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

[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

[GhostMiner]

  July 26   2002

 

   We got started with the exploration about half an hour after sunrise. We broke the pristine quiet when the excavator came to life. You could hear the sound from the big diesel motor echoing off the side of the mountain and traveling down the creek. 

   Jacob would dig a trench down and every time he got to the right depth he hit the old track. I would ride the bucket down to the bottom from time to time and take a sample of the gravels and make sure the direction of the track was not changing. The track was running about true north straight into the mountain.

   I panned the gravel samples while Jacob dug away. There was almost no gold in any of the samples so far. Just a very few fine flakes not worth mentioning.

   We took a lunch break around noon and got back at it. We were making progress and getting close to the base of the mountain. By dusk we had cut a long trench that ended close to the mountain. It was a little wider than the tracks. We stopped for the day and took a look at what we had accomplished. Jacob said the old track had been buried over the years by the tailings from up above. He figured they dated back to the time of the big operations of the 1860’s to the 1880’s. He said this lower area must have been worked by a smaller company and at some point got buried by all the slickens and tailings from the hydraulic outfits. He said it might have happened after the guys working down here had moved on or it may have taken place while they were trying to work. He said the big companies were ruthless and wouldn’t have thought anything about shooting tailings 300 feet down below to this area and burying the smaller companies workings. I’d heard about stuff like this happening in various areas and sometimes it ended in violent shootouts with rival companies. There was no law to speak of. Usually, the big companies employed their own thugs to deal with problems. They had plenty of money and that meant power.

   After we called it a day we sat by the campfire and had Jacobs favorite stew with cornbread. The temperature had cooled nicely by dark and actually there was a chill in the air by 10:00 PM. We’d go from 100 degrees in the afternoon to about 50 degrees by 2:00 AM. We have not seen rain in quite some time. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .............

[GhostMiner]

   July 27   2002     Part One       Quartz Veins and Ore Cars   

 

   We found the mine adit just before noon today. The tunnel opening is about eight feet in height and close to six feet in width. It was well timbered and covered by mine tailings from above as well as many years of slides coming down the mountain. Jacob shined the flashlight in to get a better look. Everything was timbered and still holding as far as what could be seen from the entrance. I was about to walk in when Jacob grabbed my shoulder and told me to slow down. He said we should not go charging in too far without inspecting the old working closely.

   There were several old oil lamps near the entrance. They were covered in dust. Jacob told me the workings were most likely from sometime in the 1800’s. He said if the workings dated post 1900 the lamps probably would have been carbide. The tunnel looked to go straight back into the mountain on a northerly heading. We shined our flashlights down the drift and slowly made our way deeper into the mountain.

   The tracks were still in pretty good shape but we didn’t see any mine cars. After about 300 feet the drift forked off with the original one heading north and the second turning right or east. The north tunnel appeared to be the main drift as it was higher and wider than the east one. We could feel some slight air movement coming towards us so there must be a vent shaft or opening somewhere higher on the mountain we figured. 

   I went back and got a bucket and a shovel and we took a sample from the 300 foot area. I carried it over to the tub and Jacob began panning the gravel. There were some nice colors in the pans but nothing really rich. We went back in and stayed on the northward main drift. Then I heard Jacob let out a soft whistle. He was shining his flashlight on the side wall. He quietly told me to have a look at where the beam of the flashlight was shining. “Holy Moses” was all I could say. I was looking at a big quartz vein. It had to be close to a foot wide. Jacob shined his flashlight up close and I had a good look. I asked him if that was visible gold I was seeing. He gave me a wink and a nod and told me to go get a pick. When I got back he instructed me to walk in about another 100 feet before we picked away at the quartz. He shined the light down the dark tunnel. There sat an old ore car on the tracks. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

[Mike Furness]

Watch out for the Tommy Knockers! 🤣