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


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   AUGUST 23   1936

   After breakfast the crew headed back up the mountain and Whiskey Jack came up to the pit with us and got down in the bottom and had a good look around. He said the old company did a poor job mining this area and left us a lot of good pay gravel to wash. John and me liked hearing that for sure. Jack’s plan was working out and the tom was kept busy all day long. We made good time not having to carry buckets and estimated our production to be over twice what it had been at the first operations. Two men working the tom was exactly what was required and matched up well with the available water supply. The days are beginning to shorten and the nights are longer now. Fall is not too far off. Our day's work was productive and we got 3 ounces of gold for our jars. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

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   Interesting area on top of the faultline south of Jed's workings. Exposed bedrock outcroppings. It would be nice to have an idea of what might be in there before the expense of digging it up with an excavator. Possibly a good area to metal detect before excavating? If so, would a Gold Bug be good enough to do the job? No experience with that kind of work. Any thoughts out there?

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 If you intend to detect for gold I would suggest a good used P.I. detector such as a Minelab GPX series. The soft decomposed nature of the bedrock will allow gold to settle much deeper than the practical range of a VLF detector such as the Gold bug. Also keep in mind that a hydraulic mine like this one with such soft bedrock the miners were able to blast a couple of feet of the bedrock off with their monitors so the remaining exposed bedrock now may be nearly barren.

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2 hours ago, klunker said:

 If you intend to detect for gold I would suggest a good used P.I. detector such as a Minelab GPX series. The soft decomposed nature of the bedrock will allow gold to settle much deeper than the practical range of a VLF detector such as the Gold bug. Also keep in mind that a hydraulic mine like this one with such soft bedrock the miners were able to blast a couple of feet of the bedrock off with their monitors so the remaining exposed bedrock now may be nearly barren.

Yes, that could very well be the case. I may just run an excavator up there and do some digging & take a couple of bulk samples. I usually concentrate activities on the virgin area which have shown good gold but these exposed areas are intriguing. 

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  AUGUST 25   1936

   Last night Whiskey Jack was sitting around the fire with the crew. He was getting drunk and telling stories about the old days here on the mine. He told us all a story about the time a big black bear came into camp in the middle of the night. Jack was in a small tent and the bear took him by surprise. Jack had to crawl out of the back side of the tent fast and before he could get his rifle. The bear saw him behind the tent and bluff charged him and then approached again standing on its hind legs right in front of him. Jack said there was an axe laying right there against a tree and he grabbed it quick. He said he swung it down hard right between the bear's eyes and dropped it right there. He was full of stories like that. 

   In the morning we went about our work and had a good routine going. John and me moved the tom about 5 feet to the north and shoveled away. The gravels in the pit were fairly easy to dig and only required the pick on occasion. The heat was not as bad either and that helped quite a bit. We ended our day with 2 ounces.

   I didn’t say anything to John or the rest of the crew until we got back to camp. I’d kept a daily tally of the gold weighs. The crew set about fixing supper and I brought out a bottle of whiskey and called the crew over. I told them that tonight would be a celebration as we just hit 1000 ounces. Everyone let out a whoop and Whiskey Jack did his dance and the drinks flowed. We all sat around the fire that night and talked about mining and gold. We talked about how we’d spend it. We talked about how lucky we were to have the mine and also Whiskey Jack helping us. He got all choked up and made a toast to the crew saying we were the best bunch he’d ever threw in with. I took a good luck at the crew and saw how damn beat up and worn out they all were but none of ‘em ever complained. I thanked them all for being my partners and my friends. We all shook hands and agreed we were a family now. Then we set about having a party. We were all drunk by midnight. 

  TO BE CONTINUED ........................

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