Ezra Kind, The Thoen Stone, and all the gold they could carry.

[pronghorn]

Pronghorn,

What might make this story a little suspect, is the fact that Mr. Thoen immediately began making copies of the stones, and selling them to local tourists. I doubt you will be able to Google that fact.

Take care,

Joe Ribaudo

Interesting,
can you share your source for that ?
My plans are to view the artifact at first chance, perhaps visit the site where it
was found and view the stone wall, and try to find the stone wall Oro spoke of
for comparison if it still exists. Other than that, the slot's in Deadwood will
more than likely get much more of my life savings than chasing this ghost.

 

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[cactusjumper]

Pronghorn,

Actually, it was pictures that Mr. Thoen had taken of the stone, which he then sold to tourists. The information can be found in "Extracts from letter to Frank Thomson by Louise Thoen Courtney, February 28, 1951.", on page 26 of: "The Thoen Stone" by Frank Thomson. Louise was the daughter of Louis Thoen. She was seven years old at the time the stone was discovered.

I would guess that Mr. Thomson knows more about that stone than anyone alive. He believes the story......completely. There are many things that make the inscription believable, but the chances of finding the gold described seem slim, at best.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Oroblanco]

I found the story on La Pondre's gold, which he said came from the Bighorns, and the date was 1833. It seems doubtful that he found gold in the Bighorns (though there is a famous lost mine somewhere there) as there is little indication of any gold in the range, but he could easily have gotten it from the Black Hills and simply lied about where he got it. La Pondre was a trapper and a Frenchie, now I wonder if Delacompt was also a Frenchie and perhaps got the "tip" from La Pondre? (NOT saying that Frenchies are all a pack of liars!) We know that La Pondre showed his gold at Fort Pierre (Dakota) on the Missouri river, circa 1833, then the Kind party story follows in 1834, and it is likely that the Kind party traveled UP the Missouri to the Cheyenne and followed it to the streams flowing out of the hills. Hmm..... need more research
Oroblanco

 

[Oroblanco]

A bit more here that might be helpful (or not).

One of the places proposed as the site of Ezra Kind's gold mine, was Spotted Tail gulch. Gold was produced there, and it would fit as being "beyond the high hill" if we take Crow Peak as the high hill. In support of this theory, Hub Hieverland unearthed a horse's foot with the shoe still attached, as well as a piece of rusted shovel and part of a sluice box that had been made from a tree with an axe. These were found under fifteen feet of earth.

On the negative side, Spotted Tail gulch was hardly "rich diggings" and one of the poorer placers of the Black Hills. It would likely have taken the Kind party quite some time to accumulate much gold if they were working Spotted Tail, unless they found some rich pocket. Fifteen feet of earth is another problem, for it is extremely unlikely that this much earth would be deposited by natural processes in just forty-odd years, that would mean something like four inches per year. Unless the artifacts were deliberately buried, it seems likely they might have been MUCH older than 1834. If they were deliberately buried, why bury such things as a shovel, or horse's foot?

I ran across some newspaper articles mentioning several prospecting expeditions heading into the Black Hills well before the traditional "accepted" date of discovery (1874) including one in 1867 of some 400 men, who set out from Yankton - but what happened to them I cannot learn.

Found a bit more on Delacompt, apparently there were several members of this family and of these several were trappers ranging the far frontiers; I have to wonder if Delacompt, being French and a fur trapper, might not have gotten his information from the French trapper La Pondre. Of course that would mean La Pondre's gold came from the Black Hills rather than what he claimed, the Bighorns, but I could accept that.
Oroblanco

 

[pronghorn]

Twice my friend has passed through my town and twice we have failed to hook
up so I still haven't got a look at his find

Where do you find all this info, do you live in a library?

 

[pegleglooker]

prong,
Oro doesn't live in a library... his house is THE library...

PLL

 

[pronghorn]

I suspected as much, now, how do I get my library card to this "library"

 

[Oroblanco]

Pronghorn wrote:

Where do you find all this info, do you live in a library?

