Menu
What's new
Find's Treasure Forums

Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!

You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.

Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.

Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.

Click here to register!

Need Support Help?

Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you

Changed email? Forgot to update your account with new email address? Need assistance with something else?, click here to go to Find's Support Form and fill out the form.

Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine

GhostMiner said:
The actual area the journal is based on. Some of his diggings and gold we found at the site. The journal is based on an old government report on the northern mining property.
Click to expand...
Looking at that picture of the first dig site it is obvious to me that those old timers from 1936 could sure dig. All done by hand with pick & shovel.
 
GhostMiner said:
MAY 8 1936
I am beginning to worry about John. He is jumpy and in bad sorts some of the time and has little patience nearly all of the time. I fear he has a very bad case of gold fever. John is new to this game and we both have reason enough for the fever as we are seeing gold I could never dream of. I am doing my best to keep him on an even keel.
Last night was quiet. Today John took his shot at working the dig sight and I made adjustments to the tom and grizzly until the first buckets arrived. I gave John good direction on where to dig and the gravels to look for. What he brought down I washed - a total of 32 buckets for the day. The digging is very hard now. John helped me finish up and we did the weigh. It is remaining high grade with over an ounce made. We will stay on this spot until it's played out. Maybe it will never be played out, I don't know.
We are both keeping our own gold in seperate locations. I do not know where John has his and he knows not where my gold is hidden. Tomorrow we will switch jobs with me digging and John running the tom. I will do most of the panning of heavies as John is still slow at that. I am tired. Both in the body and mind. I must worry about John and also any hooligans that may show up. I sleep with my rifle and it never leaves my sight.
TO BE CONTINUED .................
Click to expand...
MAY 9 1936
Last night's watch was quiet again. I am hopeful the hooligans are long gone. I got an early start at the crack of dawn working the dig site. John was finishing up some panning leftover from yesterday and I got 10 buckets to get him started and then came back up to the dig. We think it is now needed to have a man at camp at the creek while one man digs. We can't trust to leave the camp alone during the day.
I started working where John left off yesterday. I got down a little deeper and worked into the fault. Suddenly I hit an area of fairly easy digging with good gravels and rounded stone not too big. As I started working at it with the spade it dropped off about five feet in depth so as to be lower than the ground adjacent. It was a kettle in the old river channel and it was about ten or fifteen feet across.
I shoveled out some of the top layer to the side and took a quarter bucket sample from a few feet in depth in the kettle. John and me had set a tub with water we brought up from the creek so we could sample pan once in a while. I filled the pan with some gravels and went at it with hope. I was not to believe what I saw. There had to be a quarter ounce in there. I had to sit down and think on this. What did I hit here? I panned some more and it was full of gold at the bottom. I finished the quarter bucket. I didn't have a weigh but there had to be one or two ounces in total. It didn't take me too long to get 10 buckets as the digging in the kettle was not too bad. I took the buckets down to John and told him what I found and gave him the pan. We weighed the gold from the quarter bucket and got over an ounce.
John went to work on the tom and I dug like a man on fire. I dug 75 buckets in all. I got over to the creek and helped John clean out the tom and we panned the heavies. We were both dead tired at dusk when we did a weigh. We had 106 ounces total. We both just sat there looking at it under the light of a lantern. I couldn't even believe it. When I claimed up the ground I talked with a geologist who knew the area. He told me you could get yards to make an ounce or ounces to a single yard on the fault. Somehow I had hit a glory hole. I had heard of this but never thought about it much. I'd already made more gold than I thought I'd get for a season. I knew one thing for sure, from now on we need to be real careful about anyone coming out here and seeing this. In these times a man could be robbed or worse for far less. We had some dried beef and crackers and beans and a drink of whiskey and John went up on the first watch while I drank another cup and went to sleep.
 
