The Many Lost Treasures of Mariposa, CA (Photos Added)

[EagleDown]

Lanny & EagleDown......you guys are a Royal Flush!!!!! (poker talk -smile).....SushiDog

I read and enjoy Lanny's bedrock thread as well , so far your's and his are my favorites !

SushiDog and strickman, you have my heartfelt thanks for your kind words!!

 

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[nuggy]

Thanks Eagle, your comment made me remember a place where I too used to go and find a few pickers, just lying around on exposed bedrock or jammed into a crevice or two, after a couple of floods had gone through.
The pebbles of your words, tossed into the water of the web make ripples that go around the world to places far off. Reaching me, and no doubt many others who so far remain silent.
Keep it coming, when you can, I look forward to each installment. Nuggy

 

[EagleDown]

Halito Nuggy,

If you return to that place and pick up just one piece of gold off of the bedrock, then my writing is well justified.

Especially if you let us know about it.

Thank you for those words of wisdom!!

Eagle

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nuggy--I hope Eagle doesn't mind if I jump in here to pay you a sincere compliment--those last lines you penned there about Eagle and his writings are solid gold! Well done.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Hey Lanny.....what have you been up to on these cold winter days?.....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny
[/quote]
I managed to find a replecement engine with about 60,000 miles on it. It comes with a 60 day warrantee. Unfortunately, if anything goes wrong with it, there's the problem of un-installing it and putting another one in. But, it's much cheaper than re-building this one.

As far as the compliment, as Red Skelton use to say, (Jr.) "I calls 'em the way I sees 'em".

I have a limited amount of experience in "nugget shooting" and your thread has an incredible amount of information for me to benifit from. Keep on posting Brother, I'm soaking it all up!!

Love and Respect,

Eagle

[/quote]

Eagle--nice to know you've found an engine--if you have any history on that engine (60K), it's probably not a bad way to go, and you'll get your prospecting freedom back.

Thanks again for the warm compliments about my thread and about nugget shooting--I wander to some other threads and I've found a basket-full of great ideas from others' writings as well.

Now, as far as your stories go, I've never been much of a lost treasure hunter, but you give me inspiration in areas I've never seriously considered before. In fact, the area I'm currently working has a lost-treasure tale of its own that involves politically motivated intrigue, hatred, prejudice, violence and skulduggery.

It's about a group of zealots during the gold rush that robbed a huge amount of gold from sluice boxes and then cached it--supposedly never able to return to reclaim it as they were chased from the country. It involves a group tagged as the Fenian Brotherhood--some radical Irish group very active in a lot of mining camps. I've heard rumors and sparse details, and I've read a couple of stories, but I've never seriously entertained any kind of pursuit before. I guess I lamely think that if that many people knew of the gold's whereabouts when it was cached, what was to stop at least one of them from sneaking back across the border on any given year to retrieve what they'd hidden? However, maybe I need to beat the bushes a bit more and see what falls out.

All the best, and keep penning your 24K gold my friend,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--so as not to hijack Eagle's thread--I've PM'd you.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Yes....you are so right Lanny.....and I apologize to EagleDown....I am still learning (smile) and thank for the lesson....I PM'ed you back, and enjoyed you PM very much (my first PM ever) ....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

Lanny,

See? That's the kind of thinking I would like to see treasure hunters overcome. Just because a treasure was lost 2 or 300 years ago doesn't mean that it's been found, or for that matter, that the stories are not true. Unfortunately, over the intervening years, facts, area and details tend to morph into a kind of fantasy story through being retold over and over.

The best advice I could give the begining treasure hunter would be to research, research, then research some more. When you have all available information, then put it all together and decide if there's enough truth in it to persue. Use your God given intelligence and then include intuition with it. If you still think it's worthwhile, go for it.

One thing you can be certain of; if a 100 year old story says; "dig 30 feet west of the big pine tree, with the sign of the cross carved on the side of it".......you can bet your sweet bippy that the pine tree is no longer there. So now, all you have is a general location. The rare ones who do find a legendary cache are the ones who took the time to research the story and the purported location and then payed close attention to details. Unless they're like me and just wander around tripping over sticks and rocks, until they fall down and land right on top of a 10 pound nugget. (lol)

I spent 2 years researching the Lost Mariposa $50 Gold Slugs before I decided that I was with-in 100 yards of them. Every thing I found said that they were near the bank of Bear Creek. Then, a short while ago, I read a thread in the forum, "Treasure Legends", that said they were on an intirely different creek. (lol) Not to worry, I know which creek they're on. (lol)

Anyway, I'll get more into this legend in another story.

They are out there, it's up to you to find them.

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

A flip of a coin spells success

It was early summer of 1979. As mentioned earlier, there was so little run-off that we could get in the river as early as we wanted. (Actually, with the suit warmer I developed, I could dredge all winter.) Our only problem that year was finding an area where the river was flowing fast enough to take the silt away. And when you’ve dredged a fairly deep hole, sometimes you would still have a hard time seeing what you were doing. There were a lot of purple finger nails around the river those days.