Pegleglooker wrote:

prong,
Oro doesn't live in a library... his house is THE library

Pronghorn wrote:

I suspected as much, now, how do I get my library card to this "library"

Sheesh that is easy as "pie" - just lend me a hand un-packing a small truck..... (I can SEE the boxes of books now, so have more ambition to get at them, heh heh)

There is much available online, Google for instance now has a searchable newspaper archive, of course turning up many "pay per views" but also free sites, here is the linkee
http://news.google.com/archivesearch

Just a quick search using "ezra kind" gold turns up three 'hits' or you can search the NY Times article archive that runs back to 1851 free, however anything newer than 1922 is "pay" per article. the link is
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?srchst=p
though I only found one article on Ezra Kind there, there are quite a number of good articles on Black Hills gold, including this one
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9401E4DA133BEF34BC4052DFB667838E669FDE
<extract>
"The gold is coarse, good, and easily separated from the gravel and sand. The Professor has with him an ounce of coarse gold that two men obtained on Spring Creek with ten hours labor. An assay of this gold shows it to be 940 fine, worth $19.43 coin to the ounce."
<New York Times published October 18th, 1875>

There are many other sources to search online such as the archives of Lost Treasure magazine, though that is also "pay per view". (I can't tell you how much I hate pay per view just to read stuff that is pretty much out of copyright. )
Oroblanco

 

[pegleglooker]

Oro quoted:

"The gold is coarse, good, and easily separated from the gravel and sand. The Professor has with him an ounce of coarse gold that two men obtained on Spring Creek with ten hours labor. An assay of this gold shows it to be 940 fine, worth $19.43 coin to the ounce."

In today's money that's about $ 800 a day.. or $ 4000 a week... or nearly $200K a year..... KA-CHING!!!!!

PLL

 

[Oroblanco]

Pegleglooker wrote

In today's money that's about $ 800 a day.. or $ 4000 a week... or nearly $200K a year..... KA-CHING!!!!!

That was ten hours work for two men, WITH GOLD PANS ONLY they had only those for tools as Prof Jenney (the geologist) was making a geological survey, so if you were to work with something that handles a wee bit more gravels than a pan, like say a rocker, sluice or dredge....$$$

Side note is in order here:
(For our "newbies" who may be reading this but not yet posting, working with a gold pan, a man may be able to pan about one cubic yard of gravel a day, so these two men probably panned a bit over two cubic yards to get one ounce of gold. Working with a rockerbox you can handle more, like around 4 cubic yards a day for one man, or with a sluice it is even more - most will estimate around 7 cubic yards a day per man - dredges handle MUCH more than this. You do the math...! )

The best 'pocket' I have read of for the Black Hills (other than "the day the sluice boxes overran with gold") was a man who was a complete neophyte, utterly new to the game of prospecting, was set up by a local man in a spot where it was believed there was NO gold; well this new fellow from "back east" went to work a-digging as he had been told to first dig down to bedrock. That took him a full day, as it was ten feet to bedrock on Castle creek at the spot where he was digging, but the second day he dug up 20 ounces of gold from a spot on the bedrock no bigger than a wheelbarrow. Not as rich as Klondyke gold fields, (like ten ounces PER PAN) but certainly there have been some NICE pockets here.
Oroblanco

 

[pronghorn]

You are very good at keeping the interest high.

(other than "the day the sluice boxes overran with gold")

tell me about the day the sluice boxes overran with gold!

 

[Oroblanco]

HOLA amigo Pronghorn,
Pronghorn wrote:

tell me about the day the sluice boxes overran with gold!

You have probably heard the story before, they were running a floating dredge on Castle creek, (the Evans operation) where the bedrock tends to run deep and the gold deposits are very "spotty". They had just re-started the dredge after a cleanup, when at a depth of about 14 feet the dredge suddenly had so much gold running through the sluices that it overflowed the tops of the riffles and was running right out the back of the tailings stacker. The men operating the dredge didn't know what to do, whether to shut down the dredge and be accused of highgrading or let it run and lose a tremendous amount of gold. (Macdonald, the foreman, had just made the trip to Denver to hand-deliver the last cleanup of gold to the owners.) They decided to shut down. How much gold does it take to fill a SIXTEEN FOOT sluice? The rumor was that it had to be well over 50 ounces - and there were fifteen sluice boxes on each side - thirty in all, and all packed full of gold in a matter of moments. The owners and foreman never revealed how much gold came out of that cleanup, but estimates were at least 4000 ounces and possible several times that. Donald McDonald, an experienced dredge foreman, said it was the richest paydirt he had ever seen.

