Old Bookaroo
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- Dec 4, 2008
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While researching some old newspaper accounts of the Lost Adams Diggings I stumbled across these items.
No one has ever heard of a feeling of jealousy engendered by a lucky strike, and the sudden transformation of a miner to the position of a bonanza king. All his old friends, and frequently his enemies if he has had any, which is rarely the case, rejoice with him. It does not change the relations between them, except that one possibly becomes a more generous lender, and the other a heavier borrower, and instead of a handful of candies or a chunk of bacon, money is more forthcoming for the less fortunate searcher after a streak of ore. The sympathy extended to the unlucky miner when he states that the pay streak has disappeared and his ore is lost, is as sincere and honest as ever, the words of encouragement possibly more earnest than before. The feeling of solicitude for the success and welfare among miners is universal, and no larder is ever so greatly impoverished but that it can still spare a little something for one more needy. Let the suspicious gain ground that a miner or prospector is lost or disabled, and the whole camp will turn out to his rescue and work continuously until he is found and relieved. Even the most obnoxious and worthless characters receive this consideration and kindness when in need, while as for women and children, they are always free from need and protected in a mining community. One who has lived in mining camps and witnessed the scenes only can know how much kind and charitable work is done almost daily, and the frequency of appeals for help and alacrity with which a generous response follows.
Desert Prospector - Frederic Remington
Legends of Lost Mines
A considerable amount of romance attaches to all stories of lost mines. It could not well be otherwise, as the mines spoken of as “lost” are almost invariably in some wild region full of perils of onekind or another. If the lost mines are not in barren waterless region they are in a section of country jealously guarded by hostile savages. With every story of a lost mine goes more or less of tragedy. The mines would be “lost” were it not that the men who claim to have once found them have in almost every case lost either their lives or their wits soon after making their wonderful “finds.”
By a recent dispatch from St. Paul, we see that a party is about to set out from that city in search of a wonderfully rich mine in Nevada, for which prospectors are said to have vainly searched for years. The dispatch says:
“W. E. Gooding, formerly of this city proposes to locate the mines by means of some celebrated clairvoyant. A party of eleven, including Gooding and the clairvoyant, has been organized, and will next month set out prospecting. The men are putting considerable money into the scheme.”
There are stories of several lost mines in Nevada, and the adjoining desert regions of California on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but most of these are legends of merely local fame. We do not know the particularly lost mine in search of which Mr. Gooding and party are about to set out. The lost mine, fame of which has been spread abroad on the Pacific coast is the Breyfogle, supposed to be situated in or near Death Valley. Briefly told, the story of this lost mine is a follows: The man Breyfogle was one of an emigrant party that early in the 50s, took the Southern Utah route to California from Salt Lake, passing through the Mojave desert and striking for San Bernardino, in the Golden State.
While passing near Death Valley, Breyfogle went ahead of the train to look for deer or mountain sheep. While hunting he came upon a vein of decomposed quartz in which an abundance of coarse gold was visible. With his hunting knife he dug out a number of large chunks of gold. He then hastened back to the road in order to stop the wagon train when it came up and make known his great find. Much to his disappointment the captain of the train refused to halt. He said they were in a region where they were surrounded with waterless deserts and hostile Indians, and he would not endanger the lives of the people; and besides, he did not believe that the chunks of metal shown by Breyfogle were gold — they were “brass” or some other base metal.
When they reached California, Breyfogle exhibited his nuggets to many persons, and all told him thay [sic] they were pure gold. Breyfogle spent the rest of his days in a vain search for the mine he had once seen, going out alone at times and again heading parties of men who had faith in his mine. Also many parties who knew the story of the discovery went out on their own “hook,” and for forty years there has been more or less searching almost every year for the lost Breyfogle. In all it has cost over sixty lives. Either the skeletons or mummies of men are even now found in that region every season.
Last spring a prospector named [George] Montgomery found a mine which by many persons is supposed to be the long lost Breyfogle. This mine is situated in the Death Valley region near the eastern edge of Ash Meadow, in Nevada, not far from the California mine. The vein is of large size, is decomposed, and when found by Montgomery, coarse gold was plainly visible. He gathered from the surface of the vein a yeast powder box of specimen nuggets. The vein is near the old emigrant road. It may or may not be the Breyfogle. There are several other veins in the same neighborhood that show free gold; also lodes that essay 100 ozs. in silver, veins of copper and of lead, with large deposits of pure alum, borax and similar minerals.