GhostMiner said:
MAY 11 1936
By now we have over $5000 in gold. John and I decided not to involve the law out here as we feel that might lead to worse trouble if information gets leaked in town. We both decided to handle any problems ourselves. I went up to the dig this morning and John held watch at camp while waiting for gravels. I dug a good part of the day while also hauling down buckets for John. The kettle is played out. I was able to get 52 buckets. These gravels were taken at or near the bottom and I was hopeful for a big day. I was right to be hopeful. The weigh was heavy once again. We got a haul of 72 ounces. We now have nearly $8000 in gold between us. For me this is nearly four years wages. I looked at John and told him we had a chance to get rich, we just need to find another pot hole in the old channel. John asked me if I thought I could find another one. I told him it was in the hands of God but I would try. I told John we had done what few miners had ever done, we had worked a glory hole. We just need to keep digging along the fault north where the old hydraulic boys stopped. The work will get much heavier now as we need to dig much more gravel to get to pay. We will soon be coming to summer months and creeks will slow. That is another thing we will face. I think we have another six or seven weeks before our water supply for washing gravels becomes an issue. After that we will need to rocker box the gravels which will be very slow compared to the tom in a fast creek or we need to get a pump. I'm going up to the dig on first watch with a bottle of my Irish tonight while John gets some rest.

TO BE CONTINUED .................
Click to expand...
 
MAY 12 1936

I went up and dug gravels again while John worked the tom. I tried to work deeper into the fault but got stopped out by heavy boulders. Then I decided to move 10 feet to the north onto the buried area. This required heavy work on my part and I busted the handle on my pick and had to go down to camp and put on a new one. I took what few buckets I had down to John at the same time to give him some work. I eventually got a good excavation going and started moving rounded river rock towards the end of my day. This told me I might be getting into more good gravels but I only got 23 buckets for the day and am dog tired to boot.
John washed them and I panned the heavies out before supper. Compared to the previous day's weigh this was disappointing. We got 3 grams for all my labor. John looked kind of down but I told him we would probably get onto gold again soon. He had gotten a bad case of gold fever and wanted to see color in every bucket. I figure to keep working at the dig for a while as I need to get back on pay.
I felt better after beans and hot water corn bread and a cup of whiskey. I'm going up on watch and taking the bottle with me.
 
GhostMiner said:
MAY 9 1936
Last night's watch was quiet again. I am hopeful the hooligans are long gone. I got an early start at the crack of dawn working the dig site. John was finishing up some panning leftover from yesterday and I got 10 buckets to get him started and then came back up to the dig. We think it is now needed to have a man at camp at the creek while one man digs. We can't trust to leave the camp alone during the day.
I started working where John left off yesterday. I got down a little deeper and worked into the fault. Suddenly I hit an area of fairly easy digging with good gravels and rounded stone not too big. As I started working at it with the spade it dropped off about five feet in depth so as to be lower than the ground adjacent. It was a kettle in the old river channel and it was about ten or fifteen feet across.
I shoveled out some of the top layer to the side and took a quarter bucket sample from a few feet in depth in the kettle. John and me had set a tub with water we brought up from the creek so we could sample pan once in a while. I filled the pan with some gravels and went at it with hope. I was not to believe what I saw. There had to be a quarter ounce in there. I had to sit down and think on this. What did I hit here? I panned some more and it was full of gold at the bottom. I finished the quarter bucket. I didn't have a weigh but there had to be one or two ounces in total. It didn't take me too long to get 10 buckets as the digging in the kettle was not too bad. I took the buckets down to John and told him what I found and gave him the pan. We weighed the gold from the quarter bucket and got over an ounce.
John went to work on the tom and I dug like a man on fire. I dug 75 buckets in all. I got over to the creek and helped John clean out the tom and we panned the heavies. We were both dead tired at dusk when we did a weigh. We had 106 ounces total. We both just sat there looking at it under the light of a lantern. I couldn't even believe it. When I claimed up the ground I talked with a geologist who knew the area. He told me you could get yards to make an ounce or ounces to a single yard on the fault. Somehow I had hit a glory hole. I had heard of this but never thought about it much. I'd already made more gold than I thought I'd get for a season. I knew one thing for sure, from now on we need to be real careful about anyone coming out here and seeing this. In these times a man could be robbed or worse for far less. We had some dried beef and crackers and beans and a drink of whiskey and John went up on the first watch while I drank another cup and went to sleep.
Click to expand...
Be awesome to hit that location with the gpx 7000.
And a big coil. May have missed a few glory holes.
 
