Where To Start

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

=djui5 link=
, I'd hike out there every day, hunting with nothing but a camera and my --- burro --

How did I get into this?

Tropical Tramp

/

 

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A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

[=djui5

. Busy selling gold -----?? ------------hmmmmm intersted in a s;ighty used silver mine in Mexico Djui?

Tropical tramp

 

[Oroblanco]

Djui5 wrote:

Not really a mine, but I found this

Hmm, lets see now; you found the safe that was lost in the famous flood of the Hassayampa, (Feb 1890, when the Walnut Grove dam burst and took out a second smaller dam, sweeping out the towns of Walnut Grove, Fool's Gulch and Wagoner downstream, at least 83 died) which was reputed to have held either $1500 from the Conger store in Seymour, or the safe from Bob Brow's saloon, which was in Fool's Gulch and was supposed to have $5000 in gold - both being iron safes. Then there is the safe from the Assay Office, which supposedly held a large amount of gold; the Main Chance Saloon had a large quantity of gold in their safe; and a mine payroll of gold coins that was also in a safe. At least five safes lost in that legendary flood, all containing sizable amounts of gold, in both coin and nugget/dust form, and not counting jewelry and paper money.

Then we notice that you are indeed selling gold. You say this is "for your father" and you only get a percentage. Uh-huh. Well. What are we to make of this? You say that the treasure must still be in the stream bed somewhere. Hmm. (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) Congratulations buddy, heck even the old safe is worth real money to collectors of western-iana. Perhaps this will finance your finding and developing the danged Lost Dutchman?

BTW - that lost mine in the area, was it the Monte Cristo, of Precilliano Ruiz, somewhere near Wickenburg? I would be interested in any info you would care to share on it, should you find that article or just remember details.

Oroblanco

 

[Oroblanco]

Thank you Randy! I owe you one, this is NOT the mine I had heard of! He gives you the location too, a persistent and methodical search might just turn this one up!

I am now kicking myself just a little bit too - Mrs Oro and I looked at buying a placer claim in San Domingo wash a few years ago. The seller was not asking all that much, just a few thousand bucks; however it just did not look all that promising to us, so we passed on the deal. There is a much worse incident of this where we passed on buying claims that shortly after selling, produced millions $$$$$ (in Alaska, on Valdez Creek, don't ask. ) but now I am really wondering about San Domingo wash.

I wonder, has anyone ever made up a complete list of all the lost mines and ledges of Arizona? Might be a fun exercise some night.

Oroblanco

 

[Oroblanco]

Tropical Tramp wrote:

Busy selling gold -----?? ------------hmmmmm intersted in a slighty used silver mine in Mexico Djui?

WHAT!!!??

Jose, you wouldn't REALLY sell that now would you? Then again, if you would entertain the idea of parting with such a mine - just in case I should happen to hit the lottery any time soon - may I ask what the price would be? Thank you in advance,

Oroblanco

 

[cactusjumper]

Oroblanco,

Valdez Creek is a place where I, along with my Uncle Chuck, came very close to becoming millionairs.

Chuck was working in Phoenix and knew the owner of an oil reclamation co. The guy had been trying to get Chuck to go to work for him. They got to talking about the LDM, and the fellow told him this story:

He and his partner had worked the Alaskan Pipeline and on finishing their hitch had decided to head for the lower 48.
On the way....they prospected.

In Valdez Creek, they hit a huge, unclaimed, placer deposit. They worked it a number of years, using heavy equipment and long-toms. They could only work it a few months out of the year. When they were done, they would live the rest of the year in Phoenix. They both became filthy-rich.

One year they went back to work the claims, and found that while they were gone, the Government had changed the rules for claims. Their's had become void and others had come in and filed over them. there was nothing they could do, but they had so much money they just came back home.

The guy told Chuck that one year he decided to climb the mountain above the creek. It was very rough with down timber making it almost impossible to get to the top. He came across the outcropping that was suppling the entire placer works. Said it jutted out of the ground and was laced with big chunks of gold.

He did nothing about it, because they were getting so much gold out of the creek, and it was fairly easy.

The guy takes out a topo and marks the spot for Chuck. Tells him to go there, stake a claim and the only thing he wanted was a chunk of the ore as big as his head. Wanted to use it for a doorstop.

I told Chuck I would go with him. Couple of years go by, maybe even five, and we talked it over good. We made plans to go one Spring. Chuck retired, sold everything he had, purchased a truck, travel trailer and .340 Weatherby Mag. for Bear medicine. He then came to L.A., where we were living and died. Bad Mitrol Valve in his heart.

The next year I looked into the area and found that the mountain where the X was had been claimed-up....two months after we were going to be there. That's how close we were.

