook. In some of his writings it seems his father talked with him quite a bit about mining ventures prior to his death.

[GhostMiner]

   JULY 8   1936

   We put 47 ounces in our bank this morning. John was joking about it saying the country rock must be slanted away from this area and the bigger gold had spilled to the side we already mined. I just laughed and said I would take it and not throw it back in the hole. Everyone was in a good mood despite the heat. Our creek was getting very low on water except for the pooled area several hundred feet to the north. I told the crew we needed to try our best to finish this kettle soon because our water was disappearing. Everyone agreed. 

   Back at the dig site it was hard and steady work. The north side of the kettle was down to about 15 feet and we were determined to get to country. After lunch the heat was big. Well over 100 degrees again by early afternoon. We pushed through it and Will was down in the hole with me when he hollered  out to check the bottom. A massive slab of country rock was being exposed. We worked outward around the edges and hit huge boulders. We were stopped out with 74 buckets. The level was about 16 ft in depth. Our kettle was mined out. Jacob came down into the hole and had a look. I told them we had mined out a glory hole and should be proud miners. It was still not quitting time so we rooted around the bottom seeing if we could scrape out any more gravels but there were none left. I told them we were finished here. We will need to find another area to dig.

   Back at camp that night we sat around the fire and talked about everything that had happened to us. The crew was drinking Luckys and I opened a bottle of Bushmill. I rolled a Burley and thought about all the people who were in hard times and all the prospectors dreaming of finding gold. I was the lucky one. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ...............

[rvpopeye]

Time to make like a hockey team and skate the puck outta there .............?

 

[GhostMiner]

3 minutes ago, rvpopeye said:

Time to make like a hockey team and skate the puck outta there .............?

 

Jed? Never.