Another lost mine in this same region, almost as famous as the Breyfogle, is the “Gunsight.” It also has been the cause of many good and brave men leaving their bones in the desert regions of Death Valley. The Gunsight vein, nor nothing like it, has ever been found. The man who found the Gunsight vein was one of a party that took this same route through Southern Utah in 1850. The party of which he was a member suffered “shipwreck” near Death Valley at a place since called “Lost Wagons.” There the wagons of the train were abandoned, and those left alive struck out on foot and on ox-back for California. Soon, however, they scattered, several leaving the main party and wandering away in various directions on foot. Two or three of those straggling along afterwards found their way into California. One of these found a vein showing metal, a sample of which he took and carried with him to the Golden State. In his wanderings this man had lost the forward sight off his rifle. Going to a gunsmith in Los Angeles, he asked to have a new sight made. He showed the gun smith the piece of metal he had found, and as it was white requested that it be used in making the sight if it could be worked. On treating the metal the gunsmith said a sight could easily be made of it as it was silver. The finder of the metal was greatly surprised and told the mender of guns where he had found it; also said that in the vein he had seen there was plenty of the same stuff in sight. Some have declared this story to be absurd on its very face, as had silver been found it would have been in the shape of ore. But that part of the yarn is by no means so absurd as might be supposed. Down in Arizona, at no great distance south of Death Valley, many nuggets and even huge masses of virgin silver have been found on the surface of the ground. It is true that the surface of all these lumps was oxidized and black, but the man with the gun might have exposed the bright metal in breaking off his sample. At all events, after the discovery of silver in Nevada many parties went into the Death Valley country in search of the “Gunsight lead.”
Bennett, another of this same party, lived to get through to California. He declared that in his wanderings he saw in the bed of a stream at which he stopped to drink, great numbers of golden nuggets. He carried some of these to California, when, being assured that the lumps of metal he had found really were gold, he gave up is life to a search for the spot he had once seen. He went into the desert two or three times as the leader of searching parties and afterwards searched alone until death overtook him.
Bennett always asserted that the gold he saw lay on the bare bedrock in a little stream at the bottom of a deep and rocky canon [sic]. “Anvil Canon” [sic] received its name from the fact of an anvil and blacksmith’s tools having been left in it by Bennett on the occasion of one of his trips. This canon is on the west side of Death Valley. In the valley are some springs called “Bennett’s Wells,” because of his having discovered them after he had wandered off from the main party at Lost Wagons.
​Prospector - Julian Ashton
Another story, very simple, of gold in the bottom of a creek, at a place called “The Peaks” is told. This place was found by some parties who lost their way while endeavoring to make a cutoff between Salt Lake and California. Four or five men were in this party. All but two killed themselves by drinking too much water when the brook was found. Two men started out for California loaded with gold, but having a big desert to cross one of the pair became delirious through thirst and dashed away on the back track in the darkness of night. The other reached California after throwing away most of his gold, but was a physical wreck and died in a few weeks.
In 1861, a German made his appearance at Aurora, Esmeralda county, Nevada, who had several hundred dollars in gold, and also a kind of red cement that was full of smooth grains of placer gold. His showing these evidences of a “big find” caused such a terrific excitement that he became frightened, as he seemed likely to have his secret wrested from him at the muzzle of a revolver. The German disappeared the night after his arrival in town. Whether he was killed or ran away no one knows. There were at that time plenty of men in the place who would have killed him for half the quantity of gold he exhibited. Since that time great search has been made, but the rich cement has never been found by any white men. The Indians are supposed to know where the deposit is, as once or twice a year they bring the same kind of cement to a steam near the town of Lundy and there pound it up and wash out the gold. They have been at this for years, and though dogged and watched by the whites, their secret still remains undiscovered.
