GhostMiner

It was John.

Not in the 2002 journal : On the subject of what Jacob called the secret lookout station - I went up there with him once. It is on the northernmost perimeter of the claims and very remote. The old road is still there and winds up to the top of the mountain although you would need a Jeep or 4 wheeler to make it all the way as much of the road has been washed out. In 2019 I tried to get a Ford F150 4 wheel drive up there but got hung up after a short distance and had to back all the way down in reverse as there are no turn around places and the road is narrow with dropoffs on one side and a mountain rock wall on the other. If you ran into a critter up there on foot there is nowhere to go and you would be forced to deal with it. The old crew had a tree stand overlooking part of the road but none of us including Jacob could find it. He did show me the area of the lookout though. Someday, I would like to hike up there and set up a one night camp just to see what happened. There is no cell service either. Not there or anywhere on the claims. That area is known as a bigfoot hot spot but I have never heard or seen anything like that while there. I would be more concerned with mountain lion as I have seen those on the claims before.

May 6 2002 Part Six A SECRET LOOKOUT STATION AND VISITORS When Jacob finished his story he paused, rolled another smoke, and started into yet another tale of his adventures here. He told us about what he called a “secret lookout station” the old crew used on occasion back in 1936. He said there was an old logging road about a mile north of camp that wound its way up the mountain. It was very remote and sometimes used by outlaws as they traversed the range. At certain times when the crew was put on high alert one of the men would be sent up there to guard against hooligans coming down to the south from higher up the mountain. Jacob said you just never knew what you might run into up there. It was a lonely and dangerous place inhabited by bear, lion, bobcats, thugs, and other things. I asked him what he meant by other things. He took another sip from his cup and began to speak in a rather low tone. He said he was up there at the lookout station one night and there was a three quarter moon. It was a warm Summer night. He had his rifle and revolver on him. The station was actually placed about twenty feet up in a Ponderosa pine tree. He said it was about 2:00 AM and everything was stone quiet. He had about three more hours to go before he would head back down to camp. A little further up the road he heard what he referred to as whoop and a loud growl. Then another one from further east of the first one. Then he saw what made the first noise which was close to him. Out of the trees came what he called a great ape. It was now standing on the logging road north of him. It let out another whoop and there was an answer to the call and very close now. Then he saw another one come out of the trees on the other side of the road. Two great apes standing side by side. They were about 100 feet away and didn’t seem to know he was there. Jacob said not too much scared him but when he grabbed his rifle his hands were shaking a little. He watched the two creatures start to walk up the road and away from him. They did not make a sound. He said they looked to be over seven or eight feet in height and weighed at least 400 pounds or so but it was hard to tell. They were covered in reddish brown hair and what he glimpsed of the eyes looked to be large and kind of pale yellow. They disappeared over the next hill and he never saw them again. He said he was not fooling with us and the story was true. TO BE CONTINUED ..............

Some info not in my journal of 2002 : In my long talks with Jacob in 2002 it seemed there was a lot of tension between miners and loggers, miners and farmers, miners and ranchers, and needless to say, miners and thieves. The old reports get into some of this. Some of it is told by local historians. I think there is truth to some of it and perhaps some exaggeration to some of the stories thrown in for good measure. There is really no way to know for sure. For someone like me who has actually mined and done gold exploration in this area and is writing about the old timers of the 1930's era it has become a treasure trove of wild stories and supposed events. At some point I will also get into the post WW2 era at this location. There were two crews who worked these claims in the early 1950's. Both met with failure as far as old reports go. I am still researching some of the 1950's info which was written about in the same government report. I have made at least one good connection to this era and hope to talk more about it soon. I know it's been a fantastical, wild ride up to now but there is still much more to come. Hang in there with me, we'll get it all told - the good, the bad, and even the ugly. I promise.