Unfortunately that happens when you can’t see well enough to notice that rock sliding towards your suction nozzle. Your fingers over the end of the nozzle are just a minor and temporary inconvenience for the rocks. (lol)

I was sitting in my camp chair one afternoon, enjoying an ice-cold Pepsi, when
two trucks pulled into the campground of McCabe Flats. The drivers got out of the trucks and walked over to where I was seated.

They introduced themselves as Ron and Pat. Ron, the younger one was a fire fighter from the L.A. area, just starting a 2 week vacation. Pat was about 55, or perhaps 60 and had recently retired from the same fire department. Frankly, I liked both of them right off the bat.

They explained that they were dredging partners and asked if I had any idea where they could put their dredge in. “Well, I just might have the spot for you”. I said. “If you want to take a short walk with me, I’ll point out some areas for you”. They were ready and only took the time, (at my suggestion) to lock their trucks up. As we walked down the road, I explained that we had been getting more and more people on the river, and things were disappearing quite often.

A short distance down the road, I walked over to the side of the road and pointed down at an old willow tree on the bank, right at the edge of the water.
“See that tree right there”? I asked. “Well, I’ve always thought that if I dredged directly out from the tree, right in the middle of the river, there should be a lot of gold right there”. I told them that I had dredged about 30 feet upriver from that spot and there was only about 3 foot of overburden. The bed-rock tapered down from each bank to the center of the river where it formed a rounded trough that kept the gold concentrated. Unfortunately, the gold was scattered along this trough, but indicated that if there was a sudden drop in the bed-rock, the gold should accumulate at the base of the drop off.

They asked if they found any worthwhile gold, how much percentage would I want. I told them I didn’t want anything, but if they did find an accumulation of gold, I would appreciate it if they would let me know. I figured that at least, I would know if my theory was right. So, we had our accord, (I got that from “Pirates of the Caribbean”) (lol)

A week and a half later, I don’t know what they were saying about me, but I was feeling pretty guilty about putting them in that spot. Granted, they only had a 4 inch dredge, but, they had one hell of a hole in the middle of the river, and had not hit bed-rock yet. It seems that somewhere between where I had dredged and where they were dredging, the bed rock took a radical dive. They were down in about 8 ft. of over-burden and still no sign of bed-rock. But, I’ll give them credit, they sure weren’t quitters and they stuck it out to the last day of Ron’s vacation.

The afternoon before Ron had to leave and head home, they both came over to my camper. Ron asked if I would do him a favor. Hey, by this time, if he had asked, I would have gone home with him and been his personal yard keeper, (for free.) Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. (lol)

He told me that he had to leave in the morning, but Pat was going to stay for awhile. He said he’d rather Pat didn’t have to dredge alone and asked if I would mind dredging with him. As I said, I would have done just about anything he asked, just to get rid of my feelings of guilt, so naturally, I said it would be a pleasure.

The following morning Ron left early and by 8:30 am, Pat and I were suited up and on the bank near the dredge. Pat went out, looked in the gas tank and said that there was about a half tank of gas left. He asked if I thought we should move to somewhere else, or finish up that tank of gas first. I looked down at the ground while I collected my thoughts and saw the glint of a coin that some one had dropped in the grass. I picked up the quarter, looked at it and said; “Let’s toss this coin. Heads we stay here or tails, we go ahead and move”. Pat agreed and I immediately gave the coin a spin into the air. The quarter landed on a patch of sand and we both bent over to look. Oops, it was heads. So, it looked like we were going to dredge here a little longer. I wasn’t really all that excited at the prospect as the hole was now about 9 foot deep, while the top was probably 15 to 18 foot in diameter.

Pat said that since he was familiar with the hole, he would go in first, since there wasn’t enough room in the bottom for 2 people. I agreed and unzipped the top of my wetsuit. He started up the engine and I went over and sat down on a large boulder to roll a cigarette. I lit the cigarette and took a couple of puffs off of it when Pat came back out of the hole and stood by the dredge. He motioned to me to come out to the dredge. As I waded out in the (less than,) waist deep water, he shut the dredge off. Those little Briggs and Stratton engines were so loud that you couldn’t talk to one another near them.

When I got near Pat, he held his hand out with something clutched in it and said “here”. I held out my hand and he dropped 3 nuggets in it. All three later turned out to be a little over a half oz. each. Believe me, I was properly impressed. (lol)
We spent a minute or so laughing and just savoring the moment, then he said; “That’s nothing, put your weight belt and mask on and go down and take a look”.

I had to wade back to the bank to get my weight belt, then back out to the dredge to put my full face-mask on. When I was ready, Pat fired the engine back up. I pushed myself off of the edge of the hole, so that I would sink closer to the center. Though the sides were terraced, too much movement could cause the materials to slide into the hole. (We’re not talking hard pack here, all of the over burden was as loose as the day it was deposited there.)

