GhostMiner

Pour Out The Jack.

August 14 2002 Pour Out The Jack This morning the entire crew was up and eating breakfast together. Bill and Conor were talking non stop about the coffin of gold as usual. I brought up something to them. What if this supposed coffin of gold existed as the note stated? And what if there was a corpse in the coffin? Would Bill and Conor notify the authorities? After all, this may very well be an unsolved murder mystery from back in that time period. Whose gold was it? Who was the killer? I told them they should go to town and do some research to see if there were any unsolved murder cases in this area. I don’t know if there were good records kept or maybe it was never reported. That is, if the note was real. And if it was real, the killer had a morbid sense of humor. I think I gave them something to think on. The sun was quickly rising and we all got to work. Conor and Bill at The Hidden Mine and Jacob and I at our dig site. We worked steady until 5:00 PM and called it a day after having washed 240 yards of pay gravel. That gave us a two day run of 360 yards. We will do the cleanup and gold weigh tomorrow. Conor said he wanted to hang around camp and watch. He had never seen a gold weigh and was pretty anxious to see what kind of gold and how much of it we were getting. After supper we were all in good moods and broke out some cold beer. Then Conor brought out a bottle of Jack and we were drinking double shots with beer chasers. It didn’t take Conor long to get hammered and start talking about his ex wife. It seems she had divorced him and he was having a hard time getting over it. Jacob, who had only drank a small amount, went over to Conor and told him to buck up and be a man and to stop all the sniveling. I couldn’t have said it better if I tried. I told him to buck up or shut up. He just gave me a dirty look and kept drinking. I was actually hoping he would start something. We eventually all turned in around midnight. TO BE CONTINUED ..............

Let's remember the note/poem the crew found in The Hidden Mine. This was driving Bill and Conor to throw all logic out the window. As I previously stated, this was where I took my moniker from. Was it some kind of sick joke or something more sinister? I dig a hole cover up my tracks far as I know I ain’t comin’ back A mystery they may never solve hidden gold from the motherlode Ghost Miner is the name he’s called a thousand ounces in a casket culled The old Ghost Miner starin’ down a forty five out in the Sierra Nevada he didn’t survive The graveyard train rollin’ down the track will never bring that miner back The gold is gone sad and blue gone for good without no clue

Sorry Reg, I meant 2002. I just corrected the year.

Yes, 2002. I don't recall what the models were.

Let me ask you guys a question. Were Garrett detectors one of the best you could buy back in 2002? Bill seemed to think so.

They bought Garrett detectors as far as I can recall. I also know there was another brand they had as well but can't recall the name. I remember Bill telling us that his detector should find that large amount of gold even if it was buried deep and the military also used those detectors. As I have stated previously, I had no interest in using detectors. This was their gig. I'm a digger & like to use excavators and run large amounts of gravel. That's mining. However, Jacob and I were rooting for them and letting them give it a try. I remember Conor going on and on about the buried coffin. Did they ever find anything? Read on.

Bill only gets gold if he works the quartz vein & must give a % to me Jacob & myself. Conor only gets what Jacob wants to give him. That is between them. If they find gold with the detectors they must give it to Jacob and myself. Then Jacob and I will give them their cut.

August 13 2002 Part Four We continued washing gravel for the rest of the day and knocked off two hours early to deal with moving tailings. We had processed 120 yards of material. Jacob took numerous test pans throughout the day and the gold was looking good. The cut was holding up to his scrutiny. Back at camp Conor and Bill were talking about their day. They seemed to be getting the feel for the detectors and had turned up lots of old trash that most likely came from previous mining activities. However, they had not found one spec of gold. Bill wanted to spend at least two weeks checking the area for buried gold and Conor had pretty much lost his mind to gold fever. All logic and reasoning had left him. I suggested that maybe they should start mining the gold vein at the lower drift mine. This, after all, contained proven gold values and was worthy of working. However, when I brought this up, they looked at me like I was crazy. How dare I suggest something like this. After all, the two of them were now on a bonafide treasure hunt and were convinced they would become millionaires any day now. I just shook my head and was thinking that in a month or so I would boot them off the property. TO BE CONTINUED .................

