GhostMiner

JULY 10 1936 This morning at breakfast we talked about where we might find more gold. John wanted to come up to the fault line and help dig but we needed to leave one person to guard the camp from hooligans so I told Jacob to stay down there until we came back for lunch break. So the three of us went up and started testing gravels. We spread out north and south of the glory hole near the base of the fault line. I told the crew to dig down three feet and take a quarter bucket to the tub and pan it. We were just looking for any color. John and Will headed up to the north a bit. Will was 20 feet north of the trench we started and John was 20 feet further north of Will. I went 20 feet south of the first glory hole. We dug samples and panned all morning with poor results. Around noon we went back down to camp and had our lunch. I said it is likely there is much more gold here and we need to prospect. At the same time our creek was drying up but still had enough water for the pump a few hundred feet to the north. We needed to get on gold as soon as we could. After lunch Will stayed at camp and John, Jacob, and me went back up to the dig site. We kept widening the test holes by 10 foot increments. The fault line to the north was covered by gravels but it was exposed where I was working. I took a sample to the tub and relief came over me. There was color in the pan. Some coarse mixed with fine. I went back up and dug down to four feet and took a sample. More gold. Now I moved south another 10 feet and dug down three feet. The sample was showing good color with coarse and fines. I took one more sample 10 feet south of the last one at the three foot level. Once again I had color. I hollered over to Jacob and John to come down to the tub. I showed them the samples and pointed to where I got them. They were happy as all get up. It was late afternoon and I said let’s get a hole started. So the three of us worked each test hole trying to get deeper. We took 20 buckets down to the tom and washed it. When we finished panning we had about 2 grams. Those was upper level gravels and held promise for sure. We had our new dig site. TO BE CONTINUED ......................

Very true.

JULY 9 1936 We had an early breakfast in the cool morning air and did the final weigh of the glory hole. There were plinkers and pennyweights in promiscuous amounts as well as heavy coarse gold. It all added up to 52 ounces. I told everyone to take a good look at it as we may never see gold like this again even if we mine for another 40 years. We were both happy and sad at the same time. We had mined over 800 ounces of gold in less than three months. Now we needed to find another place on the fault line to mine. John did some work down at camp while Jacob, Will, and me went up to the the dig site and looked down into that rich kettle one last time. I told them to move just west of the kettle about 20 feet and we would start digging down and sampling. We got down about 4 feet and I panned some gravel but there was no color. We all busted our tails and got down to the 6 foot level and I panned another sample but still no color. We tried to get deeper but hit country. We all took sample pans but there was no color. I told them we need to get back up against the fault line and start digging test holes. All I wanted to see was some color for now. We spent the entire day digging and panning with very poor results and no gold. Could we have mined the only rich area on this claim? We stopped for the day at suppertime and I just said we’ll find another good spot. There has to be more. TO BE CONTINUED ......................

Thanks for reading!!

Thanks for reading the journal.

Jed? Never.

JULY 8 1936 We put 47 ounces in our bank this morning. John was joking about it saying the country rock must be slanted away from this area and the bigger gold had spilled to the side we already mined. I just laughed and said I would take it and not throw it back in the hole. Everyone was in a good mood despite the heat. Our creek was getting very low on water except for the pooled area several hundred feet to the north. I told the crew we needed to try our best to finish this kettle soon because our water was disappearing. Everyone agreed. Back at the dig site it was hard and steady work. The north side of the kettle was down to about 15 feet and we were determined to get to country. After lunch the heat was big. Well over 100 degrees again by early afternoon. We pushed through it and Will was down in the hole with me when he hollered out to check the bottom. A massive slab of country rock was being exposed. We worked outward around the edges and hit huge boulders. We were stopped out with 74 buckets. The level was about 16 ft in depth. Our kettle was mined out. Jacob came down into the hole and had a look. I told them we had mined out a glory hole and should be proud miners. It was still not quitting time so we rooted around the bottom seeing if we could scrape out any more gravels but there were none left. I told them we were finished here. We will need to find another area to dig. Back at camp that night we sat around the fire and talked about everything that had happened to us. The crew was drinking Luckys and I opened a bottle of Bushmill. I rolled a Burley and thought about all the people who were in hard times and all the prospectors dreaming of finding gold. I was the lucky one. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

Here is something interesting - I have located the son of the geologist involved with Jed. I am trying to contact him via Facebook. In some of his writings it seems his father talked with him quite a bit about mining ventures prior to his death.

Good points. They are making plenty of gold to buy provisions on their own though so not sure about needing to be funded by a geologist. I do think the geologist may have gotten a cut of the gold. I am in the process of searching back in time to try & contact relatives of the geologist. However, even if I get to interview them they may not know anything about this project. There is more that took place afterwards as well and I am trying to work on that part of the story at present. The information trail outside of the report or journal has grown cold over the years. However, I am trying.

