GhostMiner

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 ................

Some thoughts not written in any journal. Searching for truth has led to so many dead ends. Gold, guns, whisky, fights, murders, and treasure. Some days it's a bit overwhelming as the research continues. If I am to believe the information of three seperate people who came to the claims there have been three gold caches found and removed totalling 190 ounces of gold. Two of them were on the claims and one on an adjoining area very close to the claims. The murders for gold in 1936 and 1937 came in a government report and verified by Jacob. The initial gold strike of 1936 produced over 1000 ounces from an area of about 900 square feet. In 1937 Jacob's crew removed 218 ounces from another area even though they only mined part time in April, May, & June of that year.The fights and mayhem came from stories told to me by not only Jacob but also a knowledgeable professional person involved in gold mining. Some of the shootouts on the mine involved the gold miners against the ranchers in the area. Some were between gangsters and miners. There was also an incident that occurred in town between a local doctor and a miner over a woman. There was a shootout between the two of them on the main street and the miner was killed. The search goes on for gold and treasure as well as the truth behind the legend of the mine. I am also now of the belief that there was another gold strike on one of the claims very near the southern faultline that occured in either 1964 or 1965. This was nearly half a mile from the 1000 ounce strike of 1936. This information was given to me in a report from a credible person. There was a vague reference to this in the original report I found but it left me hanging. Supposedly, a very large gold deposit had been identified and referred to as sizeable tonnage. There was a vague description of the location as it related to the big strike of 1936 and talk of taking a pay loader into the area. This led me to believe it may have been at or near the surface. There was no more about it in the information I have so I didn't know what they found. I'm guessing it may have been a good amount based on the information that has since been provided to me. Possibly several hundred ounces of gold. This was not a cache but a rich gold deposit missed by the crews in the 1800's and also 1936 - 1937. I was able to track down the location of the crew leader from that era. His location? A graveyard in Tonopah Nevada. He died not long after his time on the mine. Another dead end in the truest sense of the word. Maybe this place really is cursed as I have been told. I still remain convinced there is a huge deposit remaining near the strike of 1936 that will be in the thousands of ounces. Getting to it would require shafts and drifting. This is something out of my wheelhouse. I may one day put a team together capable of taking on a project like this. More on all this at a later date.

May 1 2002 We worked all day at the new test site with only a few short breaks. Jacob has a slight elbow injury from when he struck a rock with his pick and is taking it easy but still doing sample pans. By mid afternoon we finally started to see some color and we all let out a whoop of relief. The crew took a rest in the shade and Jacob pulled out his flask and we all had a shot of whisky. He rolled one of his smokes and started talking about prospecting during his time out here. He reminded us that gold prospecting was hard work and gold mining was ten times harder than prospecting. He told us that if we eventually found a mineable spot and saw some gold every day we would know it was all worth the effort. Keep working hard is what he was telling us. We just might get rewarded. We ended the day close to dusk and the last sample pan was promising. Hopefully this area will get better with the digging and not prove to be a dead end. TO BE CONTINUED ....................

I am recalling another occurance from the 2002 season that I never wrote in my personal journal. It was a hot Summer night sometime in mid July 2002. The crew was sitting around Jacob's camper as we often did until he signalled to us it was time for him to retire for the evening. A bear must have smelled some food we had previously cooked. We were always careful about cooking and garbage because there are a large number of black bears in this area. Well, this big old black bear came waddling down the mountain making it's bawling / low growling sounds. It was curious about our camp and started to circle it for about half an hour or so. It seemed like it was too timid to actually come all the way in. Well, after putting up with this for the half hour, Jacob got tired of it and grabbed up the Thompson. He put it on full auto and aimed it a little over the bears head and let it rip. I could see tree limbs snapping off and bark flying in the three quarter moonlight. The bear high tailed it up the mountain and was gone. Jacob never said a word as he took a sip of whisky from his cup. The rest of us had a good laugh about it. That was Jacob.

