The Lost Mines of the Desert - Part VII: The Goler Placer Diggings

[Old Bookaroo]

THE GOLER PLACER DIGGINGS.

from The Miner’s Guide; A Ready Handbook for the Prospector and Miner, by Horace J. West (Los Angeles: Second Edition – 1925)

Three men rode leisurely out of the Panamint Range of mountains at the edge of that famous sink of mystery, Death Valley, and on across country toward San Bernardino, their destination. They were all on good horses, had ample packs, and ten-gallon water canteens. They rode through the heat of the day, their horses kicking up the dust of the desert and leaving behind a continuous hazy vapor which always distinguishes anything of life that moves in the desert wastes.

During the heat of the day they stopped to camp in the shade of their horses, which were watered and fed. Soon they started on. This time there was not the same certainty, the same equanimity, among them, and a quarrel arose as to the proper direction to take. They quarreled all that afternoon, and finding their water-supply practically all gone on the following morning, their words almost resulted in blows. They separated.

One of them, Frank Goler, struck out alone in an easterly direction while the other two went south. Where these two went, whatever happened to them or even the memory of their names, has been added to the many mysteries of that desert country. It was the last time they appeared alive, and in all probability succumbed to thirst and heat.

By noon of the second day, Goler had arrived at a series of low hills that lay directly in his path. He crossed them, and on the farther side discovered a canyon into which he plunged without the least fear and with renewed hope of salvation. It contained abundant vegetation, and what was more than all the rest, it carried in its deepest embrace a little mountain stream.

Arriving at its banks, Goler, nearly delirious from lack of water, gave his horse its freedom and dropped to the edge of the stream and began lapping up the cool, bright water. And while he drank, the rays of the sun, penetrating the foliage of an overhanging cottonwood, glinted upon something on the bottom of the stream – something yellow just beyond the touch of his lips.

It was a nugget weighing several ounces. There were others near it, and Goler, bewildered at his good fortune, pulled forth three of the pieces of gold and then stopped to think of food, for he had not taken nourishment for more than a day. The thought of how much longer he would be forced to travel without sustenance brought fear into his vitals. The gold suddenly lost its charm, his find dwindled into a nothingness as compared with his life and he was seized by a sudden panic to get away.

He tucked the nuggets into the bosom of his shirt, caught his horse, mounted, and then proceeded with all possible speed down the canyon, taking little time even to make proper survey of the location of the treasure. Finally, after several hours of rough riding he came out upon a plain. Just ahead of him he saw what apparently had been the bed of a big body of water.

It was all dried out and lay in a straight easterly line with Mount San Antonio, or Mount Baldy, as it is more generally known in the Southwest. The snow-capped peak gave Goler encouragement, and also indicated the proper direction to the little mining town at the foot of the famous Arrowhead, where the Indians found relief from many ills in the waters that purled from several springs.

It required another day for him to reach this place, and when he did he was completely exhausted and his horse fearfully jaded and ready to collapse. The nuggets had worn holes in his garments and rubbed through the skin, causing serious sore places because of the fact that the alkali of the desert and fiber from his garments had worked into the wounds.

Three weeks elapsed before he had fully recovered, and then he showed the treasures he had collected.

“Why, there is enough of this stuff to load several wagons where I found it, and I am going to bring in a load in less than a month,” he assured some of his friends.

He at once set out to fit up a wagon with broad-rimmed wheels, light canvas top and a team of sturdy horses.

The day he set out, a large gathering watched him off and several prospectors followed, hoping to be in on the wealth that he had discovered. In a few days they returned, disgusted with the fact that Goler apparently did not know whither he was traveling. In a month he came back tired out and disgruntled because he had been unable to relocate the same chain of hills and the hidden waters. Six different times he went in search of this wealth and always returned with the same story – one of reverses and loss, until finally he had spent all of the money he had accumulated in a life-time and had to give up the quest.

It is generally conceded that the Goler discovery has since been found. His first location was in 1886. In 1891 an old and odd character, Hen Moss, who made his home in San Bernardino, started out on one of his regular prospecting trips. One of his burros wandered away from the other three, and Moss started to follow the lost animal with his entire train. It led the motley aggregation of life toward some hills in the desert which had never been carefully examined, because they were supposedly dry and afforded little opportunity for prospecting for any length of time.

The wandering burro found a canyon and in it water, and in this way led Moss to the discovery of a gold deposit. In a few hours he panned out several ounces of dust with his horn spoon and also found two or three fair-sized nuggets. The discovery went to his head. He failed to place his locating stakes and hurried back to San Bernardino to celebrate his good fortune.

For several days a very intoxicated old man swayed the entire community with his lavish expenditure of gold-dust and nuggets. When it had been consumed in this manner he had time to sober up and come to a realization of his folly.