May 6 2002 Part Five Jacob said the crew knew that the loggers were up to no good. He said they were born troublemakers. Anyone with half a brain knows you don’t walk into a gold mining camp at night without an invitation. Jacob told us some of the loggers had revolvers and one had a shotgun. They had gotten liquored up and wanted to see what we had to steal. Jed and Roy stood face to face for about a minute. Neither one said a word. Then Roy backed down and the loggers headed back up the mountain. No doubt they were still trying to build up their courage by drinking some more. We had noticed they were carrying bottles of whisky. We figured we were not done with them and we were right. Jacob said they were still up around midnight when sure enough the loggers came back down to camp. Roy hollered out he was coming in and didn’t want any misunderstandings. Jed told him that if they came in they would get all heck kicked out of them or possibly shot. He meant it too. Jed never bluffed. The fools came into camp despite the warning and started running their mouths at us with Roy saying they knew we had gold hidden and they just wanted to see it. He also said they were running low on whisky and wanted to get some of ours. At this point Jed had enough of them. He walked over to Roy who was drunk and still running his mouth. Jed cracked him on the jaw with a short right handed punch and Roy went down. The others decided they wanted some and the fight was on. To say they got beat was an understatement. Jacob said that the fight lasted about two minutes and the loggers got the worst of it. The mining crew relieved them of their weapons which they never gave back. The loggers had to carry Roy back up the mountain as he was passed out. Jacob said they ran into this crew in the tavern about two weeks later and none of them said a word to them. Jacob told us that his brother loved to fight. He wouldn’t look for one but if a fight presented itself he was always willing. According to him, Jed wasn’t a real big guy and some thugs underestimated him until he built up a reputation in the area. Then no one messed with him unless they were newcomers and didn’t know him. He said that was the same for the entire mining crew. People stayed clear of them, even the deputies. They had become a real mean bunch and never backed down from anyone. He said it was just the way things were back then. TO BE CONTINUED ............

May 6 2002 Part Four A LONG STORY FROM JACOB BEGINS The fire was burning low and we were all sitting in a circle around it. I could feel the night chill coming on and threw a couple small logs on the fire to get it going better. Jacob took a sip of whiskey from his cup and a long drag on his smoke and began to unwind what was on his mind that night. He pointed up to the north along where the pines come near the creek on the east side. The ground begins to climb there as it winds up the big mountain. Jacob said the crew from 1936 had been sitting in camp one night in June just about where we were now. They were drinking and swapping stories when they heard what he called a bunch of rowdies coming down the trail towards their camp. When they got closer they could see it was a bunch of loggers from a local company. He said the loggers hated the miners and the same held true as far as the way the miners felt about them. He said his brother’s crew was real surprised to see them out there, especially at night. Before they could figure out what was going on the loggers came walking straight into their camp uninvited. This didn’t set well with Jed and his crew. There were six loggers and Jacob said they were pure trash. They were drunk. Jed asked the loggers what the hell they were up to. The crew leader told him they had been sent out to look over a job further up the mountain and had set up camp about two miles north of ours. Their crew leader’s name was Roy and Jed didn’t like him much. Roy said they came down to drink with us and see how much gold we were getting. Well, Jed squared up face to face with Roy and we all got to our feet. We were waiting for one of them to throw the first punch and the fight would be on. TO BE CONTINUED .................

Pictures of some of the gravels and rock in this area. We pulled good gold out of there thanks to Jacob.

May 6 2002 Part Three At lunch Jacob was talking about how good it was to be back here mining gold again. I told him how bad we all felt about what had happened back in 1937. He got real quiet and I decided to change the subject. We all just started speculating on how much gold was still buried in the side of the mountain we were working. Jacob said he wouldn’t be surprised if there were thousands of ounces. He said the deposit could run west clear down to the creek and way north into the mountain for hundreds of yards or more. He said there wasn’t anyone who knew and the only way to find out was to work like hell. We got back at it mid afternoon and worked until dusk. We were beginning to move lots of rounded rock and Jacob’s samples were showing promise.It was dark when we finally got back to camp with the mats so we decided to do the cleanup bright and early tomorrow. It was canned hash and canned stew for supper and a few beers for dessert. We sat and talked about the claims for a while. Jacob got on the subject I had brought up at lunch time. It was one of those times when he took close to a full cup of whisky and he started opening up about the old days here. He rolled himself a smoke and asked if we wanted to hear a story about miners and loggers. What could I say? I told him we were all ears. TO BE CONTINUED .................

