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

[GhostMiner]

   July 23   2002

 

   Today’s gold weigh was a good one with 23.2 ounces. The gravels here are looking very good. We will fill in the pit today and begin to open up a new one. If the ground continues to hold these values we will pass our 1000 ounce goal easily. 

   Jacob and I are also talking about digging into the lower portion of the mountain down here at some point. We have some very old maps that show there was a drift tunnel cut into the lower mountain and it looked to be just east of the tailings dump. This would put it at the very easternmost portion of that claim. Over the years it has been covered over by sluff and storm debris so finding it will take a bit of work. I have learned from experience that when the old timers hand cut drift tunnels they were usually onto something good. Often times they were stopped out far before all the pay gravels were taken. I think the lower mountain area has been worked heavily but we will cut a few trenches for a test. We would sure like to find that old tunnel as well. We probably have enough floodplain gravels to last us into early August. Jacob is always thinking ahead. The mining process has become fairly routine now. It’s all about running material at a steady pace. The more exploration.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

[GhostMiner]

 

[GhostMiner]

On the subject of the old tunnel. we are not talking about a shaft but a drift or tunnel going into a mountain. This may also prove to be a combination of tunnels and shafts. It was worked in the late 1800's after Hydraulic mining was stopped or limited by the Sawyer Decision of California in 1884. This court ruling sent the big companies packing and the ground left as well as the tailings was worked by small, independent crews on a much smaller scale with most of it being pick and shovel labor.

[GhostMiner]

   July 24   2002

 

   It has been a confusing day for us. After opening a new pit and checking the gravels we have not seen much of any gold. Certainly not worth mining. The pit we opened adjoins the first pit to the east. There is no bluestone and only a few fines. We found bedrock at 19 feet. So we closed up that hole and moved over to the west side of the original pit and found bedrock at 20 feet. There was no bluestone and no gold. We continued to work our way east from the original pit by digging test holes and still found nothing of value worth mining. Had we just gotten lucky with that first discovery? We spent the entire day until 6:00 PM digging in the floodplain with no good results. Jacob is now wondering if we just happened to find the only spot down here that had any gold. It would have been pure, dumb luck. Jacob is cool and collected but I am not very happy as I write all this. We will continue to poke holes in the floodplain at 10 ft spacing until we either find gold or look for the buried mine shaft in the mountain. We also have the old tailings dump to work if needed. Gold is a fickle friend as Jacob has stated many times.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

[GhostMiner]

5 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

   July 24   2002

 

   It has been a confusing day for us. After opening a new pit and checking the gravels we have not seen much of any gold. Certainly not worth mining. The pit we opened adjoins the first pit to the east. There is no bluestone and only a few fines. We found bedrock at 19 feet. So we closed up that hole and moved over to the west side of the original pit and found bedrock at 20 feet. There was no bluestone and no gold. We continued to work our way east from the original pit by digging test holes and still found nothing of value worth mining. Had we just gotten lucky with that first discovery? We spent the entire day until 6:00 PM digging in the floodplain with no good results. Jacob is now wondering if we just happened to find the only spot down here that had any gold. It would have been pure, dumb luck. Jacob is cool and collected but I am not very happy as I write all this. We will continue to poke holes in the floodplain at 10 ft spacing until we either find gold or look for the buried mine shaft in the mountain. We also have the old tailings dump to work if needed. Gold is a fickle friend as Jacob has stated many times.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

Hang in there 'cause this is about to get interesting. 

[GhostMiner]

  July 25   2002     Part One     WE MAKE A DISCOVERY

 

   We got up before sunrise and had ourselves what Jacob called a Mountain Man’s Breakfast. It consisted of Two or three eggs, sausage, home fried potatoes, and biscuits with gravy. With it we had coffee laced with double shots of Irish whisky. What a way to start a work day. We were free spirits and answered to no one. 

   After breakfast and just as the sun came up the air temperature was still nice and cool. This was the part of the day I liked before the intense heat took over. We were determined to find where the gold was hiding and set about digging more test holes. Jacob was running the excavator and after about an hour or so he stopped and motioned me to go down into a 15 foot deep pit he was working on. The ground was sloped and I was able to walk down into the bottom with a shovel. Jacob said he had hit something hard down there but it didn’t look like rock. I saw something thin and long heading north towards the base of the mountain but it was still partially covered over by gravel. I started to scrape back the ground in order to better uncover the mystery. After a few minutes of work I could see what it was. I hollered up to Jacob to have a look at what I was seeing. He climbed down off the excavator and peered into the hole while shining his flashlight down there. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed.  

   TO BE CONTINUED ............

[GhostMiner]

   Something I never wrote in the journal  :  One night up on the mine Jacob & I were sitting by the campfire talking about all kinds of things when he told me a story. He said it was a few years after he had left the mine and was up in Oregon. He said there were a conglomeration of characters living up on a mountain. They were scattered about in cabins and tents. A mix of loggers, prospectors, ranchers, & drifters that all lived within a few miles of each other. On occasion, they would get together at an old barn one of the ranchers owned. Usually it would be a Saturday night. They'd drink home made whisky and after awhile get pretty drunk. Then they would organize a wrestling match. Jacob was in a number of them and said it could get wild. Sometimes it turned into a big brawl or a fist fight but they always remained friends after it was all over with.

   He told me about one night when one of the roughest guys in the bunch challenged him to a fight. A no holds barred fight which meant anything was legal except for eye gouging. Jacob said the guy was a young logger and knew Jacob was a gold miner. That always meant trouble according to him. Jacob told me the logger was a big, burly guy and was a good wrestler and fighter in general. Jacob was also young but wiry and was uncommonly strong for his size. They went at it and the fight lasted for nearly an hour. Jacob claimed he got the better of the logger but paid for it with a broken knuckle in his right hand and a broken nose as well. He said he beat the logger to the point where he couldn't get back up on his feet but the guy refused to quit. Finally, some of the other guys who were there put a stop to it. Jacob told me he and the logger became close friends after that fight. He said the logger was killed several years later when he had taken a fall out of a tree.  

[GhostMiner]

July 25   2002     Part Two

 

   I did a little more scraping and the beam from the flashlight illuminated the area. There were two wooden rails capped with iron strapping. Jacob said it appeared there was some kind of operation going on down here. They must have been digging tunnels into the base of the mountain and using mine cars to remove ore and debris. Jacob told me it would have been done most likely by human labor and possibly work horses as well. We had some old reports on this area but there was no mention of this activity. It may have been done in secret or someone got paid off to keep their mouths shut. Hard to tell but we were both anxious to follow the rails into the mountain.

   Jacob began excavating the old tracks and following them north. By the end of the day we had gotten within 50 feet of the mountain's base. We were losing daylight rapidly and knocked off for supper. We really didn’t want to quit but figured we could get some answers tomorrow.

   After supper Jacob was gabbing away about what the old operation might have been like. He said they would have hand dug a drift into the mountain and hauled the ore cars out to process gravels at the creek. He figured it might have been a pretty good sized operation with quite a few men doing pick and shovel work as well as dynamite for the heavy ground. This had always been a placer operation with no sign of hard rock mining as far as we knew. There was no sign of a stamp mill in the area so Jacob figured it was a buried placer channel gravel they were following. He said it must have been rich for them to go to the trouble. I couldn’t wait to see what those old timers had been chasing. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

[dig4gold]

Now that is interesting.

D4G