August 13 2002 Part Three A Change In Gravel By afternoon we had cut a sizable trench into the tailings. Without warning the gravels changed from a brown and gray loosely compacted material to a more solid bluish material. I was running the excavator and hollered out for Jacob to take a look. The cut was a good fifteen feet wide and twenty feet in depth and had formed a sort of open air tunnel through the tailings and into the base of the mountain. Jacob chopped out some material with his shovel that had been disturbed by the excavator bucket and removed a pan full of blue gravel. I kept digging while he panned them until he came over with the pan and waved for me to come take a look. In the pan was a handful of heavy black sand and fourteen very coarse pieces of gold I would call pickers as well as a lode of fine gold to boot. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Jacob said we had hit a virgin spot and it was rich. He explained to me that this is why you keep working ground. It looked like it had paid off for us this time. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

August 13 2002 Part Two We had a jam up in the hopper that feeds the trommel. I climbed up inside with a shovel and a rock bar and spent over an hour getting it unjammed. When we got everything going we had a visit from a Sheriff’s deputy. He said there had been some people camping down the creek who were robbed by two men last night. I told him about our run in with the two guys we chased off and said it might be the same guys. He wanted a description but I couldn’t give him one because I never got that good a look at them. He warned us to be careful and headed out. After he was gone Jacob lit up a smoke and said he should have cut them down with the Thompson when he had the chance. I just said we’d take care of business if they came back around. With that we got back to mining. TO BE CONTINUED ............

August 13 2002 Part One Washing Tailings We weighed up the gold this morning. From the 425 yards of washed gravel we got 2.5 ounces of gold. We were disappointed. As mining goes. It wasn’t a total disaster but Jacob and I were hoping for much more. Jacob just shook his head and said it is what it is and we need to keep washing gravel. He encouraged me by his thinking that we might very well hit a sweet spot in those tailings. Also, if we dug far enough in there might be some virgin ground hidden in there. Conor and Bill headed back up to the Hidden Mine and Jacob and I got to washing gravel. The one nice thing about working in this lower area is the mining is relatively easy compared to some of our locations. The creek is close and the digging is not hard. The gravels are fairly loose. We have been setting a steady pace and the trommel has been churning along without any issues. Jacob did make a few adjustments on the sluice angle before we started up in order to capture more of the fine gold down here. I haven’t seen any coarse gold to speak of. We broke for lunch and Conor and Bill came down as well. They weren’t having any luck. They did turn up some bits and scraps of metal here and there. All junk. Conor was still rambling on about a buried casket of gold. It was all I could do but I kept my mouth shut. After all, he was Jacob’s nephew and Jed’s son but I couldn’t bring myself to like him. He was cocky and brash. Maybe I wouldn’t have liked Jed either, who knows? TO BE CONTINUED ..................

Yep. Even tried using concrete on a couple of markers and the hooligans ran a truck over them. Unless you can patrol them on a regular basis there's not much to stop them from pulling them out or knocking them down. I also use lots of metal signs high enough on trees so they can see them but can't get at them without a ladder. A lot of work.

