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

[GhostMiner]

It takes a great deal of work in order to get water to the faultline. You are lifting a total of about 150 - 300 feet depending on the area. Where Jed is mining at the new kettle it's a lift of about 200 feet. You are pumping water from a creek at the bottom of a mountain and carrying it a long distance. Most modern pumps with a 3 inch line have a lift of maybe 75 ft. I don't know what size pumps Jed is using but they are most likely small. That's why they need four of them. He would also loose a lot of volume and pressure over the long run. If the pumps are rated for 10,000 gallons per hour he would be lucky to get half of that rate at the pit.

[GhostMiner]

   AUGUST 20   1936

   The crew was up bright and early and we ate bacon and hot water cornbread. I had my usual coffee and Irish Whiskey starter. We were all anxious to start the new mining operation. Sarge stationed himself not far from the first pump at the creek to protect it from any hooligans. Ben had a watch post on the other side of camp and would see anyone who attempted to walk up the mountain from that side. Of course the crew was also armed as usual. We have learned never to go anywhere on the claims without guns.

Jacob and Will fired up the pumps while John and me headed up to the pit. It was good being able to work with John again. We got water coming up and gave the signal with a single rifle shot that all was good. The first pump was nearly a mile away. If we lost water we would fire two shots, pause, then fire two more. We had the tom set close to the digging area and it was nice not having to carry buckets. We both shoveled gravel directly into the hopper grizzly on the tom. It worked great and Whiskey Jack was a genius. We had a water diverter so when we took a break we could close off most but not all of the water supply and divert it into a run off pipe so water wouldn’t wash through the sluice. Now we had all the water and gravel we needed to mine and I was as happy as I have ever been. I didn’t even care how much gold we got as long as we could keep running gravel every day. I had become hooked on mining.

   By Late afternoon we stopped shoveling and told Jacob and Will to shut down the pumps. Then everyone came up to the pit and we did the cleanup before supper. This was the new routine now. We had tubs up there for panning and we all went to work and got 3 ounces for about 9 hours of shoveling. We were all happy. The crew walked back down the mountain taking swigs from a bottle of whiskey Jack had brought up with him.

  TO BE CONTINUED .................

[GhostMiner]

Good old Whiskey Jack LOL. 

[GhostMiner]

 AUGUST 21   1936

   At breakfast we heard Sarge give a holler to halt and we went down to where he was stationed and saw  two guys standing there. Sarge hollered out to them asking what they wanted. They said they were looking for the mine owners. I told Sarge to let them come up. They were dressed in fancy clothes and said they were professional investors from Nevada. I asked them what they were here for. They said they invested in small gold mining operations and helped take them to a big scale company. They had been in the area and told us that we may not realize it but we have become the talk of the area. They said the talk was we have made a big gold strike. The investors were interested in finding out more and putting money into our little operation for a percentage. They told us that they could provide equipment and mine workers and we could sit back and collect the money and they would run everything. They said that if we showed them proof of what we were getting in gold they would be very interested in making a deal.

   I asked them what kind of deal and they told me they put in all the money and we would get 30% of the profits. They said don’t think that is small because we will take your little operation to a big scale and probably 20 or 30 times the gold. I laughed at the offer. I said I've heard about investors in mining operations. They make it sound good with a percentage of profits from a large scale operation but they inflate the costs and you never see much of a profit at the end of the season. I told them I liked mining for myself and really didn’t care about getting any bigger and if I did I would do it with my own money. I also told them that I wasn’t sure who they had been talking with but we still hadn’t found much gold out here and I thought that the claims were looking to be mined out by the old timers. They just shook their heads and bid us a good day and left their contact information if we changed our minds. 

   We all headed back up the mountain talking about the investors and having a laugh. Whiskey Jack once again warned that we needed to be careful as there was a lot of talk about us in the area and maybe further away as well. He was always worried about us getting robbed.

   We got back to shoveling and John and me gave it hell. The weather had cooled just a little and we were throwing gravels into the hopper as fast as we could. The pumps were working well. When late afternoon came and we signaled the shut down of the pumps we had started a nice hole in the bottom of the pit.We weren’t too far above country and there was also lot’s of loose pay gravel on the north side of the wall we were digging. I told John that the old timers did a poor job up here and left a lot for us to dig. We ended the day with a weigh about an hour before dark and got 4 more ounces.

   TO BE CONTINUED ..................

[GhostMiner]

On 3/27/2022 at 9:07 PM, bsieb said:

This is SO good! Thank you for posting this!

 

Thanks for reading rhe journal.

[GhostMiner]

On 3/26/2022 at 5:33 PM, Hunterjunk said:

While i have been slack in the giving of likes i have to say i have enjoyed this thread  more than anything i have ever read on any forum !  So it's some sort of Super Dooper Like from me . Thanks for all the words and pics .

Thanks for reading.

[Cascade Steven]

I agree.  This is a spellbinding tale and all true.  So much better than a movie. 👍👍👍

[rvpopeye]

Sure is better than watching TV !

[deathray]

I concur with everyone. This is frigging great man. Thanks for taking time out of each day ,to post these. It's going to suck when it's done,lol.

[GhostMiner]

24 minutes ago, deathray said:

I concur with everyone. This is frigging great man. Thanks for taking time out of each day ,to post these. It's going to suck when it's done,lol.

Thanks. I enjoy posting it. Lot's of great readers like you!