The “Pegleg Smith” is a lost mine of the Colorado desert. It was discovered by Smith, a man with a wooden leg, in 1837, while piloting a party of trappers from Yuma to Los Angeles. The mine is supposed to be somewhere to the northward of Carissa Creek station, on the old Butterfield state road. The landmarks are three small hills in the open desert. One of these hills (the largest) is composed of black quartz or spar, and is alive and glittering with gold — “millions in sight.” Smith never again found his mine, though he went to look for it after gold was discovered in California, but it was found in the 60’s by a miner en route from Yuma to Los Angeles by a cut-off. This man told the same story that years before had been told by Smith — it was a mountain of black rock blazing with gold. He carried to Los Angeles over $7,000 in hastily gathered nuggets. At Los Angeles he was stricken with fever and was attended by Dr. DeCourcey. After getting upon his feet again he and the doctor were preparing to go to the mine when he suffered a relapse and died.
The “Pegleg” has been much sought for, and the search still continues. On the 22[SUP]nd[/SUP] of February, this year [1892], Thomas Doran and John K. Bell left San Francisco to take another look for the lost mines. With them goes as photographer and botanist, H. L. Forrest of New York. The party will be well supplied with wagons and pack animals. In 1886, Mr. Doran explored forty square miles of country south of Carissa creek; this trip he will explore the regions to the northward of that station. This time he goes on the search with valuable points obtained from George Montgomery, discoverer of the supposed Breyfogle mine (mentioned above) and a map furnished him by an old miner, who says it is a tracing made for him by Pegleg himself, and shows the route he took from Yuma to Los Angeles, and the three hills and other landmarks as the old fellow remembered them.
It may be that the St. Paul party, with their clairvoyant, is out in search of the lost “Pegleg” mine. They might very well pass through Nevada en route to Yuma. It would be a quite a surprise were the St. Paul men and the Doran party to reach the golden mountain of black spar at the same moment. The clairvoyant should by all means enlist the spirit of old Pegleg. Perhaps, however, said spirit is constantly hovering over the black mountain and attends to no outside calls. — Denver Mining Industry.
Sierra County Advocate (Hillsborough, Sierra County, New Mexico — Library of Congress cites Kingston, N.M.) — April 8, 1892 — Volume X. - No. 535. “Hillsboro is situated in the center of the great Hillsboro, Kingston and Black Range gold and silver country, and only 18 miles distant from the famous Lake Valley silver fields.”
Good luck to all,
The Old Bookaroo
No one has ever heard of a feeling of jealousy engendered by a lucky strike, and the sudden transformation of a miner to the position of a bonanza king. All his old friends, and frequently his enemies if he has had any, which is rarely the case, rejoice with him. It does not change the relations between them, except that one possibly becomes a more generous lender, and the other a heavier borrower, and instead of a handful of candies or a chunk of bacon, money is more forthcoming for the less fortunate searcher after a streak of ore. The sympathy extended to the unlucky miner when he states that the pay streak has disappeared and his ore is lost, is as sincere and honest as ever, the words of encouragement possibly more earnest than before. The feeling of solicitude for the success and welfare among miners is universal, and no larder is ever so greatly impoverished but that it can still spare a little something for one more needy. Let the suspicious gain ground that a miner or prospector is lost or disabled, and the whole camp will turn out to his rescue and work continuously until he is found and relieved. Even the most obnoxious and worthless characters receive this consideration and kindness when in need, while as for women and children, they are always free from need and protected in a mining community. One who has lived in mining camps and witnessed the scenes only can know how much kind and charitable work is done almost daily, and the frequency of appeals for help and alacrity with which a generous response follows.
Desert Prospector - Frederic Remington
Legends of Lost Mines
A considerable amount of romance attaches to all stories of lost mines. It could not well be otherwise, as the mines spoken of as “lost” are almost invariably in some wild region full of perils of onekind or another. If the lost mines are not in barren waterless region they are in a section of country jealously guarded by hostile savages. With every story of a lost mine goes more or less of tragedy. The mines would be “lost” were it not that the men who claim to have once found them have in almost every case lost either their lives or their wits soon after making their wonderful “finds.”
By a recent dispatch from St. Paul, we see that a party is about to set out from that city in search of a wonderfully rich mine in Nevada, for which prospectors are said to have vainly searched for years. The dispatch says:
“W. E. Gooding, formerly of this city proposes to locate the mines by means of some celebrated clairvoyant. A party of eleven, including Gooding and the clairvoyant, has been organized, and will next month set out prospecting. The men are putting considerable money into the scheme.”