Taking a look back at the 1936 journal & remembering Whisky Jack. Some have asked about him. Yes, he was real. He is in the old report as Jack Kemper and was listed as mine laborer / mine hand. His age according to records would have been 79 in 1936. Cause of death was snake bite / heart failure. Gravesite is unknown. I have not been able to locate any relatives but am following one lead that may produce something. However, in researching our mining property, I have found family members of old crews who knew next to nothing about their old relatives & actually learned about them from me. Such is life I suppose. Long gone & forgotten. I am doing my best to keep the old stories alive. Let's go back for a minute & remember when the crew met Jack. July 31 1936 Part One After breakfast we weighed up yesterday's pay and it was as expected. There was barely half an ounce. We were still sitting at camp talking over the digging results when I heard Sarge holler out that there was a man coming up the creek. He told the man to halt which he did. The crew walked over near the creek to have a look see. It was an old man with a white beard. Sarge asked him what he wanted. The old man said he had drove out from his place near town to talk with us. He wanted to meet the crew. I told Sarge to let him come into camp and I asked him what he was there for. The old timer said his name was Whiskey Jack and he had worked the claim here for a mining company about 50 years ago when he was in his twenties. The company he worked for named the claim after him. He was part of a 6 man crew who mined this area with monitors and also by hand drifting tunnels into the mountain. He said they had gotten a lot of gold up here. According to him they had water delivery issues late summer and started drifting into the fault and had found some signs of big gold. He was also on the crew that had driven the Eastern Drift Mine into the mountain. Part of the crew was called off to work at a big mine 8 miles away leaving only three men to continue the drift which they never finished. The following year the company had pulled out of the area and he went with them. They had marked the area on a big boulder on top of the fault. The drift was down near the bottom of the fault in gravels they hadn’t hydraulicked yet. They did it that way to keep the location of the drift secret. Before they left the area they backfilled the opening to hide it. He offered to show me the area and I gladly accepted the offer. The crew followed him out to the dig area and he said it was north from where we were working. We followed him as he walked north where there was no sign of mining. He pointed up to the top of the fault which was about 80 ft higher up. He said he was too old to go up there but told us to look for a big boulder with an X and a cross marked on it. The drift was 80 feet directly below it near the fault line. John stayed down at the bottom talking with the old timer and Jacob, Will, and me climbed up to the top. We searched around for a few minutes and about 75 feet further north than where we started we found the boulder. They had notched the markers in there pretty deep. We were all excited and came back down. I told him we had found it just a little further north than where he remembered. He said the drift was right where there was a kind of opening or hole in the fault line and they had followed it in and moved out rock and gravel. It was a natural cavern below the channel with country at the bottom and above. The country rock had cracked in that area and allowed gold bearing gravels to deposit inside the fault line. That’s why there were few timbers needed and the material inside was mostly smaller gravel with some small rounded river rock. He said there was real good gold in there and each man was taking over 2 ounces a day by pick and shovel work. He was of the opinion that there was big gold deeper in. It was a natural gold trap. Now he had our attention for sure. JULY 31 1936 Part Two I asked Whiskey Jack if he'd like to stick around while we tried to find the old drift. He said sure as he didn’t have anything better to do. We all took the picks and shovels up to the proposed area and started to work. Jack said it wasn’t very deep and if we were directly below that boulder marker at the top we should find it. They had timbered the adit and left a few timbers laying near the opening when they left so he said they were probably still there. The four of us fanned out a bit and started about 20 feet out from the hill as Jack directed. After several hours of digging Jacob said he found a timber. We went over and started digging the area and pretty soon we found another timber and the top of the drift. We shoveled out the area which looked to be backfilled and maybe also covered by slides over the years. We finally got it opened up enough and we had a look in. Whiskey Jack came over and let out a hoot and was stomping his foot on the ground saying there she is. He said it went back in about 50 feet or so and they had stopped for the year and never returned. He remembered the tunnel to be in very stable ground and they hadn’t needed to set much support timber. By now it was getting near dusk and I called it a day. We went back down to camp and fixed up some beans and bacon and I pulled out a bottle. I asked Jack if he wanted a cup. He grinned and said he didn’t get that name for nothing. We fixed him up a place to sleep in one of the tents and Whiskey Jack and me drank a few cups together and talked about mining. Jack told me he had mined for a good part of his life and had worked for several big companies. He said the big company that had worked our area leased out claims to smaller companies and got royalties as well as selling the water to them. He said he had worked one summer on the flume crew when water was brought 20 miles from higher up the mountain with the hand dug ditches. He got off that crew eventually and helped run one of the mining crews and ran a big monitor set on a tripod for one season. He said some of the old toms were 500 to 1000 feet long. He’d seen one of the forkers get hit by mistake from the blast of water from a monitor and get sent sliding down the tom on the side of the mountain breaking several bones in his body. He said the big companies controlled everything including the law. They ran the towns. He said he noticed we had armed guards here and he said the old companies had them too. He’s seen a thief get shot for stealing gold one day. Jack told me our crew was getting a reputation in town. People were saying there is a rough bunch of miners on the mountain not to be messed with. The town folk figured us as a mean bunch that stared down outlaws and spit in their eye. Whiskey Jack was full of old stories about mining back in the old days and I loved listening to them. Sarge and Ben were on watch duty and the crew had all retired for the night but Whiskey Jack and me sat up drinking Irish whiskey until deep into the night.

On the subject of the underground mines - here is a video of the old 1855 Nebraska Mine in the northern Sierra Nevada. I don't know if Bill is still working this mine but a number of years ago I got a lot of guidance from him. I know there is a lot of gold still in this mine.

Remember Bill Anderson's story of The Graveyard Train where the miners had hooked a number of ore cars together & one of the crew rode them on the rails down the mountain to the creek. However, the train of cars had failed to negotiate a sharp curve and plummeted into a ravine killing the miner. Bill called it The Graveyard Train.

A nice video showing some old ore cars. Note that the works were hand dug.