The dredge had hit a 'reef' where a ledge of bedrock ran across the stream acting like a natural riffle, and it is a certainty that more reefs like this exist but remain un-discovered. It takes quite some 'diggin' to get through fourteen feet of overburden, and Castle creek has places where it is much deeper than that. Can you imagine how it would feel to dig up several thousand ounces of gold in a matter of minutes?

Thanks for the compliment amigo, you ain't bad at keeping folks interested either!
Oroblanco

 

[pronghorn]

You have probably heard the story before

I am new to this treasure hunting thing so no, I had not heard that story, most
of what I read here is news to me.

I trully wish I could just lend you a hand un-packing a small truck but alas,
lately my time is like my money, short and going too fast.
Where was the internet and this website when I was young
Maybe I will have a chance to visit your library some day, that would be
a great privilege, as would meeting you be also.

 

[Oroblanco]

Thanks for the kind words my friend, and I hope you will look me up some time you find yourself in the Black Hills! I would love to meet you in person. I am working on finding a good place to find gold, some interesting "leads" so far but unfortunately everyone (so far) has turned out to be someone's mining claim. I will keep you posted, and was kidding about getting the danged truck unloaded, don't have a place to put everything yet which is why it is still 90% packed.

I agree, boy do I wish we had the research archives, records etc available by internet thirty years ago, maybe by NOW, I would not be quite so poor!
your friend,
Roy ~ Oroblanco

 

[Oroblanco]

More Info on the theory of Ezra Kind's gold mine being in GOLD RUN.

I found a copy of a book written by the daughter of the first judge in Deadwood, (Bennett) and she writes that they found evidence of a mine having been worked in the valley of Gold Run - the operation must have been rich (Gold Run was one of the richest creeks in the Black Hills) and they also found evidence of a terrific battle having taken place at the camp next to the mine. As it was already old when it was found (1876) folks wondered who or whom could have been there mining so obviously long ago, and what was the result of the battle. When it was found, the Thoen Stone had not been discovered yet so they did not make any connections.

Now I was fairly convinced that Ezra's mine could not have been in Gold Run simply because it was a rich creek, as far as I knew there had never been any evidences found there to suggest that someone had been here mining before - yet these people found not only an obvious mine but also a camp with many bullet holes pock-marking the logs. They also found a considerable tailings pile which indicates they did a fair amount of digging, and considering how rich that creek is (or was I should say) I have to change my opinion and say that even though this location doesn't make sense for where the Thoen stone was found, it IS possible that this was the very creek where they got seven horse loads of gold.

That book is titled "Old Deadwood Days" by Estelline Bennett, a pretty interesting read even if thin on information on the lost mines.

I also have a "lead" for a place to do some prospecting for a fee - a fellow named Lew Wright owns claims just below the confluence of Castle Creek into Rapid Creek, and he sells shares that are good for a day or two of digging on his claims. Supposedly his claims are very consistent for finding fine gold and occasional nice flakes and nuggets. Contact
Lew Wright
23040 Mystic Road PO Box 262
Hill City, SD 57745
(605) 574-2081

Also there is a club - Black Hills Prospecting Club of SD and they have a number of claims on Foster Gulch near Hayward, off Battle Creek. The state allows them to use highbankers. For information contact

Kevin D. Vadnais
(605) 484-8835 (home)
or write care of
21396 Mule Deer Drive
Lead, SD 57754
http://www.blackhillsprospectingclub.com (Not sure if their web site still works)

I wish I knew a good hot spot you could go, without paying for the privilege but still working on that. However on the 'plus' side, as far as I can find out, it seems that you are allowed to prospect within the public right of way along the highways, so anywhere the roads cross the creeks so long as you stay in the right of way you won't be claimjumping. Sometimes the bridge foundations work like a natural set of "riffles" to help trap gold and you can find some decent gold this way believe it or not. If and when I can find some better places I will sure let you know buddy.

Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
your friend,
Roy ~ Oroblanco

 

[pronghorn]

Great info Oro
Been a while, this winter has been a hard one and they are forcasting more snow for us.
How did you and yours fair this last blast? We were a good half way to being snow free, we
now have more than we had all winter, ten foot drift across the driveway. But not as bad
as Fargo. My brothers are both in West Fargo and it don't sound good!

I was in Deadwood with a bunch of my lady's relatives last weekend. Wanted to hit the
Adams house but just didn't make it.

Hope all is well with you and that winter isn't frayin your nerves like it is mine, looking forward
to your response... Tom

 

[Oroblanco]

HOLA AMIGO Pronghorn!
It is good to hear from you - was wondering how you were making out up there? I know that you folks have been getting hit a lot harder than us all winter, and it was not a real pleasant affair here. I hope that your brothers in W. Fargo are alright - they sure don't need any more moisture there.

We got a couple of really nice breaks in the weather, which we took advantage of to get the walls put together and stood up, before the last blizzard hit. Even got out to do a little metal detecting, Beth <Mrs O> found a neat old Chinese coin in fact. (I thought it was some kind of copper washer at first, as it has a hole in the center - I might have tossed it if I found it! ) Calving is getting down to the end gate on the ranch (thankfully) about three-quarters done now but the last ones always seem to drag on.

I hope you are doing well amigo and looking to hear that you have found seven horse-loads of GOLD! I have to go back out to the ranch tomorrow so won't be able to post here for a while (have to see how this next storm turns out) but hopefully this will be the last blast of winter. Good luck and good hunting buddy, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
your friend,
Roy ~ Oroblanco

 

[RockRaven]

As an addition to some of the earlier posts on the potential location for both the mining site and why the Thoen party ended up on Lookout Mountain, I would like to put forward both the Maitland area and also point out the town of St. Onge. St. Onge predates all other settlements in this area. Although not verified in modern times, many residents of St. Onge have claimed that old beams in roots cellars and basements are inscribed with dates as old as 1838. What is known is that the town was a fur trader outpost going back way beyond the gold rush - for many years it was still essentially a French settlement with many people who spoke French up until recent times, and many current individuals who claim to trace their lineage back to these original mountain men. Both Whitewood creek and the area known as Maitland are actually very near to Lookout mountain geographically - and the idea that the Ezra Kind party entered the hills from a northwesterly direction would provide a simple, direct line of march from southeast to northwest, with Lookout being used as it represented both a landmark and jumping off spot for eastbound travels. This would make Spearfish Peak the "big mountain" from behind which the gold was found and brought, not Crow Peak. Certainly Spearfish Peak is just as prominent as Crow Peak, and behind it pretty much lie both Maitland, first, then the Whitewood (Deadwood) gold placer district. "The Spawn and the Mother Lode" by Joel Waterland is an excellent book that covers the mining history including the placers of the Deadwood area. Many of the early miners who entered the hill on the '76 Trail came in by way of the Spearfish area initially because of the identifiable nature of the local landmarks.

In regards to the part that St. Onge or its precursor might have played, if the outpost existed at that time, it would be a potential place from which a letter could have been sent, supplies bought, and maybe even the initial goal of the prospectors as they traveled into or out of the Black Hills. Also possible that this outpost might have been the impetus for the expedition in the first place - well known to be a French trading outpost which would link well to certain members of the expedition. The hard part to verify would be the actual founding date for St. Onge to actually put it in the 1838 timeframe for sure. Still interesting though.

 

[Maitland]