April 30 2002 The morning broke clear and cold. We got ourselves back up to the new dig area and went to work. By noon we had a nice lateral cut started and broke for lunch. As usual, Jacob took a sample of gravel to pan. Nothing, not a flake. I noticed he had a concerned look on his face. He told us we were digging virgin material as far as he could tell. He said nothing had been disturbed at this location. Then he said that sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes not so good. He said it might have been tested by the old timers way back and there were no values and they moved on. Or, we just may need to keep working in farther. He wanted to see some sign of gold there soon, even just a flake or two for starters. After we had lunch we worked deeper into the mountain. We had a nice, steady pace going. No one was saying much but I knew we were all thinking the same thing, we wanted to see some gold. Around 3:00 PM I saw Jacob take another sample over to the tub and pan it out. We stopped digging and watched him. When he finished he just tossed the remains out of the pan with a quick shake of his hand and shook his head in disgust. Nobody said anything and we just went back to work. By 5:00 PM we were pretty tired and hungry. We decided to knock off for the day. Once again Jacob took a sample and once again there was no gold to show for all our hard work. I was feeling discouraged but Jacob said we needed to stay in this location a while longer. We all agreed. We’d give it more time. TO BE CONTINUED .................

Posting my writings from back in 2002 is sure bringing back a lot of memories. So many things I didn't write about at the time. I am going to post them as I recall them. One that comes to mind was a hot Summer night sitting with Jacob outside his camper. It was dark out. Vern and Jim had gone into town for dinner at a bar they liked while Jacob and I decided to stay at camp. He kept thinking he heard voices up to the north of camp. This was creek and mountain on the west side of the creek. He always kept the old Thompson close. I didn't hear anything but he was convinced we were about to be attacked. He was clutching the Thompson and insisted that I arm myself which I did. After about half an hour and nothing happening he told me the hooligans may have left the area or they might be circling us. Another half hour passed and he finally put the Thompson down. I never heard a thing and he went to bed. A little later Vern and Jim came back from town and I told them what had taken place. We just chocked it up to Jacob remembering some bad things from the past out there.

April 29 2002 Part Three Jacob told us that the government agent was about as welcome here as a rattler at a square dance. Then he gave us one of his winks and we all busted out laughing. We eventually all got back to work digging. We had no idea what the gravels here would hold as far as gold values but intended to find out as fast as possible. Everyone wanted to start mining and seeing gold. We dug the rest of the day and got a nice cut going into the base of the mountain. Jacob took a pan of gravel for sampling and he let out a curse or two. Nothing but some black sand. Not one single flake. It was getting late and we had skipped lunch as well. We decided to call it a day. When we got back to camp what did Jacob want to eat? More of that canned stew. It seems like he can’t get enough of it. We sat around the fire eating and Jacob was going on about how life was at camp back in his day. They usually bathed down at the creek which he said wasn’t too bad after a real hot day but wasn’t much fun if the weather was cold. Jed kept saying he would fix up a hot shower with a tub heated by a fire and a pull chain but they never got around to it. Jed loved his hot water cornbread and cooked it up quite often. Sometimes it turned out good and sometimes not so good. Beans, bacon, stew, corn bread, and crackers mostly. And of course whisky and beer. He said the crew also played cards for gold some nights. Knife throwing contests were also popular with them as well as shooting cans and bottles set in various locations. The life of a mining crew up in the mountains. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

Yep, that's it LOL.

My partner Vern was actually run off the claims by gunshots a couple of years ago. He recorded it on video. I will see if he is willing to release it. We think there is millions in gold & treasure still on the claims. I would advise that the area remains a dangerous place.

Not a place for feigned of heart.

You would be most welcome. This Summer we are planning on some events out there.

