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

[GhostMiner]

   Did I Do That ??

 

 

[GhostMiner]

September 4   2002     Part Three

 

   I eventually calmed down and went over to speak with Conor. He was pretty upset and told me he’d pay for the repairs. I told him no, it will come out of company funds and everyone makes mistakes from time to time. I told him it was a lesson learned for him and I had made plenty of goof ups as well. That seemed to relieve his mind some but he was still feeling lousy.

   As we straightened up the mess we heard Big Clay rambling down the haul road and when he dumped the gravel he stuck his head out the window and asked what the hell happened. I told him it was just an accident and we’d get it taken care of. I told him not to mention any of this to Jacob as we would explain things when he came down to camp. I told him we were heading to town to get lumber to fix the tom. I didn’t want Jacob getting all upset while he was working. Clay let out a laugh and nodded his head in agreement and rambled back up the mountain for another load.

   I told Conor that we would get the materials to build a bigger long tom so we could process more material and if we got going and had it built in a day or so we wouldn’t miss a beat and actually would end up better off than when we started. That made him feel a lot better and off to town we went.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

[GhostMiner]

  September 4   2002     Part Four

 

   We got back to the mine around 3:00 PM. The truck was loaded down with all the lumber needed to rebuild the tom on a larger scale. We unloaded everything and got to work. The sluice run was lengthened first. Then all the mats were put in place with the riffles. By the time we had this completed Jacob and Clay had stopped work for the day and come down to camp for supper.

   I explained to Jacob what had happened and he didn’t have much to say. He was happy to see the new tom was being built. Conor and I worked right up to dark on the grizzly/hopper set up and we finished up just as it was getting dark. We had done the entire job in five hours of non stop labor. There were a few minor details left to finish up but we decided to get some food and call it a day. A long day for sure.

   Conor and I ate our late supper while Clay drank beer. Lots of beer. Jacob seemed to get a kick out of it. He asked us about the new long tom. I told him it would process double what the old one did. I figured it could handle 10 - 15 yards of gravel per hour so if the trommel broke again we had a good backup system ready to take its place. We could hardly wait to give it a try.

   Everyone hit the sack around 10:30 except for Big Clay who sat out at the fire with a case of beer by his camp chair. I’d never seen anyone like him before. He is a character. I told him I’d see him in the morning and am going to bed. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ...............

[Joe L]

More please.   

[GhostMiner]

58 minutes ago, Joe L said:

More please.   

You mean more beer LOL ??

[GhostMiner]

   Every once in a while I post excerpts from the journal on my FB page as an experiment. People who read it know nothing about prospecting or gold mining. I am always surprised when they want to read more. Some comment that the journal needs to be made into a movie. I think not a movie but it would make a great continuing weekly adventure series made for TV. Who would the actors be to play all the different characters in the journal is something I always think about. 

   Every year starting in 2019 I get contacted by Discovery. It's actually happened twice this year. They bug me to put a crew on Fred Dodge Mine Rescue which I always tell them I have no interest in doing. This last contact came from a girl who is an associate producer based in London. I told her about the journal & sent her the link. I told her it would be a far better program than anything they are currently producing. Her response was that I should pitch it to the new programs department. I never did. If I had the funds and know how I would produce my own mini series. Some people have suggested I read the journal on a YouTube channel. Not sure about that. Lots of fun posting the entries here on Steve's site. 

[GhostMiner]

5 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

   Every once in a while I post excerpts from the journal on my FB page as an experiment. People who read it know nothing about prospecting or gold mining. I am always surprised when they want to read more. Some comment that the journal needs to be made into a movie. I think not a movie but it would make a great continuing weekly adventure series made for TV. Who would the actors be to play all the different characters in the journal is something I always think about. 

   Every year starting in 2019 I get contacted by Discovery. It's actually happened twice this year. They bug me to put a crew on Fred Dodge Mine Rescue which I always tell them I have no interest in doing. This last contact came from a girl who is an associate producer based in London. I told her about the journal & sent her the link. I told her it would be a far better program than anything they are currently producing. Her response was that I should pitch it to the new programs department. I never did. If I had the funds and know how I would produce my own mini series. Some people have suggested I read the journal on a YouTube channel. Not sure about that. Lots of fun posting the entries here on Steve's site. 

   That lady's actual title is Assistant Casting Producer. 

[GhostMiner]

Concerning re opening the original dig site of 1936 here is an email response from a Discovery producer  >  

That sounds super interesting! Can I ask you a few questions about your plans to mine this season?

 

[GhostMiner]

2 minutes ago, GhostMiner said:

Concerning re opening the original dig site of 1936 here is an email response from a Discovery producer  >  

That sounds super interesting! Can I ask you a few questions about your plans to mine this season?

 

   So my plan is 2 fold - to work the upper dig site talked about in the 2002 journal with a trommel & excavator. Water will need to be pumped from the closest creek about 3000 ft in distance. At the same time another crew would work the old 1936 dig site which sits on a fault line 2000 ft west. The 1936 gold strike area produced 1000 ounces and I have had a physicist up there looking at the area. He thinks the 1000 ounces was a drop in the bucket because it was removed from a small area of raised bedrock and there is likely 1000's of ounces more just below and to the sides of the original strike. The miner was murdered and the area long forgotten until I discovered it by finding the old government report. Two crews & one big camp. I will continue to work on this plan & post more as things possibly develop. 

[GhostMiner]

   Something Not In The Journal  :  Back in 2014 one of my partners gave me a phone call and told me to check my email. He was pretty excited and wanted me to see some pictures he had sent. This guy is Vern in the 2002 journal and we are still partners to this day. He specializes in exploration and is known as one of the best gold prospectors in northern California. If there is gold he will find it. He has amazed me more than once. 

   On this particular occasion he was poking around on one of our western claims. He had been taking bucket samples in a little gulley near the base of a mountain and had found trace amounts of gold. I had him checking this area because it showed no signs of previous mining by the old timers. No tailings or signs of a diggins at all. It has been my experience that when you see no sign of previous mining near large workings it is for a good reason - the old miners couldn't find anything worth their time. That's why I always like to explore at or near previous workings - especially those that showed that the old timers put in a lot of hard work. They usually did that for a reason - there was a lot of gold. 

   Anyway, on one of his samples he started finding several nuggets of shiny material. They were about the size of dimes and nickels. He thought they were platinum nuggets and so did I. They were found just several feet below the surface. He ended up taking them to get analyzed and told me they were DSO iron. I asked him what the heck that meant. He said DSO stands for Direct Shipment Ore. Pure iron. When we had a physicist out there he did some lidar work in that area before flying a drone along the fault line 1500 ft to the east. He said there appeared to be a large deposit of iron where Vern had sampled. I found this quite interesting. I'm also wondering if there may be a large gold deposit along with the iron but at a much deeper level. Someday I may find out.