I have the topo and the pictures the fellow gave him of the placer works. I will post the pictures when I get around to digging up Chucks album.

Perhaps it's the very claims you.....almost bought.

cj

 

[Oroblanco]

Re: Where To Start (rant content warning. long reply)

Holy cow Cactusjumper, our paths have indeed crossed over the years. The claims we considered buying but backed out of were a group of four, that the owner had only recently filed; he had some interesting test-pan records but had not dug to bedrock anywhere. If memory serves, he was asking $14,000 for the group, but when I asked about taking a few samples of my own he said no, and the deal fell through. A fairly big mining company bought the group not long afterwards, even though he had not one drill log or a single assay report (at least he did not when we were negotiating, or he would not tell me) probably you already know the company as they were the largest gold producer for several years because of it and even worked through the winters.

{Begin rant}

We had a much worse "incident" with mining claims in Alaska, a few years previous to trying to buy these claims on Valdez creek. We had found a very nice placer deposit on a creek near Mount Distin, north of Nome and filed three claims which pretty well covered the placer - downstream of the claims, we found very little gold so three served the purpose. The land had been tentatively approved to the state of Alaska, so when we went to file the claims the BLM refused to accept our claims and told us to file them as State placer claims. Trying to obey the law we filed the claims as state placer claims, which as you know are forty acres in size, not based on 20 acres per owner. The prospecting season was over, (you know how soon winter approaches in the Seward peninsula) and my time to be out prospecting had run out so had to return home. With our prospecting records we negotiated with a smaller mining company in Alaska to work the claims on a percentage basis, (a word of advice here for prospectors and treasure hunters - keep a notebook of your explorations and finds, including how many colors per pan, places where no gold was found, contact zones, etc this is very important if you hope to negotiate a sale or lease for your mine) and they began shipping the equipment into Nome over the winter, with an idea to do some exploratory trenching etc after ice-out.

So we thought things were progressing as hoped for; we knew from our prospecting that the claims would produce gold in paying quantities, though we had not found bedrock. (I tend to dig down six or seven feet, if bedrock is not hit by then I go to heavy equipment) We also had a large number of samples that we shipped home and some concentrates to have assayed. In the spring, we got registered letters from attorneys for the Bering Straits Native Corporation, that they were taking us to court to seize the claims, as they now said the BSNC had "selected" the land as "reindeer pasture" (NOT kidding, wish I were) and we had a nice legal fight on our hands. The mining company put everything on "hold" until this was cleared up. The state of Alaska even took our side in the legal battle, since the land had already legally been "tentatively approved" (title passed to the state instead of BLM) but you can guess the outcome - the BSNC won out. However, they also broke the laws in the deal, I won't post everything they pulled here in public, but they contracted with a major mining company that went in and started mining the claims a full YEAR before the federal court had decided the issue. We would not have even known they were doing it, except our partner paid a visit to the claims and found them hard at work on it, and nearly had a gunfight on the spot. They got $4.5 million in gold the first year, $7 million the second year, don't recall the third year and they were stopped by the state refusing to allow them to continue using the water from the tiny creek. This incident made us pretty cautious about buying claims where anything was the least bit "iffy" - you know what I mean. So we were "millionaires" for a short time, after a lot of hard work and many hundreds of camps over so many creeks I lost count - in one year I know, we prospected 51 different creeks, as I kept that notebook.

The real bite in the arse, is that we were told by the judge AFTER the hearings, that if we had "cross-filed" our claims, that is filed them BOTH as state placer AND as Federal placer claims, the court WOULD HAVE REJECTED BSNC's CLAIM ON THE LAND. So if we had broken the rules when we filed, we would have won. It would have taken us more than three years to get all that gold of course, but it would have been good paying years.
{/Rant}

Sorry for the rant, have had some very negative experiences by trying to do things the LEGAL ways over the years which resulted in our being 'cheated' out of a veritable fortune on more than one occasion. ("Fortune" to us anyway, not billions of course.) That is sad about your uncle, sorry things played out that way.

You know, you would think that after a person has been "burnt" in mining a few times he would quit the game, but somehow that darned "gold fever" seems to be incurable, and hope springs eternal. Just a thought here Cactusjumper, but you know they never did find the mother lode that produced all that gold on the Nome beaches and creeks......

It is funny they say that once you have been to Alaska, you never come all the way back. Thanks CJ my friend for bringing back the memories, for the good ones far out-weigh the bad.

Roy ~ Oroblanco

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;
There where the silences are spawned, and the light of hell-fire flows
Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run;
Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun --
I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere another day is done.

(from The Heart of the Sourdough, Robert Service)