May 6 2002 Part Two After breakfast we got to work. Jacob was pointing out a mule deer on the ride up to the site. There were a lot of them out here. It was already warming up and we quickly loosened up to the digging. Jacob was in a rare mood and was hollering and giving everyone encouragement. He was working a pick and shovel right along with us. I hit a couple of rounded rocks about a foot in diameter and Jacob said we were on the channel. We took a break around 10:00 AM and sat down on some chairs I had taken up there for break times. They beat sitting on logs. Jacob took a slug of whisky from his flask and rolled himself a smoke. He said he was going to start taking samples after we started digging again. He wanted to closely monitor the gravel values. Vern, Jim, and I decided we were going to pick up the pace of digging. We were hell bent to get gold. The hopper of the tom was kept full with rich gravel and we didn’t stop for lunch until 2:00 PM. When we went over to the wooden table near the tub, Jacob had several pans sitting there for us to look at. Each one looked to contain some nice gold. Jacob told us the samples were improving and he thought we might make some money here. He said it would take some hard work but if the deposit was in there deeper we would start seeing ounces soon. Jacob said the damn fools who took over the claims back in 1937 didn’t know squat about finding gold. He was hoping they had left us some rich pay. TO BE CONTINUED ..................

May 6 2002 Part One Jacob Deals With A Claim Jumper I awoke to a near disaster today. There was someone over at the creek near our gold cleanup area and I heard yelling. Jacob had the Thompson but was not pointing it at him. I pulled on my boots and ran over there to find out what was happening. The guy was hollering at me to get this crazy old man away from him and take his gun away. Jacob told him to shut his mouth or he’d hang him for claim jumping. Jacob said the guy was a hooligan and had come out here to steal our gold and other goods. When I finally got things calmed down I learned that the man was a prospector and hadn’t realized the area was under active claim. Jacob then called him a liar. I was finally able to convince Jacob the man had made an honest mistake and the prospector walked back down to the main road. I apologized to him which seemed to help and we shook hands. Then I went back up to camp and had a long talk with Jacob. Hopefully this won’t happen again. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

May 5 2002 We couldn’t wait to get back to digging gravels this morning. We got water down to the tom and went to work. Jacob was even doing a little digging. He took a sample over to the tub and came back and showed us the contents of the pan. There was a nice little picker and some coarse flakes. This kept us going. There is nothing like seeing gold in the pan to keep you working. We stopped for lunch and got back to work around 1:00 PM. The sound of those shovels all ringing off the gravel and rock was music to my ears. We have a nice cut beginning to open up and are making it wider as we continue into the hill. So far the digging has been easier than I expected and we are getting used to the work. Jacob tells us each man should be able to move close to a ton of gravel per hour unless there is big rock to slow us. We will have to build our bodies up to achieve that number as we are nowhere near working that fast yet. By day's end I estimate we processed about six yards of gravel. I would like to double that amount at some point. When we finished up the gold weigh after supper we had 3/10 of an ounce. While we were sitting around the campfire a black bear came down the creek not too far from us. We banged some pans and hollered at it and it kept on going. There seem to be a lot of them in this area. Jacob said his crew saw plenty of them as well. We have not seen any mountain lion yet but were warned about them by the ranger. It has been a good day on the claims. We are all tired and ready for sleep. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