There are stories of several lost mines in Nevada, and the adjoining desert regions of California on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but most of these are legends of merely local fame. We do not know the particularly lost mine in search of which Mr. Gooding and party are about to set out. The lost mine, fame of which has been spread abroad on the Pacific coast is the Breyfogle, supposed to be situated in or near Death Valley. Briefly told, the story of this lost mine is a follows: The man Breyfogle was one of an emigrant party that early in the 50s, took the Southern Utah route to California from Salt Lake, passing through the Mojave desert and striking for San Bernardino, in the Golden State.
While passing near Death Valley, Breyfogle went ahead of the train to look for deer or mountain sheep. While hunting he came upon a vein of decomposed quartz in which an abundance of coarse gold was visible. With his hunting knife he dug out a number of large chunks of gold. He then hastened back to the road in order to stop the wagon train when it came up and make known his great find. Much to his disappointment the captain of the train refused to halt. He said they were in a region where they were surrounded with waterless deserts and hostile Indians, and he would not endanger the lives of the people; and besides, he did not believe that the chunks of metal shown by Breyfogle were gold — they were “brass” or some other base metal.
When they reached California, Breyfogle exhibited his nuggets to many persons, and all told him thay [sic] they were pure gold. Breyfogle spent the rest of his days in a vain search for the mine he had once seen, going out alone at times and again heading parties of men who had faith in his mine. Also many parties who knew the story of the discovery went out on their own “hook,” and for forty years there has been more or less searching almost every year for the lost Breyfogle. In all it has cost over sixty lives. Either the skeletons or mummies of men are even now found in that region every season.
Last spring a prospector named [George] Montgomery found a mine which by many persons is supposed to be the long lost Breyfogle. This mine is situated in the Death Valley region near the eastern edge of Ash Meadow, in Nevada, not far from the California mine. The vein is of large size, is decomposed, and when found by Montgomery, coarse gold was plainly visible. He gathered from the surface of the vein a yeast powder box of specimen nuggets. The vein is near the old emigrant road. It may or may not be the Breyfogle. There are several other veins in the same neighborhood that show free gold; also lodes that essay 100 ozs. in silver, veins of copper and of lead, with large deposits of pure alum, borax and similar minerals.
Another lost mine in this same region, almost as famous as the Breyfogle, is the “Gunsight.” It also has been the cause of many good and brave men leaving their bones in the desert regions of Death Valley. The Gunsight vein, nor nothing like it, has ever been found. The man who found the Gunsight vein was one of a party that took this same route through Southern Utah in 1850. The party of which he was a member suffered “shipwreck” near Death Valley at a place since called “Lost Wagons.” There the wagons of the train were abandoned, and those left alive struck out on foot and on ox-back for California. Soon, however, they scattered, several leaving the main party and wandering away in various directions on foot. Two or three of those straggling along afterwards found their way into California. One of these found a vein showing metal, a sample of which he took and carried with him to the Golden State. In his wanderings this man had lost the forward sight off his rifle. Going to a gunsmith in Los Angeles, he asked to have a new sight made. He showed the gun smith the piece of metal he had found, and as it was white requested that it be used in making the sight if it could be worked. On treating the metal the gunsmith said a sight could easily be made of it as it was silver. The finder of the metal was greatly surprised and told the mender of guns where he had found it; also said that in the vein he had seen there was plenty of the same stuff in sight. Some have declared this story to be absurd on its very face, as had silver been found it would have been in the shape of ore. But that part of the yarn is by no means so absurd as might be supposed. Down in Arizona, at no great distance south of Death Valley, many nuggets and even huge masses of virgin silver have been found on the surface of the ground. It is true that the surface of all these lumps was oxidized and black, but the man with the gun might have exposed the bright metal in breaking off his sample. At all events, after the discovery of silver in Nevada many parties went into the Death Valley country in search of the “Gunsight lead.”
Bennett, another of this same party, lived to get through to California. He declared that in his wanderings he saw in the bed of a stream at which he stopped to drink, great numbers of golden nuggets. He carried some of these to California, when, being assured that the lumps of metal he had found really were gold, he gave up is life to a search for the spot he had once seen. He went into the desert two or three times as the leader of searching parties and afterwards searched alone until death overtook him.
