** Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine ** A Miners Journal **

[GhostMiner]

   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.

[GhostMiner]

   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 ....................

[GhostMiner]

   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.   

[GhostMiner]

   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 ................

[Bedrocker]

18 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

   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 ................

Mornin'... don't forget a pic of Jacob when you get a chance.

That picture on the cover of your book isn't Jed and crew... correct?

[GhostMiner]

   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 ...............

[GhostMiner]

  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 ...............

[GhostMiner]

   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.

[GhostMiner]

   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.