May 4 2002 Part Two The bedrock here didn’t seem to fall away like the other area we abandoned. Jim, Vern, and I were digging side by side and heading northward into the gravels. I was surprised at how easy the digging was. Jacob laughed and told us not to get too relaxed as it would most likely get tougher. Jacob was taking samples about once an hour and I noticed he had his flask of whisky with him as well. We took a break around 2:00 PM for a late lunch and I walked over to the table where the test pan sat. There was some nice gold in the last pan. Jacob said that if there was gold in the samples there would be lots of it in the tom. That made us get back to digging like crazy. Around 6:00 PM Vern went up the mountain and shut down the pump and we pulled the mats out of the tom. We washed them out at camp and ran the heavies through the concentrating sluice. I estimated we had processed about five yards of gravel. After supper we finished up the panning and Jacob gave us one of his winks when he weighed up the gold on the scale. A quarter of an ounce. We were throwing our hats in the air and jumping up and down like maniacs. This was the most gold I had ever seen and we took it out of the mountain. He said this was most likely a rich spot and we had done good. We all had a shot of whisky with Jacob. I was dog tired but too excited to sleep. Jacob hit the sack and the rest of us stayed up talking about gold and had a few beers. The fever has struck us. TO BE CONTINUED .................

Some other info not in my journal of 2002 : I am posting a couple of pictures of one of the more dangerous areas of the claims back in the old days according to what I was told. This is an area above one of the creeks where armed thugs would lay in wait for unsuspecting prospectors down below. They knew that anyone working the miles of creeks would have to pass this area on their way north. There were numerous gun battles, fights, and robberies in this area. It was the wild west. Even up to the WW2 era. One story I was told by a historian was that a prospector was cooking a piece of meat on a fire near the creek. He didn't have a pan handy so he was using his shovel to cook on. Suddenly, he was jumped by several armed men who took his gear, his money, and even the piece of meat he was cooking. There were also local ranchers who came out there to shoot it out with the miners who they hated. Very rough times.

You were lucky to get out of that situation without help. I don't think Vern would ever have gotten out by himself.

May 4 2002 Part One Vern Gets Himself Stuck When we got up to the mine site this morning Vern went up the mountain to get the pump running and send some fresh water down to the holding pond. We all carry walkie talkies on us. There was a bit of a frantic call down to the crew at the mine site from Vern. It seemed he had got himself stuck in the pond. When we got up there we saw his predicament. The pump was set near the bank of the pond. It had a twenty foot suction line with a filter on the end. It had been sucking water from just about five feet from the edge of the pond and Vern decided he wanted to move it out into deeper water. Evidently, he hadn’t been able to throw the line out as far as he wanted so he decided to walk it out to its full twenty feet of length. Around fifteen feet from the pond’s edge he started to sink into the silt below his feet. The more he tried to extricate himself the deeper he sank. He was beginning to panic. He had told us to bring rope so we could pull him out. I couldn’t tell how far down his legs were in the silt but he said he thought two feet or nearly knee high. He was definitely in trouble. Jim threw the rope out to him and he tied it around his waist and grabbed ahold of it with both hands. Jim, Jacob, and I pulled with all our strength on and off for a good half hour before we got him free. Both of his boots had pulled off his feet because of the suction and we dragged him across the water and back to solid ground. He was pretty shook up and darn lucky someone was there to rescue him. I went back to camp and got his spare pair of boots and we eventually got back down to the dig site. What a way to start the day. TO BE CONTINUED .............

A warning to claim jumpers.

The Deere 690 parked near one of the creeks.

Here is one of the old debris shoots from the hydraulic company of 1860 - 1880 era. There are a number of them. They used these to shoot tailings down the mountain to the creek below. If you did that today they would lock you up and throw away the key. However, it makes for intersting prospecting. The long toms could be up to 800 feet in length before hitting these areas and all the gold they missed would end up in these cuts. The area here is very remote with lots of bear tracks and mountain lion tracks as well. Very hard to get water there but could be done with great effort. I would like to use a drywasher here in the dry Summer months. Also would be good for metal detecting.

