GhostMiner

Lots of huge Cedar & Ponderosa Pine up there. Straight and tall. I's love to have a cabin up there - might never leave.

Here are the remnants of an old miners cabin we found while exploring up on the mountain.

MAY 10 1936 At breakfast I told John that I wanted to go up and dig again and see if the kettle would widen out some. I had put a dent in its gravels yesterday. So John caught a little sleep while I drove up there. I eagerly got to work shoveling gravel into buckets abd seeing if the rich pay would widen out. It seemed contained to this small area so I shoveled what was in there. After I took 10 buckets down to John to start his day I went back up and kept digging. I eventually took a break. I grabbed the rifle and took a seat on a log near the hole when I thought I heard something moving up in the woods on the mountain. I heard what sounded like a branch break and someone or something falling through the limbs of a tree. Then there was the sharp crack of a rifle shot. Rifle in hand I dove into the hole which was a good eight feet deep. I looked around but couldn't see anything. Then there was another shot and the bullet had struck one of my buckets that was near the hole. I was pinned down. John had to hear the shots and would come running. Camp was less than hald a mile away and sound travelled here. Eventually I heard John holler to me was I ok? I hollered back yes and told him what was going on. He had war experience. He told me to stay put and he'd try to scout the area. I waited for a good twenty minutes or so and John came back from the north hiking down the ravine. He said he couldn't find anyone but maybe we both better get back to camp. I didn't want to leave the buckets of pay so we both loaded them on the truck. There were 15 of them. Then we went back down to camp and got a surprise. Our camp had been robbed. They stole our gear and food but left the tom and grizzly alone. Our tents were ok as well. Lucky our gold was well hidden and not touched. We figured whoever these hooligans were they must have planned this out. Create a diversion at the dig site while the rest of them robbed our campand carried off what they could. John was madder than i'd ever seen him. He told me he would kill them if he found them, I calmed him down and said we still had our gold and more buckets to wash and we could go to town and get supplies to replace what they stole. So I took the truck to town while John washed gravels and kept a lookout on camp as best he could. I got back after a couple of hours and there was no further trouble. I helped John finish up the heavies and we weighed up the gold. What we saw in the pan made us almost forget about the robbers for a minute or two. We got 43 ounces out of the 25 buckets. I did some figuring and it was a better percentage per bucket than yesterday. John asked me if I thought this would keep going. I told him the kettle was nearly played out but maybe one more good day. We both stayed in camp that night and took turns on watch. I drank some Irish whiskey to ease my mind. TO BE CONTINUED .....................

LOL. I'm assuming Jed was of Irish descent.

That's hooligans

Got it.

Got it.

There is also a large amount of quartz - some with crystal in it.

Shale and granite depending on the location. We are finding some promising signs there. Nice chunky gold. Yum yum.

A quick note from me at this point. So the ancient river channel had flowed wide from east to west. The fault line upheaval had lifted the east side up anywhere from 60 - 100 ft so as the river ran over it became a big waterfall. The old river carried gold all the way from its source. So at some point the old river had moved (hundreds of thousands of yrs ago according to our geologist) and left the area high and dry. Some of the big hollows or as Jed called them kettles could be stacked up with gold. Then over the years the fault was buried again inder more gravel and rock. The old time hydraulic miners had exposed some of this when they worked it but never finished the northern area which was still partially or completely covered. Add to this puzzle that bedrock was thrown all over the place by the quake that caused it. Now you have a treasure hunt. If you get lucky you get rich. At this point of the journal Jed seems to be on to something.

MAY 9 1936 Last nights watch was quiet again. I am hopeful the hooligans are long gone. I got an early start at the crack of dawn working the dig site. John was finishing up some panning leftover from yesterday and I got 10 buckets to get him started and then came back up to the dig. We think it is now needed to have a man at camp at the creek while one man digs. We can't trust to leave the camp alone during the day. I started working where John left off yesterday. I got down a little deeper and worked into the fault. Suddenly I hit an area of fairly easy digging with good gravels and rounded stone not too big. As I started working at it with the spade it dropped off about five feet in depth so as to be lower than the ground adjacent. It was a kettle in the old creek channel and it was about ten or fifteen feet across. I shoveled out some of the top layer to the side and took a quarter bucket sample from a few feet in depth in the kettle. John and me had set a tub with water we carried up from the creek so we could sample pan once in awhile. I filled the pan with some gravels and went at it with hope. I was not to believe what I saw. There had to be a quarter ounce in the pan. I had to sit down and think on this. What did I hit here? I panned some more and the pan was full of gold at the bottom. I finished the quarter bucket. I didn't have a weigh but there had to be one or two ounces in total. It didn't take me too long to get 10 buckets as the digging in the kettle was not too bad. I took the buckets down to John and told him what I found and gave him the pan. We weighed the gold from the quarter bucket and got over an ounce. John went to work on the tom and I dug like a man on fire. I dug 75 buckets in all. I got over to the creek and helped John clean out the tom and we panned the heavies. We were both dead tired at dusk when we did a weigh. We had 106 ounces total. We both just sat there looking at it under the light of a lantern. I couldn't even believe it. When I claimed up the ground I talked with a geologist who knew the area, He told me you could get yards to make an ounce or ounces to a single yard on the fault. Somehow I had hit a glory hole. I had heard of this but never thought about it much. I'd already made more gold than I thought i'd get for a season. I knew one thing for sure, from now on we needed to be real careful about anyone coming out here and seeing this. In these times a man could be robbed or worse for far less. We had some dried beef and crackers and beans and a drink of whiskey and John went up on first watch while I drank another cup and went to sleep. TO BE CONTINUED ................................