April 29 2002 Part Two Jacob Loses His Cool We started working the new site hoping for the best. Around noon or so we had a visit by one of the government agents who wanted to clarify something on my paperwork I had submitted for our plan to explore and possibly mine with heavy equipment. Evidently,there was an area near one of the creeks that needed to be protected and monitored if we used an excavator there. Jacob was looking at the plan that the agent was holding in his hand with the area circled. The agent told me that part of the plan was going to be temporarily set aside for review. He said the paperwork had a notation as to that change and I needed to sign it. At this point Jacob decided to speak up. I could tell he didn’t like paperwork. He said that sense when does a government agent have anything to say about what a miner does or where he works on his claim? Before I could intervene he told the agent he could stick his government paperwork up his ass and light it on fire. Then he told him he wouldn’t give a bucket of piss for a job like his. Well, needless to say, that didn’t go over too well. I got a hold of Jacob and asked him if we could have a talk. I kind of explained how things had changed since he worked the claims and told him everything will eventually be approved and we can keep working as we are until then. He calmed down some and I apologized and told the agent Jacob was pretty touchy about paperwork and things like that. Lucky for us the guy was pretty understanding and actually laughed it off and Jacob even ended up shaking his hand before he left. Now I knew Jacob had a temper that was quick to flare just like his brothers. Even though he was 85 years old, I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. I could only imagine what Jed, Jacob, and the crew were like back in their day. TO BE CONTINUED ......................

April 29 2002 Part One This morning we got a bit deeper into the drift and hit a rocky area that we couldn’t penetrate. Jacob said it was some kind of a very unusual fault line that was running east/west and highly unusual. We all took turns swinging a pickaxe against the wall of rock but couldn’t make any headway. Jacob advised we move out of the drift and start a dig a bit to the west. It was disappointing as we had seen signs of gold before we came to the dead end. Jacob thought the area might have been mined out in that area by the people who ran him off in 1937. When he started thinking about that night he became agitated to say the least. He told us that he still had nightmares about it. He now wished he had tried to find out who the gang was and shot it out with them even if it meant dying. I tried to get his mind off the subject and asked him where a good spot might be to start digging again. We had a look around and ended up moving about 300 feet west. The base of the mountain looked about the same and we started a new site. Jacob said we would need to keep prospecting this area until we found a good place that hadn’t been worked. He figured there was gold all along the base of the mountain up there and it ran for half a mile. I was thinking to myself that we might be up here all Summer trying to find a place to mine. This might be harder than I had thought. TO BE CONTINUED .............

Then there was one more story I heard that supposedly took place in 2012. This came from what I would consider a very credible witness who claims to have seen some of the gold. The area was just off my claims at the southern end of the mountain. According to the witness who was not involved in any way with mining or treasure hunting, a crew had dug up a cache of 50 ounces. The funny thing is, I was actually there talking with this crew several times. They were digging areas at the base of the mountain with an excavator and also using metal detectors. They were out of Nevada and had been hired by the claim owner to do some prospecting to see if the claim had any good gravels to mine. At least that's what they told me. The crew looked pretty rough. The first time I met them I walked into camp unannounced and was met by two big dogs who they called off. They were sitting at a wooden table drinking whisky and smoking dope. I told them I was the claim owner of all the adjoining areas to their claim. They were all wearing guns and told me it was a good thing I told them and now that they knew I was up there on the mountain they would shoot their guns the other way. They lent me one of their detectors which was a Fisher Gold Bug. It was the only time I ever used one. It was darn friendly of them as they didn't even know me. Eventually I returned the detector with a new battery to boot and thanked them. A week later I went down to their camp but they had packed it up and were gone. Later on, I was talking with a guy who knew these guys. He said I was real lucky they took a liking to me or I would have had my throat slit. For real. This is the kind of crazy stuff that happens out there. One night while camped up near one of the old dig sites by myself I awoke to gunfire at around 2:00 AM. It was a ways off and lasted for at least 15 - 20 minutes and there was a lot of it. I have no idea what was going on.

Another weird thing that happened but not in any journal. A guy stopped by one of the claims one day and was talking with Vern. He asked him if the claim was his. He said he was one of the partners. Supposedly, according to this stranger, a friend of his had one of the claims back in the 1980's and found a cache of 80 ounces of gold buried not far from one of the creeks. He even showed him the approximate location. Then, according to a guy we talked to who was from Nevada, he personally witnissed someone who was prospecting the claim before we had it find a cache buried into the lower side of a mountain south of where John had the tom set. He said it was 60 ounces. The two of them went wild digging up the area for weeks without finding anything else.

Also, wait until my journal gets to the part of trying to locate the gold caches they hid. Crazy.

Yes. But there have been so many floods over the years and the lower creek has even changed course several times. More about what we found will be in the 2002 journal.