With borrowed capital he fitted up a second time, and when he left town he might have been mistaken at a distance for the Pied Piper of Hamelin. More than half the male inhabitants of San Bernardino were at his back, all equipped for a long journey with pack train or on horse.

Moss tried to throw them off his trail, doubled on them, returned to San Bernardino, but all to no avail.

“Guess I might as well take you along,” he said one day when his patience had been frazzled to a rag.

This time he proceeded directly to the distant range in the open desert. And when he neared the canyon, those who were following him realized the nearness of the end of their journey. Moss spurred his horse ahead and left his pack train to care for itself. There were better horses in that group, and race as he might, his hand unsteady and his saddle not so well filled as others, he was overtaken and passed.

The stampeded prospectors, filled with lust for gold, had reached their goal, and old Hen Moss was one of the last to arrive on the ground of his discovery. He staked what proved to be the poorest claim of all the eighty that were staked out. The men all figured that they had come to the old Goler discovery, and therefore they so named the district which was at once organized. The Goler District is located in what is now Kern County, California, about twenty-eight miles north of Mojave, a little mining town on the Southern Pacific.

The creek proved one of the richest ever found in California. Several hundred thousand dollars were taken from a comparatively small area. In places the wealth was phenomenal, nuggets worth more than a thousand dollars each having been picked up with such frequency that they ceased to be objects of interest. There was not enough of them, however, to fill a wagon. Goler was mistaken in a degree because of the fact that much of the creek-bed was filled with a very peculiar rock, one similar in all appearances to gold, but which lacked its weight and turned out to be the well-known fools’ gold which has tricked many an amateur miner.

Moss did not lose courage, however. Seeing the great riches developed by those about him, he became disgusted with his little finds and finally packed up and set out. He discovered in the same range Red Rock Canyon, sometimes called “Bonanza Gulch” because of the gold it contained.

For a time he had acquired forethought, and he located the entire gulch before ever giving an inkling of what he had done. He went over the entire length of gulch, about three thousand feet, and amassed a fortune, for it produced an ounce of gold to every linear foot of the entire distance. His newly acquired wealth did him no good, as has been often related in the case of miners who have come upon their wealth suddenly: he squandered it all.

When he returned to San Bernardino or to Mojave, he delighted in bewildering the denizens of the place by his wonderful show of wealth. He would fill a quart pickle bottle with gold, and after a few drinks would throw his nuggets through the windows of some saloon merely to watch the people scramble.

He died only four or five years ago [that would have been 1925 or 1926], a pauper who had lived in his declining years on the charity of his friends.

to be continued…Next – “The Lost Gun-Sight Mine.”

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Further Reading

First of all, we must separate this John Goler – for that was his correct name – from the John Goller who famously found and lost a gold placer in the wastes of Death Valley. The literature is further confused by the fact that William Lewis Manly, author of the irreplaceable Death Valley in ’49 (1894) wrote at least one newspaper article naming the protagonist of the Panamint Mountains find John Galler. You can read this in The Jayhawkers’ Oath and Other Sketches by William L. Manly (Los Angeles: 1949). The editor, Arthur Woodward, did researchers a remarkable service by collecting a number of very scarce lost mine, Death Valley and American West articles in this book. With a footnote, Mr. Woodward corrected Galler to “John Goller.”

An important article on the Lost Goler Diggings was written by Ada Giddings and published in Desert Magazine (March, 1952). There is information provided here that is not available elsewhere, such as Goler taking his Spencer carbine and marking a sand hill near his fabulous find. And Goler’s return to this country, including locating another gold placer – one he was able to profitably exploit.

A version of the tale based on that article may be found in Eugene Conrotto’s Lost Desert Bonanzas (Palm Desert, California: 1963) – reprinted as Lost Gold and Silver Mines of the Southwest (New York: 1991). Both editions include Norton Allen’s map from the magazine article. It is, as always, very helpful.

I recommend securing a copy of the original article, however, for it contains considerable information based on Mrs. Giddings’ first-hand knowledge of the lay of the land. It recounts “The Big Discovery” in 1893, and how approximately $1 Million in gold was taken from Goler Canyon.

Harry Sinclair Drago attempted to sort out Messrs. Galler, Goler and Goller in Lost Bonanzas; Tales of the Legendary Lost Mines of the American West (New York: 1966). Uncharacteristically, he makes the story more confusing than it has to be. He does note that “It was taken for granted that John Goler’s find had been rediscovered – which may, or may not, have been true. Figures that can be taken as authentic say that upward of a million dollars in gold was taken from Goler Canyon and its gulches.”

I found a couple of interesting accounts of exploring Red Rock Canyon on the Internet. It is rugged country, not suited for the tenderfoot. Apparently some folks think The Lost Padre Mine may be located here.

“Goler Gulch Gold” by Mary Frances Strong, published in Desert Magazine (September, 1973), also presents a confused history of our Goler and “Death Valley” Goller. She resolves discrepancies between the two gentlemen, including the extra “L,” by ignoring them. However, her article is firmly grounded on several expeditions to the area, and anyone interested in searching for the Lost Goler should take advantage of the information she presents.

