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

[dig4gold]

Gosh... This has gone off topic. Unless the topic just becomes what you decide to post about. After all it is a gold forum not a motorbike forum.

D4G

[GhostMiner]

2 hours ago, dig4gold said:

Gosh... This has gone off topic. Unless the topic just becomes what you decide to post about. After all it is a gold forum not a motorbike forum.

D4G

Yes. My fault by posting about my new bike. I promise to get the journal going again tomorrow. Sorry about that.

[geof_junk]

Hope I am not too far of topic. Some remains of the 1930 mining on Bougainville (Crocodile gold). Photos taken 50 years ago. The machinery was carried from sea level to about 2000 meters above, on the backs of the local natives. Not an easy route back then.

By foot.

The crew.By Bike

The easy way

I hope those photos get you back on the journal soon.

[GhostMiner]

   June 21   2002     Part One

 

   Hot and dry weather again. Over 100 degrees and the ground is parched. Jacob says this will likely be the case until sometime in September. Jim is healing up nicely and able to pull guard duty while Vern and I shovel gravels into the tom. Jacob never seems to mind the heat much and keeps a bandana tied around his head along with a brimmed hat to block out the sun. He cleaned up the gold by early afternoon and showed us the jar containing 4.1 ounces. This seems to be extremely rich ground we have stumbled upon. It’s almost as if Jacob can somehow smell the gold in the gravels. 

   Jacob came over to the tom after the weigh and  helped us shovel until dusk. We processed 38 yards by dark. At supper we all had hash and beans and washed it down with cold beer. It never tasted better after such a long, hot, and dusty day. After the sun set the temperature was quickly down into the 60’s and we got relief. After several rounds of beer the crew retired for the night and I took the first watch. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

[GhostMiner]

   June 21   2002     Part Two

 

   I was hoping for a quiet night. We hadn’t had any further issues with hooligans as Jacob refers to them. The night air had dropped to around 60 degrees as 11:00 PM approached. It was quiet and I sat in a good hideout watching the pump. I was getting bored when suddenly I saw flashlights in the woods above the trail. I counted three of them. I had my 9 mm with its 15 round magazine. The holster I used also held an additional and fully loaded 15 round magazine. I pulled the semi auto out and was ready for anything. I also had a walkie talkie. 

   Sure enough, three men seemed to be sneaking down the mountain towards the pump. My mind began to race. Would I actually shoot someone if I had to. I figured these guys were also armed because they knew we were. Slowly but surely they moved closer to the trail. They were trying to be quiet but every now and then someone would kick a rock and it would roll down the hill or they’d step on a stick and make a little noise. 

   I extended my arms out and braced them on the flat section of rock I was hiding behind. I had it trained on the lead person. By then they were just twenty feet from the trail and another twenty from our pump. All I could think was not tonight you creeps - not on my watch. I was done tolerating this stuff from them. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

[GhostMiner]

   Just so everyone knows & I have also mentioned this before, there continues to be gunfire from time to time on or in the area of those claims. A few yrs ago my partner was run off the claim by gunfire. This occurred when he was prospecting the area of the original Stevens gold strike of 1936 which was real. He did not know if they were warning shots or possibly just someone shooting randomly & didn't stick around to find out. I had one scary experience out there in 2019. I had set up camp just south of the original gold strike of 1936. I was up there by myself a few days before the rest of the crew arrived. At around 2:00 AM I awoke to gunfire. It was coming from the north way up on the mountain about a quarter mile or so above the old dig site. The crazy thing was that it went on for 15 or 20 minutes. There were different kinds of guns being fired because the sound of the shots were not all the same. It sounded like a war. Eventually things quieted down and I tried to get back to sleep. I will no longer stay on those claims by myself. 

[GhostMiner]

   June 21   2002     Part Three

 

   As they approached the trail they suddenly veered off and stayed in the cover of the woods. They were just off the trail and following it toward our camp. I got on the radio and warned the crew. I slowly followed the flashlight beams from a safe distance to the rear. I got back on the radio and told Vern to take a covered position just above camp and have Jim and Jacob watch for them as they got near. I was thinking we might be able to set up a trap with no escape. 