Up on the faultline looking at some of the old workings.

Still on the subject of taking a bad fall, I can't stress enough how dangerous old mine sites can sometimes be. Severe drop offs and hidden shafts, large rocks, and many other places to get hurt. This incident took place in August of 2020. At the site where we set the trommel next to the 180 ft long recirculation pond I once again took a fall that could have been a bad one. The trommel was set 20 ft or so above the pond and the ground was on a steep angle. Before we had water in the pond I was setting up a heavy plastic sheet for the sluice runoff to run down and into the tailing side. To the left of that was just hard packed gravel that ran at a steep angle for about 50 or 60 feet down to the flat ground below. We had a crew of 6 working that day. They pulled up with one of the pickup trucks around noon and hollered over to me it was time for lunch and if I was coming I could catch a ride to camp about 3/4 mile away. Seeing as the temperature was already close to 100 degerees in the sun I sure didn't want to walk back to camp. There were several small Ponderosa pines on the hill and unknown to me there was a very thin and barely visible root running across the hill about halfway down. Yes, a trip wire if there ever was one. The crew was sitting on the haul road waiting on me so I took off down the hill running downhill towards the parked truck. Well, my right foot caught the root and I felt myself going head first down that steep grade. One of the crew members (Vern) hollered "OH NO" as I went flying. Somehow, out of instinct probably from my old baseball and boxing days, I went into a tuck & roll - tucking my head to my chest and rolling on my right shoulder and right back up on my feet like it was no big deal. One of the guys was amazed and asked me how the hell I did that. I just laughed and said that was a tuck & roll and I guess there is still a little athlete left in me. But I knew how lucky I was to be walking away completely unhurt from that fall. Once again, I think the old crew is watching over me.

Back in 2019 I took a bad fall on the mine while running water line. There were three of us working that day. It was July and the temp was about 110 degrees. We were running 2000 feet of 3 inch layflat from the source pond to a 180 ft long holding pond. We had built a dam across the middle of it with a little notched out spillway. We dropped pine trees and bucked them up. Then we used our excavator to haul them to the pond, set them in place, pack them in with gravel, and line the 5 ft high dam with plastic sheeting. You could walk right across it when finished. The trommel sat on a pad on on side and shot fine sluice tailings into one side and the dam that was used to settle the water before it came into the clean side where our pump for the trommel sat. We used the holding pond and dam to recirculate water supply and refreshed the pond from the source pond 2000 ft across the mountain. Water had to come up out of the source pond and gain 90 ft of altitude before it leveled out and eventually went downhill to the recirculating pond. One 3 inch pump didn't have enough head (lift) to clear the 90 feet so we were forced to put a second pump in series before the big rise in order to clear it. Once the water cleared the 90 ft height it was clear sailing. So there was an old Forest Service road we needed to get the water line under about 500 feet before it got to it's final destination. Luckily, there was a culvert and we ran the line under the road there. We had to use 2 45 degree fittings on each side of the culvert to make the turns because the road ran in line with the hose direction. We had no idea what would happen when the water crashed through. It ended up working just fine somehow and it didn't seem like we lost much pressure if any at all. There was a big drop off on the exit side of the culvert and I was pulling hose through. It was nearly a straight 30 ft drop of hardpacked gravels with nowhere to get a foot hold. Well, you guessed it - I lost my footing and went over backwards all the way to the bottom. Somehow, all I got was bruised and scraped up. I was pretty sore the next morning. I've had several bad falls on the mine and walked away from all of them. I think the old crew is looking out for me.