From what I have read over the years, many of the '76ers themselves as well as their predecessors (such as the Ezra Kind party) who came into the hills from a northerly direction entered in from the Elk Creek (Bethlehem Rd.), Polo Creek (Hwy 85), and False Bottom (Maitland Rd.) drainages. It likely that some came up from the Bear Butte Creek (Boulder Canyon) drainage and possible that some did through the Spearfish Creek (Canyon) drainage. My guess is that the Ezra Kind party could have entered into the hills from the False Bottom Creek drainage and prospected around what is now the Lead-Deadwood area and then headed west towards the Tinton area and went north towards Spearfish after they "got all the gold [they] could carry". As Oroblanco mentioned earlier, in Old Deadwood Days by Estelline Bennett it is mentioned that old mining operations were found in Gold Run Gulch in 1876. Also, in Pioneer Days in the Black Hills by John McClintock he tries to dispel rumors of an old tunnel found up in Rutabaga Gulch (which is roughly two and a half miles northwest as the crow flies), the rumor that McClintock was referring to was published in 1915 by and George Martin Smith in a book entitled South Dakota: Its History and Its People, wherein it is mentioned that evidence had been found in the hills indicating many fights between the white men and the Indians. The writer goes into a theory that an abandoned tunnel found up Rutabaga Gulch could have been linked to a party of very early prospectors fleeing the Indians (he directly relates it to two skeletons being found up in the Bear Lodge Mountains... which I think is a bit farfetched, but who's to say he isn't correct?) The two skeletons mentioned likely have nothing to do with the Ezra Kind party (1833/34) because there was a leather book cover found with them with the only legible numbers being "1 52", so of course this would date their time in the area to 1852, eighteen years after Ezra Kind carved his fateful message into his stone. This would help explain some of the evidence of early prospecting in the Lead-Deadwood area, and the False Bottom Creek drainage was one of the more often used pathways into the hills, not only during, but also before the Black Hills Gold Rush. The Ezra Kind party probably came from the Missouri area and came up and around the Black Hills from the east and into the hills from the north. There was also evidence of previous mining operations around the Tinton area (specifically Spotted Tail Gulch if I remember correctly) when that area was explored just slightly after Deadwood's big boom had started. There, in Spotted Tail Gulch (or close to it), an old sluice box was found buried (I believe about 13 feet deep) and near it was a horse's leg with a horseshoe still nailed to it, most likely the 13 feet of soil was probably due to a flash flood many years earlier. The only thing that doesn't add up is that the Ezra Kind party, in his own words, had "ponies", not horses. Could this early mining activity out by Tinton have been related to the Ezra Kind party? The Tinton area and the many gulches there host some of the best gold in the Black Hills and it wouldn't have taken long for a party of prospectors to get "all the gold [they] could carry", granted, this could probably be said about any of the rich placer areas in the Black Hills prior to the Black Hills Gold Rush, as the gold had been sitting in essentially the same spot for tens of thousands of years and you could freely pick nuggets out of the stream just like you could any other type of rock that was to be found. It is also possible that the Ezra Kind party got their gold from some other source other than the Lead-Deadwood and Tinton areas (although those would have been the best spots they could have went). There is a lot of documented evidence of early prospectors prior to the 1875/6 rush: bullet holes in trees, abandoned mines, cabins and remains of cabins, etc. Where the Ezra Kind party got their gold is one thing, but what happened to it is another. Did they bury the gold? Doubtful. They had to have had the gold on their ponies at the time of the ambush, as they were probably done with prospecting the hills and headed back home to [we presume] Missouri. They could have been storing the gold in a cache somewhere, but I highly doubt this because they wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time in or around the Black Hills than they would have had to in order to get their gold. The Indians who ambushed them would have had no use for the gold, they thought white men were stupid for risking life and limb after those little rocks and the gold would have more than likely meant absolutely nothing to them; although it would have had trade value with with white men so the Indians could have used the gold to trade for guns and other supplies, but I think this is rather unlikely since at that time most of the Indians on the western half of what is now South Dakota would have probably scalped and killed just about any white person they came across (because the Indians knew there was gold in the hills and did everything they could to keep things silent about it). The Indians could have buried the gold in a very-near shallow spot "then and there" after the majority of the Ezra Kind party was killed, just for the sole purpose that no white men would ever find that same gold again and get crazed over it. I think this is likely. If the Ezra Kind party's gold is still out there, it's probably not far from the place where the massacre of their party took place. And just where did the massacre take place? Well, I think the best way to find out where "beyond the high hill" might be, is to go to the site of the quarry where the Thoen Stone was found almost 130 years ago. I can't remember for sure what side of Lookout Mountain the Thoen Stone was found on (I believe on the west/southwest side, can anyone confirm this?), if that's the case then the west half of Crow Peak could very well be the spot where the massacre of the Ezra Kind party took place if we take into account that Ezra wrote the stone in the same area where it was found. Crow Peak has an elevation of 5,760 feet, so it would make it one of the highest hills in the very near vicinity to where the Thoen Stone was found. If the Ezra Kind party are the ones responsible for the old workings found in Spotted Tail Gulch, then this would make a little more sense too because they could have came down from Spotted Tail and went northeast (back somewhat toward the direction they likely entered from) and ended up going down Higgins Gulch which would have brought them near the base of Crow Peak. The best evidence for narrowing down where the gold of the Ezra Kind party may lie would be the skeletal remains of those in the party. From everything I've ever read, no human remains (dating back to the 19th century) have ever been found around Lookout Mountain, Crow Peak, or anywhere in the nearby vicinity of either place. I could be wrong, maybe there's some book or way-old newspaper article I haven't read yet, but if these seven men were all killed somewhere in that area then their bones are still lying there. Human bones can last thousands upon thousands of years in soil; and if their bones were still above ground when settlement in the Black Hills began (because you know the Indians wouldn't have buried them), then we'd certainly know about it as it would have made the newspaper headlines back then. Unfortunately, the last time any new, real "evidence" was added to the story of the Thoen Stone was probably when Frank Thomson traveled across the United States for thousands of miles in search of rumors and facts to put into his book. Until we unearth some more relics and artifacts, old human bones, or the treasure of the Ezra Kind party itselfl; each and every time we wonder about the Thoen Stone and the Ezra Kind party, we are going to end up with far too many questions to the very few answers that we're fortunate enough to have. I believe Ezra's gold is still out there and it accompanies his party's unmarked and unknown graves. I strongly believe that the Black Hills were explored much earlier than most people think or that written history gives credence to, and that there are still more mysteries waiting to be discovered until the right person digs up the right patch of ground, maybe then we'll end up with some more answers, or if not, many more questions.