OK. Got it down. I have one more entry I will try to get on tonight.

Make sure to read the new posts today & also posted pictures. Also enter your gold total guess.

To everyone reading the journal I am going to give you a chance to take a guess at Jed's total gold count. I can say that his season was contained to 1936. Another hint I can give is that the faultline is known to produce extremely large deposits concentrated in hot spots. One more hint comes from a geologist Jed worked with and it's pretty much what our geologist told us : "The ground along the fault can be yards to the ounce or ounces to the yard or no gold at all." There is np prize for guessing correctly but just bragging rights. It will be the closest gold in ounces without going over. I will keep it open until midnight on this Saturday January 29 Pacific time. Good luck.

I thought i'd post a few pictures of two of our company directors & wives doing some exploration at the faultline. There are numerous pockets of gold remaining and Jed didn't get it all for sure. We used heavy equipment for part of the exploration work and for the more remote areas that need more road building we went old school using a home built 14 ft long tom recirculating sluice with a 12 Volt Johnson pump. I'm the guy in the bibbed coveralls. We plan to work Jed's sight once again after an abandoned period of 86 yrs. Later on in the journal i'll post pictures of what Jed's site looks like today.

MAY 8 1936 I am beginning to worry about John. He is jumpy and in bad sorts some of the time and has little patience nearly all of the time. I fear he has a very bad case of gold fever. John is new to this game and we both have reason enough for the fever as we are seeing gold I could never dream of. I am doing my best to keep him on an even keel. Last night was quiet. John took his shot at working the dig sight and I made adjustments to the tom and grizzly until the first buckets arrived. I gave John good direction on where to dig and the gravels to look for. What he brought down I washed - a total of 32 buckets for the day. The digging is very hard now. John helped me finish up and we did the weigh. It is remaining high grade with over an ounce made. We will stay on this spot until it's played out. Maybe it will never be played out, I don't know. We are both keeping our own gold in seperate locations. I do not know where John has his and he knows not where my gold is hidden. Tomorrow we will switch jobs with me digging and John running the tom. I will do most of the panning of heavies as John is still slow at that. I am tired. Both in the body and mind. I must worry about John and also any hooligans that may show up. I sleep with my rifle and it never leaves my sight. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

It's a fascinating story for sure. And we are starting to have some of the same issues at the same mine but 86 yrs later. Crazy. Thanks for reading the journal. There is a long way to go but it only lasted one season.

Unfortunately no. You are on your own.

Thanks Lanny.

We just did that but it still won't tell us who they are. They have a big hole going on some high grade $500/yard gravel deposit. We may pull a camper up there when the weather is better and keep a man on site 24/7. However, it is remote and could be dangerous. Sounds just like the old days.

Depression era. People were desperate. Not all that different from today in a way. We're being claim jumped as well. Same location. Nothing has really changed.

Believe it or not I don't own a smart phone but I use a chrome book on occasion. It has a camera. My wife has it at work today but i'll get it later.

MAY 7 1936 Last night we stayed out of the whiskey and slept good. I took first watch and John was up there the second shift. Then things headed south once again. We were fixing coffee and bacon when in walks the three rag tags into camp. The one with the rifle says they tested ground all over the mountain the last few days and none of it looked any good. He asks again about his crew working with us for a small percent of any gold found and coffee and beans. Once again I told him we weren't finding any gold and didn't need anyone. Then he started to argue with me and said being camped up and such a big excavation going we must be on to something good. John had stood up infront of the guy and had his rifle in hand. I was caught flat footed. The last staement by the guy made John snap. I had never seen this in the ten years I had known him. John rammed the butt end of the rifle into the guys belly and he went down on his knees. Then John whacked him in the face with the butt end and he slumped over on his face. I jumped up off my chair ready for anything coming. One of the younger guys made a lunge at John but John caught him on the side of the head with the rifle barrel, withdrew it, and brought it up hard under his chin. He went down hard as well. The other guy stood there shaking. The second guy eventually got up and was cursing up a storm at John. John made the guy tell him where they were camped. I'm not saying how he did this. Then John told him to pick up his friend who was still passed out and git. And he made them leave the rifle. After this we followed them up to where they had a rough camp set up. The first guy had come around by now. We busted up their camp and told them to pack up and leave the area. John told them that if he saw them on our claims again it would go even rougher for them. They left but they weren't happy about it. Regardless of what anybody hears about this event this is the way it all happened. By then it was nearly noon so we decided to both go up and dig for a few hours and get back down to the creek until we felt sure they weren't coming back. We only dug 15 buckets and worked the tom. Once again we got a cracker jack return on our labor. Almost one and one half ounces. We are in something special.

Thanks. Not to give anything away but Jed is on the site of quite a discovery as well as all kind of trouble.

Did you read the May 6 entry?