Bennett always asserted that the gold he saw lay on the bare bedrock in a little stream at the bottom of a deep and rocky canon [sic]. “Anvil Canon” [sic] received its name from the fact of an anvil and blacksmith’s tools having been left in it by Bennett on the occasion of one of his trips. This canon is on the west side of Death Valley. In the valley are some springs called “Bennett’s Wells,” because of his having discovered them after he had wandered off from the main party at Lost Wagons.
​Prospector - Julian Ashton
Another story, very simple, of gold in the bottom of a creek, at a place called “The Peaks” is told. This place was found by some parties who lost their way while endeavoring to make a cutoff between Salt Lake and California. Four or five men were in this party. All but two killed themselves by drinking too much water when the brook was found. Two men started out for California loaded with gold, but having a big desert to cross one of the pair became delirious through thirst and dashed away on the back track in the darkness of night. The other reached California after throwing away most of his gold, but was a physical wreck and died in a few weeks.
In 1861, a German made his appearance at Aurora, Esmeralda county, Nevada, who had several hundred dollars in gold, and also a kind of red cement that was full of smooth grains of placer gold. His showing these evidences of a “big find” caused such a terrific excitement that he became frightened, as he seemed likely to have his secret wrested from him at the muzzle of a revolver. The German disappeared the night after his arrival in town. Whether he was killed or ran away no one knows. There were at that time plenty of men in the place who would have killed him for half the quantity of gold he exhibited. Since that time great search has been made, but the rich cement has never been found by any white men. The Indians are supposed to know where the deposit is, as once or twice a year they bring the same kind of cement to a steam near the town of Lundy and there pound it up and wash out the gold. They have been at this for years, and though dogged and watched by the whites, their secret still remains undiscovered.
The “Pegleg Smith” is a lost mine of the Colorado desert. It was discovered by Smith, a man with a wooden leg, in 1837, while piloting a party of trappers from Yuma to Los Angeles. The mine is supposed to be somewhere to the northward of Carissa Creek station, on the old Butterfield state road. The landmarks are three small hills in the open desert. One of these hills (the largest) is composed of black quartz or spar, and is alive and glittering with gold — “millions in sight.” Smith never again found his mine, though he went to look for it after gold was discovered in California, but it was found in the 60’s by a miner en route from Yuma to Los Angeles by a cut-off. This man told the same story that years before had been told by Smith — it was a mountain of black rock blazing with gold. He carried to Los Angeles over $7,000 in hastily gathered nuggets. At Los Angeles he was stricken with fever and was attended by Dr. DeCourcey. After getting upon his feet again he and the doctor were preparing to go to the mine when he suffered a relapse and died.
The “Pegleg” has been much sought for, and the search still continues. On the 22[SUP]nd[/SUP] of February, this year [1892], Thomas Doran and John K. Bell left San Francisco to take another look for the lost mines. With them goes as photographer and botanist, H. L. Forrest of New York. The party will be well supplied with wagons and pack animals. In 1886, Mr. Doran explored forty square miles of country south of Carissa creek; this trip he will explore the regions to the northward of that station. This time he goes on the search with valuable points obtained from George Montgomery, discoverer of the supposed Breyfogle mine (mentioned above) and a map furnished him by an old miner, who says it is a tracing made for him by Pegleg himself, and shows the route he took from Yuma to Los Angeles, and the three hills and other landmarks as the old fellow remembered them.
It may be that the St. Paul party, with their clairvoyant, is out in search of the lost “Pegleg” mine. They might very well pass through Nevada en route to Yuma. It would be a quite a surprise were the St. Paul men and the Doran party to reach the golden mountain of black spar at the same moment. The clairvoyant should by all means enlist the spirit of old Pegleg. Perhaps, however, said spirit is constantly hovering over the black mountain and attends to no outside calls. — Denver Mining Industry.
Sierra County Advocate (Hillsborough, Sierra County, New Mexico — Library of Congress cites Kingston, N.M.) — April 8, 1892 — Volume X. - No. 535. “Hillsboro is situated in the center of the great Hillsboro, Kingston and Black Range gold and silver country, and only 18 miles distant from the famous Lake Valley silver fields.”
Good luck to all,
The Old Bookaroo
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