- Maitland

Edit: I uploaded a topographic map showing the elevation of some of the points around Spearfish. Clearly, Crow Peak is the highest one in the area of Lookout Mountain.




I also found this picture showing the site of where the Thoen Stone was found, courtesy of "Black Hills The Hike".

 

[RockRaven]

The valley where the white cross is pictured is near the southeast end of Lookout Peak, near the development known as Sandstone. It faces Spearfish Peak, and is geographically closer to Spearfish Peak than Crow. Crow may be steeper but both are equally prominent. Not really putting this theory above the theory of Crow Peak as the high hill referred to in the inscription, just the idea that this may be a possibility. Christopher Hills books "Gold Pans and Broken Picks" on the history of the Tinton has an extensive portion devoted to the path into the Tinton mining district as well as the trail between Tinton and Deadwood, the '76 trail. It is unlikely that many people accessed the hills by way of Spearfish Canyon as it was nearly continuous beaver ponds and required slogging through mud and deep pools for around fifteen miles, from Iron Creek on down. Based on Mr. Hills excellent research many of the first miners entered the hills by way of Crow Peak as a landmark - they would circumnavigate around the north part of the hills coming from Ft Laramie, split the gap in between the hills and Bear Lodge, then turn west just north of Crow Peak and follow Bear Ridge or Sand Creek up in the Tinton district. At Savoy a part of the trail is preserved, a very steep hike from the Latchstring leads up the from the canyon to the rim near Iron Creek Lake. From Savoy they would cut across through a sort of no-man's-land and find their way to Deadwood. This trail was soon replaced by much better roads coming in from the east such as Polo Gulch where the highway is now, but the original '76 trail was not any kind of straight line at all, more like a corkscrew into Deadwood.

Certainly the Tinton district had rich enough diggings to merit consideration as the area from which a great deal of gold might be extracted. All but two of the large nuggets found in the Hills come from the paleo-placer "Old River" in this area, and the total value of the placer gold is second only to the Deadwood mining district in total value. Although there has been some speculation that it would not make sense for the horseshoe to have been buried at near fourteen feet down, this would only be logical if the miner's cleared the overburden to bedrock in the absence of a sluice to use the bedrock as a gold catch. Spring flow would have washed the gravel for them, leaving it in the cracks in the bedrock where it could be recovered after the water went down. This would create a situation where a large amount of sediment would fill in the diggings soon after, even a single flood could dump many feet of debris over such a natural sluice.