August 12 2002 The crew was up at dawn with the exception of Conor who didn’t come out of his camper until just after 8:00 AM. He didn’t have much of anything to say to me and he and Bill went up to the Hidden Mine with their new detectors. In the meantime, Jacob and I started up the trommel and got to mining gold. The place we were digging did have fine gold but it was all tailings from the upper mining area that had been shot down the mountain over 100 years ago. Occasionally we would pull up an old homemade bucket or some other bits of scraps from the old timers. We didn’t see anything of Bill and Conor all morning. At lunch Jacob said we would run the gravel where we were digging for the remainder of the day and do a cleanup and then do a gold weigh tomorrow to see if the ground was worth the trouble. He had been doing test pans with poor results and wasn’t confident we were going to make much gold there. We ran the trommel until dusk and processed a whopping 275 yards which gave us a two day run of 425 yards. I knew we had gold but how much gold? Tomorrow I will tell the story. Conor and Bill had already had their supper by the time Jacob and I got back to camp. I asked Bill if they had any luck and he shook his head no. Conor was silent. I asked Bill how long they were going to metal detect the area and he wasn’t sure. He said they wanted to comb a large area from the mine heading outward to see if they could find anything. I wished him good luck. TO BE CONTINUED .................

Moonshine, mineshafts, & old cabins. I have some shine to drink tonight as well. Cheers from GhostMiner.

August 11 2002 Part Two Another Confrontation Jacob and I worked the rest of the day without any issues. The trommel was running smooth as silk and we were seeing some gold in the sluice box. It was mostly very fine and it was hard to tell how much but at least we were seeing gold again. I always sleep better after seeing it. We ended up with 150 yards of washed gravel. When we walked into camp Bill and Conor were playing with their new detectors. Bill said they had been given instructions by the guy who ran the shop where they bought them and they even used them before bringing them back to camp. He seemed confident that he and Conor would find the supposed 1000 ounces of hidden gold. It had been a hot day and after supper we sat around camp drinking a few beers and talking about gold. Conor and Bill had gotten hold of some moonshine in town and they opened up a jar and started drinking it. I tasted it and it was powerful stuff. Jacob had a sip or two as well. After a while Conor started getting a little drunk again. Then he opened up a can of worms. He was saying that this mining property really was Jed’s and seeing how he had been murdered it should have gone to him. He just went on and on about it. After listening to this for about 15 minutes I heard enough. I told him that it was a tragedy that Jed died and the mine did go to Jacob until the crooks killed the crew and took it over in 1937. I tried to explain to him that I had legal rights to all of the mining claims that made up the vast property. However, he didn’t want to hear it and told me he should be getting a big cut of the gold we had worked for this year. I laughed in his face and told him that wouldn’t happen. He knew that he and Jacob were splitting up Jacob’s gold and they had their own agreement that didn’t concern me. After a spell Conor staggered back to his camper in a fit of drunken anger. Jacob got up to follow him in. I told Jacob that he needed to rein Conor in or I would do it for him. He didn’t say anything and Bill went to bed as well. I stayed up for a spell and had a drink of the moonshine to settle down. I looked up at the big sky and finished my beer. It was nice to have some quiet time alone. I was thinking that Conor had the worst case of gold fever I had seen and he could become unhinged - especially when he drank. TO BE CONTINUED .................

Same here. Must be an issue with the site. Tried posting some pictures but got same message.

Sorry about that. I was attempting to add a picture & link but am unable to do so.

-- checking --

August 11 2002 Part One The morning came without further incident and Jacob and I were up bright and early with the sunrise. I couldn’t say the same for Bill and Conor who were still sleeping it off at 9:00 AM. We let them sleep and got busy with our own mining operation where we had started down near the creek. It seemed like an eternity since we had mined any gold and we were both chomping at the bit to get some gravels dug. We continued where we had left off and by noon we’d processed 50 yards. The sluice on the trommel was showing some promise. We took a quick lunch break at camp. Bill was sitting in a chair and Conor had just gotten up. They both looked pretty sick and hung over. They had some coffee and a little food. Bill said they were going to town to buy a couple of metal detectors. Then they planned to start scanning the grounds around the Hidden Mine for buried gold. I asked them if they knew how to operate a metal detector and they said no but would get some directions from wherever they were buying them from. Jacob agreed that it might be a good idea and if anything would give them a new skill. As for Jacob and I, we were just happy to dig holes and test pan gravels. The thought of a casket with 1000 ounces of gold buried somewhere on the claims seemed incredulous to me but I figured it would keep them out of my hair while I mined. Jacob told Conor to make sure they bought some good equipment and get some instruction on operating them as well. With that we left them to nurse their hangovers and got back to work. TO BE CONTINUED ..................

Not In The Journal : At this point I was having thoughts of closing down the mine for the year and heading home. The makeshift crew was loose and dangerous. I had no idea what was coming next & it was probably a good thing I didn't. Whisky, gold, & guns aren't a good mix. Barrooms, broken hearts, & bad decisions were coming.