Was the Goler Placer Diggings lost and never found again? Do the nuggets remain in the El Paso Mountains north and west of Randsburg, not far off the Southern Pacific line?

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This is Part VII of the Lost Mines of the Desert series. Part I was posted December 26, 2008. Part II – “The Lost Arch” Diggings went up January 3, 2009. Part III – The Peg-Leg Mine; Or, the God of Fury’s Black Gold Nuggets, on January 11, 2009, and may be found under the Lost Peg Leg Mine topic. Part IV – The Lost Papuan Diggings – January 19, 2009. Part V – The Lost Dutch-Oven Mine – was posted January 27, 2009. And Part VI – The Lost Breyfoggle – first appeared February 8, 2009.


Once this series has been completed, I am considering collecting all these stories, along with The Lost Tub Placer yarn that will not be reprinted in the TreasureNet Forum, into a book for ready reference and convenient reading. If you would like to be notified when that is done, please send me a PM.

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[Oroblanco]

Muchas gracias Old Bookaroo for posting this;

Conrotto made a fair case to show that this lost mine was found, within Goler's own lifetime. I don't have his book handy but a rifle matching Goler's was found near the entrance to the canyon, and the gold nuggets in the spring likewise.

Not to discourage folks from hunting for this but a major portion of the area is today within the Red Rock Canyon State park; it is illegal to dig, camp or metal detect within the park, and another major portion of the area has been declared a Wilderness Area with restrictions on digging, mining, metal detecting; no new mining claims are allowed within the Wilderness Area, and no motorized vehicles allowed.

It makes a great story though, thanks again. If we were going to compile a set of "lost mines" which have been FOUND, this one would be in the top ten in my opinion.
Oroblanco

[mrs.oroblanco]

tag

[Old Bookaroo]

Oroblanco:

I'm glad you enjoyed this tale.

That is one of the interesting parts of this story - were the Goler Canyon workings the "Lost" Goler Placer, or another deposit?

The Ada Giddings Desert Magazine article provides a detailed account of Goler's Spencer carbine being left behind as a marker - and then found several decades later. During the Great Depression several familes earned bacon and bean money placering in the area. In fact, the US Government published a guidebook for part-time gold miners, explaining the basics of a simple operation. This was not limited to this area, of course.

Your comments about Federal land being "Off Limits" are well taken and anyone actually searching for this lost digging - or any other - would do well to keep that in mind!

As for a book about found lost mines - the skeptical would suggest that would be a brief volume, indeed...

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

[Oroblanco]

Old Bookaroo wrote

Your comments about Federal land being "Off Limits" are well taken and anyone actually searching for this lost digging - or any other - would do well to keep that in mind!

I hope I have not just caused a big misunderstanding for our readers here - most all Federal lands in general ARE open to prospecting and mining claims, however CA state parks are not, and the Wilderness Areas have rather severe restrictions. Prospecting is allowed on Wilderness Areas, just with stringent rules and absolutely no motorized equipment allowed, nor would you be allowed to file a mining claim inside the wilderness area boundary. The El Paso range still has a few small spots where prospecting would be legal, just that they have closed off large areas so a prospector or treasure hunter needs to be careful or risk arrest. Even in those few spots where it is legal to prospect, there are some valid mining claims so it would be wise to check the BLM records before digging or a guy could get arrested for claim jumping. In other words, do your homework and know where you are amigos, good luck and have fun!
Oroblanco

PS for our readers; the 1872 Mining Act gives "we the people" the right to enter onto the public lands for the purpose of searching for valuable minerals, not a privilege, it is a right. We need to stop the creation and enlargement of so many "wildernesses" and parks, monuments etc which severely restrict your right to enter on the public domains. You would not give up your other rights, so we ought not give this one up.

[Old Bookaroo]

Oroblanco:

I wrote my comment in haste - the error is all mine and certainly not yours. I should have written "Some" Federal land is off limits. I agree with your comment that the 1872 Mining Act is important. I think it has been somewhat abused by large corporations. Now we're all in danger (from a variety of causes if not actual reasons) of losing it.

On the Lost Padre Mine Topic, Springfield posted about a lost mine hunter who recently died under mysterious circumstances. It appears this gentleman was trespassing. Whether or not that was true in his case, it's always a bad look.

We've got to respect applicable laws, rules and regulations. That's not only simply the right thing to do, as is generally true in life it is clearly in all our best interests.

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

[Oroblanco]

Old Bookaroo - I agree! That 1872 mining law was for "we the people" NOT we the corporations.

That incident you mentioned too, it does happen. There was an incident about twenty years ago where two prospectors shot each other to death over the mining claim boundaries - no amount of gold is worth dying over.

Oroblanco