No. I don't know anything about metal detecting. We have had several small permits to run heavy equipment on several areas & found gold. The old mining operations there date back to 1858 & they used hydraulic mining. There were over one million ounces of gold taken out but they never finished. California passed the Sawyer Decision in 1884 which put a stop to large scale hydraulic mining. The area where the journal takes place was partially mined but the old timers never got down to pay there. It's along a faultline that is partially buried. The amount of gold taken in 1936 by this crew was massive & is factual. How deep can you detect a large gold deposit? Also. how do you send private mail here? Can't figure it out.
 
I click on a name & it pulls up their profile. Then I click the box at top for coversation but get a message there are no conversations. I couldn't even get a profile picture into my user name for some reason. Really wird website compared to the others I use.
 
GhostMiner said:
I click on a name & it pulls up their profile. Then I click the box at top for coversation but get a message there are no conversations. I couldn't even get a profile picture into my user name for some reason. Really wird website compared to the others I use.
Click to expand...
You have to have so many posts for certain functions.
 
GhostMiner said:
No. I don't know anything about metal detecting. We have had several small permits to run heavy equipment on several areas & found gold. The old mining operations there date back to 1858 & they used hydraulic mining. There were over one million ounces of gold taken out but they never finished. California passed the Sawyer Decision in 1884 which put a stop to large scale hydraulic mining. The area where the journal takes place was partially mined but the old timers never got down to pay there. It's along a faultline that is partially buried. The amount of gold taken in 1936 by this crew was massive & is factual. How deep can you detect a large gold deposit? Also. how do you send private mail here? Can't figure it out.
Click to expand...
Most Pulse Induction machine's could possibly find large deposit about 4-6 ft.
Large old box coil machines can supposedly go 10-15 ft.
Whites made a good one.
 
This is a very deep deposit. At least 50 - 60 ft deep or more. The original discovery was on an area of raised bedrock about that deep but the bedrock dropped off & most likely contains way more gold. If I told you how much gold was discovered in 1936 it would ruin the story but it was quite a bit.
 
MAY 13 1836
Today I worked the gravels in a U pattern starting at my new hole and going east into the fault and slowly turning south back towards the kettle. Fractured rock is abundant but I haven't seen a sign of country yet. I've panned some of the dig to test and there is a lack of much color. Somehow I have run completely out of the pay area. There were no good gravels to take down to the tom and this is the first day here with no gold.
My theory is to go deeper into the fault and lower the excavation to find country. This will require the most effort I've had to put in since I started. I am convinced there must be a vast amount of gold still trapped in the channel in this area near the played out kettle. The old river must have brought more gold near it. If I can find another pot hole or an area of raised country rock it may prove rich in gold and we will be high on the hog once again. John is a bit discouraged but I am keeping his spirits up and saying look at what we have accomplished so far and surely we will find more.

TO BE CONTINUED ...................
 
GhostMiner said:
This is a very deep deposit. At least 50 - 60 ft deep or more. The original discovery was on an area of raised bedrock about that deep but the bedrock dropped off & most likely contains way more gold. If I told you how much gold was discovered in 1936 it would ruin the story but it was quite a bit.
Click to expand...
Sounds like it's time for a loader and track hoe.
 
MAY 14 1936

The weather has warmed considerably. The days are getting hotter but the nights are cold. There have so far been no more hooligans to disrupt us. Today I once again did the digging to get us a good direction and a descending trench heading along the fault towards the first dig. I have dug down a good eight feet below the second hole and am lowering a trench five feet in width from there. That way I can walk a ramp out with the buckets once pay is discovered. We have not run the tom for two days now. The dig is slow with an abundance of heavy rock that either gets worked around or moved. I am gambling a bit here but after seeing the gold in the first dig I feel the gamble will pay off.
We have also decided for the both of us to stay at camp at night as there is little chance of anyone stealing gravel out of the dig that would be worthwhile at this time. I am going to alternate digging with John tomorrow. We can't leave the camp unmanned so one of us must always be here in case of robbers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top