Some further info here : We were lucky to have the pond on the mountain at the northern area of the claims. The crew that worked there in the mid 1960's was where we got a lot of the information in the old report. The old time hydraulic companies had worked this area but never got down to much of the pay gravels because of the Sawyer Decision of 1884 which pretty much shut down large scale hydraulic mining. So they had removed some of the overburdon in some areas which helped us out quite a bit. Being in a fault zone, bedrock tends to be all over the place. There are areas of exposed bedrock and areas where it's 110 feet or more below the surface. A geologist's nightmare as one person called it. We have used that pond to pump water 2000 feet at times by running several pumps in series using 3 inch layflat hose. Sometines, if we need more pressure, we downsize the hose with a coupler and go 3 inch down to 2 inch. Running 300 ft rolls of layflat acros a mountain is a workout and a half - especially in 100 degree heat. Getting water up there from the creeks is a long haul of about 3000 - 3500 ft and an altitude change of 100 - 200 ft depending on location. That's why we prefer the pond in that area.

May 3 2000 Part Two Mining At Last Vern fired up the pump and we got water to the tom. Jacob was grinning from ear to ear and telling us to get to shoveling. Jim and I got busy and kept the tom fed for the next few hours with Vern pitching in as well. When we shut down we pulled the mats, put them in a small tub, and placed them on the bed of my truck. I figured we had roughly run about three yards of gravel. When we got down to camp we ran the concentrates through a little cleanup power sluice using a 12 volt pump at the creek. Then Jacob panned out the final weigh. It came to 1/10 ounce. Some fine and lots of coarse and some pickers as well. Jacob said this was pretty good for starters and proved there would be decent gold deeper in. We were all pretty excited about starting to mine and we all had some whisky with Jacob. It had been a great day. We are now gold miners at last. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

May 3 2002 Part One Setting Up The Operation This morning was real cold for early May. We even had hail, enough to coat the ground for an hour before the sun melted it off. Even that didn’t slow us down much. We all had breakfast in my camper which has a bit more room and over morning coffee we discussed our mining plan. We would not need to haul buckets to the creek as Jacob had done back in his day. The reason being we have a pond up on the mountain that was formed by a flooded out mine shaft in the low lying area of ground where the shaft was located. The shaft had been used by the 1960’s crew and the report told us it was 155 ft deep. We have our own proprietary well and pond thanks to them. It was only 300 feet west of this new dig site. I had built a fourteen foot long tom and set up a grizzly and small hopper with spray bars to shovel gravel directly into. We set it near the beginning of the dig to shovel into without hauling any pay by bucket or wheelbarrow. Jacob said we may be able to move the tom as we dig which will really make things faster and easier. We are pumping directly to the hopper and are using a low settling area as a natural small pond for fine tailings runoff. The ground is situated such that the dig site is above the water source so we just notched out a little ditch to take the water from the tailings pond back to the water source. By recycling we should have no water issues for quite some time if at all. We are using a three inch gas pump in conjunction with a water regulator to control pressure and flow. It’s a fairly simple setup. By mid afternoon we were ready to process gravel. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

May 2 2002 I think Jacob will be limited to panning duties for a spell as his elbow looks swollen and is quite sore. He refused to see a doctor but I am keeping an eye on the injury. We resumed working the gravels and set a steady pace of digging. Every hour or so Jacob would take a sample for panning at the tub. We were seeing some color in the pan each time. Not a lot but enough to keep us interested. The bedrock was a bit deeper here, maybe five to eight feet below our starting point which was the base of the mountain. It took more effort to get there but the entire ten feet or so above bedrock was beginning to show promise. We broke for lunch as usual and got back to digging around 1:00 PM. We continued straight through until 6:00 PM with only two short breaks. We were into the base of the mountain enough that there was a bit of overhang. Jacob took the last sample of the day and panned it out. Then he set the pan on the table and gave us a wink and a grin. I knew by now that was a good sign from him. We looked at the contents of the pan. It was loaded with fine and some coarse gold and even a few pickers. Jacob said we had hit a rich area of gravel and needed to start our mine right here. We let out a whoop and I threw my cap in the air. We were finally going to mine for gold. I can’t wait to get started. TO BE CONTINUED ................