   At about the halfway point they suddenly stopped and cut out the lights. I got back on the radio and informed everyone. They no doubt were trying to take the camp by surprise attack. I still couldn’t tell if they were armed but I was thinking they most likely were. All I knew is they sure didn’t want us mining out here.

   They had no idea I was following them. I could hear them talking in a low tone but couldn’t make it out. I had to be careful not to be spotted or let them hear me talking with the crew. I was in the woods on the other side of the trail. After a short time I no longer heard any voices or movement from them. They had either stopped or moved away from me undetected. Maybe they had split up, I just didn’t know. I began to worry that they would approach camp from multiple directions. There was no way to tell now.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

[GhostMiner]

   June 21   2002     Part Four

 

   I had totally lost these guys and was unsure what to do. I decided to stay near the pump area in a good hiding place. After a short time Jim radioed me. He said the crew had seen the three flashlights heading away from camp to the south towards the main road. Jacob was staying at camp and he and Vern were following them. About a minute later he radioed again saying the lights had cut out and they had lost them. They were returning to camp. 

   I didn’t know what to make of any of this strange activity. Were they playing around with us or had they intended to do harm? The only thing we could do was stay on alert. Jacob said he'd stay up & watch the camp for a spell and I would watch the pump until 2:00 AM when Jim would take over the night watch. All was quiet once again.

   TO BE CONTINUED ..............

[GhostMiner]

   June 22   2002

 

   We had no further disturbance last night. It was puzzling to all of us what these guys were intending to do. They must have figured we had spotted them and moved on. My fear is that if they cross Jacob they will not be moving anywhere ever again. We’ll just have to keep a close watch on everything.

   Jim took watch duty at the pump today while the crew worked the tom. Jacob panned out 4.6 ounces of gold on the cleanup. The day time temperature peaked out at 118 in the sun. The shoveling is not too bad if we pace ourselves. At least we don’t have to dig by hand like the old crew did back in the day. I don’t know how those guys were able to do it. We ended up with 29 yards of processed gravel. The amount was a bit lower because we were all tired from last night and the heat slowed us as well. Still waiting on the pump & trommel. Hopefully soon. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ...................

[GhostMiner]

   June 23   2002

 

   It’s Sunday and we decided to take the day off and get some much needed rest. The cleanup brought another 3.7 ounces of gold. We still need to guard our pump and water line every day. It’s too bad things are like this out here. Jacob wants to catch the hooligans and beat them up. I bet he could still do it too.

   Vern sat up at the watch station as darkness came and Jacob, Jim, and I sat by a small campfire. Jacob brought out a bottle of Bushmills and we drank shots and cold beers while we swapped stories. Jacob began telling us about the night he had been run off the mine in the big shootout of July 3, 1937.

   He said he could hear bullets whizzing over his head and some were striking some big logs that surrounded his dugout where the watchpost was located. The gunfire sounded like a war zone and after an hour he was running out of ammo. Jacob had been surrounded on all four sides by armed thugs and there were a bunch more that had surrounded camp. He said he fought like hell and knows that he wounded at least one or two of the gang but he claims there were at least thirty of them on the claim. 

   The gunfire had suddenly come to a stop down at camp. He tried to holler down there but could hear no reply. Then he said the thugs hollered out that the crew were all dead and he would be next. There wasn’t much of anything he could do at that point and he had the last magazine loaded in the Thompson. The goons didn’t know that the crew had dug an escape tunnel from the watchpost to a safe area to the south. He said he sprayed a burst from the Thompson into the woods where some of the goons were located, grabbed his flashlight, and started crawling through the tunnel to safety. By the time the gang realized he wasn’t there he was long gone. 

   He walked in the woods along the main road back towards town making sure to keep out of sight. He figured the gang would probably drive up and down the road looking for him and he was right. Jacob said they had several trucks with some men in the back holding rifles and driving up and down the road. He quietly watched them from the woods just off the highway. Jacob said that if he had had any ammo he would have shot it out with them right there but he only had a few short bursts left in the Thompson. He felt sick to his stomach knowing what they had done to the crew. He said that he lay awake many nights wishing he had fired on them and took out a few of them before they killed him. It was something he lived with every day since that horrible night.

   TO BE CONTINUED ..................