JULY 7 1936 Yesterday we scraped bottom on the south side of the kettle. The take was huge. There was 129 ounces in the pan. We are all stunned. And we are not finished. I have made nearly 7 yrs of labor in less than three months time on my percentage. I couldn’t have done it without the crew. Once again we broke out the bottle and drank to the gold. Then we went back to work. We need to finish working the other side of the kettle and clean it out. We moved the stacked rock in the bottom over to the other side which took us most of the morning. We took our lunch break and returned to work in the extreme heat of 100 degrees. Jacob and me worked the bottom while Will cranked the buckets up and set them on the truck 20 at a time and drove them down to John. I think we have a couple of days to work on this side of the hole before we reach country assuming the bottom is flat. We had to pry a lot of big rocks loose and clean them and carry them over to the low side for stacking. About mid afternoon Will gave a holler down to us. He said there was a stranger coming. Jacob and me got up to the surface and saw him walking over to our dig site. I asked him who he was and what he wanted. He said he owned a claim about a mile to our east along the lower creek on the mountain. He was doing ok he said but was looking for better ground. He had two more men working over there with him. He said he was contacting other claim owners in the area and trying to form a co operative to pool their resources and manpower as well as hire protection to guard the mines against thieves. It seems we aren’t the only ones dealing with hooligans. I told him I appreciated the offer but we were only going to be here short term and had no interest. He had to have noticed our large diggings but said nothing about any of our operations. He gave me his contact information before he left and told me to contact him if we wanted to join the group. We continued on with our labor and finished the day with 105 buckets. Our progress was a bit slow as we were all feeling the heavy work now. That night at camp we sat around the fire and talked about the co operative. John was afraid they would try to push everyone into this group and use some kind of tactics to get us to join as well as take a fee or gold percentage from us. I don’t know how many groups are actively mining in this area and really have no interest. My only goal is to get this gold out of the ground as quickly as possible. TO BE CONTINUED ............

Another entry coming. As far as the gold - there will be things revealed in the journal and things left to qustion. Jed did not post any locations in the jornal as to where any gold was hidden. The property is vast and thousands of places to hide jars of gold. I have found empty cans but no gold. However, I am not using any metal detectors.

That is a most interesting post.

Gold keeps quite well under the ground LOL.

So I know that Jed was working with a prominant geologist. I have his name as it's in the report. Jed never mentions him but I bet he's getting something out of this operation. Let's assume 10% - just a guess. So that gives Jed 90%. Now John is hired for a 50% cut according to Jed. Now that leaves Jed 45%. Then he brings in his brother Jacob & Will for a small %. No idea what he considered small but let's say another 10% to them combined. John was contributing to Will's gold payday as well. So now Jed is down to 35%. I bet i'm close on that. So 35% of 581 ounces is 203.35 ounces to this date in the journal. Probably 4 or 5 yrs wages back in those days. Keep working Jed, you ain't retired yet.

They're up to 581 ounces.

To Jed.

To Jed.

JULY 6 1936 The weighing was finished after breakfast. There was gold everywhere in the tom and when panned we got a whopper. The plinkers and pennyweights are plentiful and are mixed in with the coarse. All told we had 95 ounces to greet our day. I told the crew that if we are still not near a bottom we could end up with much more. This is the glory hole we have all dreamed of for sure. Up at the dig site we continued to work the same side of the hole while stacking rock on the opposite. We are down over 15 feet on this side. We have very stable side walls and the ground is dry. We did a bit of cross bracing on the north side for safety. Some of the large flat rock is quite heavy and requires two men to move. We got down to 17 feet on the south side of the kettle and then it happened. We struck country. It was near the end of the day and we had 112 buckets. I told the crew to call it a day. If the bedrock is even then we still have the other side of the kettle to work down so we are not finished here. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

Just a note here : This is the calm before the storm. Just when things look peaceful ..................

JULY 5 1936 The day was hot. We hadn’t seen more than a sprinkle of rain in three weeks. Our creek is no longer running but there is still enough water for the pump. I may have to find a better place to set the pump if the creek dries further. There is an area of good water up to the north and we may need to run several hundred feet of hose down to the tom. Today we started stacking the large flatter rocks on one side of the kettle after cleaning them instead of lifting them out with the winch. This will help us make better time with the bucket counts. We will move them to the other side as we dig down and move them as needed. This is a bit of a gamble but I think we are near country and may be ending this hole soon. If I am wrong we may need an entire day or more to move the larger rock out. At the end of the day we hauled out 125 buckets by using this stacking method but we can only do it for a short time. We have still not seen country. The test pans were all very rich. TO BE CONTINUED ..............

I don't know of any geologist who works for free. The journal never mentions a geologist but the report does.

Sometimes they do.

JULY 4 1936 Seeing it was a holiday we decided to take the day off but not before weighing up the gold from those rich buckets. None of us could believe our eyes. We had 72 ounces. The bigger pieces added a lot to the weight for sure. Instead of a big celebration we all just stood there and stared at the pan. It was like something out of a dream but it was really happening to us. John was close to crying I think. He couldn’t speak. Jacob just looked over at me with disbelief and Will was holding his head in his hands and rocking back and forth. Jacob said we are doing it, we have a gold strike of mass proportion. I shook my head in agreement. After breakfast John gave us all haircuts. He was pretty good at it. I gave myself a good shave and we all washed our clothes in the creek as well as ourselves. We decided that it would be best from here on out to stay clear of town unless provisions were needed. We would only send one man to town when needed and keep the other three on site to protect our goods and treasure. After supper the crew opened some Luckys and I opened a bottle of whiskey and we took a walk up to the hole. We just looked down into it trying to guess how much gold was waiting for us. I had no clue. None of us did. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

No mention of it but wouldn't be surprised.

Wait untill they hit the bottom.