As I neared the bottom, I could see that Pat had finally hit bed-rock. I saw an area of bed-rock about 12 or 16 inches across and also saw the blackness of a crevasse right in the middle of it. When I reached the bottom, I knelt and looked into the crevasse and yelled so loud that I loosened the seal on my mask and had to pull it away from my chin to blow the water back out. (lol)

There in that small crevasse was a sight almost as beautiful as my first newborn child. the crevasse was only about 2 inches wide and about 12 inches long, and an inch from the top, from one end to the other, all I could see was gold. In all my years of dredging, up until that time, I had never seen so much gold accumulated in a river, in one spot. The things dreams are made of!! (lol)

There’s a little more to this story, but I have some work to do so I’ll finish it up a little later.

 

[strickman]

hurry , were all on the edge of our seats !

 

[SushiDog]

EagleDown....perhaps you can reconcile and shed some light on the two versions of where the $50 gold slugs were minted....I say this because as I have been doing a lot of research for gold prospecting sites, et.al., the "Ophir Mint" did not mint those slugs, and the slugs were minted in San Francisco at the Assayers Office (wherever that was located in San Francisco)....so the stories abound over exactly where the slugs were minted at by reading many resources online....one other thing that comes to mind is....."IF" the slugs were minted in Ophir, why would any of the slugs be buried near or adjacent to that site? Likewise for the location in San Francisco? If my memory serves me well, you mentioned in a previous post somewhere that you discovered one of these slugs in a stone wall somewhere....that is, IF my memory serves me well....and....I have read the story about the tax collector trying to cross a river on a horse with a saddle bag full of these slugs.....however....none were recovered.....as you mentioned in your past post, stories abound, and you have to separate the wheat from the shaff....there is just too much 411 about the $50 gold slugs that starts to become overwhelming.....wherever the slugs were minted does not matter in my mind....I mean, they could be anywhere....if you or I had one of these slugs in our possession back in those days, where would we "safe keep" it, if at all? AND, one more question that I would like for you to help me out with......when was the last time a person found and reported such a find?....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

SushiDog,

Interesting post you've made. To answer one of your questions; No, I've never said that I found one of the slugs. What I have said is, the Sherriffs department use to have a brass proof on display in the foyer of the County Jail. I haven't been there for a while, so I don't know if it's still there.

The proof showed the results of a "cracked die", so from what I found out, the die was destroyed after the assayer picked the slugs up from the mint. The balance of the story I would prefer to wait and post along with the rest of my research.

One thing you need to keep in mind; a lot of stories are changed as they "make the rounds". Usually, this is not done maliciously, but still, it tends to "muddy the water" so to speak. Then, you have the ones who hope to find the stache themselves. They intentionally add and subtract "facts" to throw others off of the trail. Unfortunately, some of this type are published in periodicals and books.

I no longer have all of the information I collected back in the 60's due to moving, weather and I might add, mice. So, in basis, I believe my facts are correct, though I might be off a year here and there.

There was ONE of the slugs found, back about 1854, but I prefer to save that for the complete story also. As for your last question, I can only speak of the ones that I have personal knowledge of.

In about 1974, a man who had recently bought a house in Palmetto, FL noticed a depression in the yard, on the side of the house. He was concerned that a sewer line might have caved in, (or that an old cistern was caving in, so he dug down to see what had happened. He uncovered a heavy steel box and when he opened it, he found was loaded with gold coins. If I remember correctly, the gold coins had a face value of about $110,000.00 Now take heed here; he called some family members and close friends to show them his new-found fortune. From there, the word spread and before he knew what was happening, a lawyer showed up with a letter from the previous property owner stating that the gold was legally his. I don't know what the final outcome was as when I left FL, they were still in court.

Shortly after I returned to CA, a person I knew and I were on route 99 just North of Bakersfield when he pointed off to the side and told me about a cache of gold coins he knew was buried there. He gave some details about how they got there, (spoils of a burglary) and about where he thought they were. I kinda put it off as a tale told to pass the time. But, in 1992, about 17 years later, I read a story in the Californian (newspaper) about a young man digging a trench for a water line, digging up some gold coins. And guess where they were. Yep, right in the area that he had shown me. I might add, when they were buried, this area was nothing but sage brush and sand dunes, as it was when he showed it to me. It's pretty well covered now, with buildings.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Eagle--it is just so dang much fun reading your stories--what a gift you have--the Grand Master Story-Teller. (I realize that a lot of hard work and time goes into the writing as well. So, many thanks for all of the hours you spend putting your stories on this site.)

On a different note, wow--would I have loved to have been in on that crevice of gold!! All that hard, hard work to dig a terraced hole of that size--that's no joke! Only a dredger knows how long that takes. But, the nice thing about that hole--it really paid off. Nice tip you gave them too--very generous indeed.

All the best, and I'll keep checking back for the rest of the story.


Lanny

 

[EagleDown]

Thank you Lanny. High praise indeed from one I was thinking about asking to be my "ghost writer". Should I decide to write a book of course. And, you're absolutely right, it is a lot of work. Especially for me, as while I'm typing, I'm trying to keep track of the story line, spelling, punctuation and dragging out old memories, all at the same time. Then, if I'm typing in the thread itself, after a few lines, the story starts bouncing up and down to where I can't see it while I'm typing. It's really dismaying to read it afterwards and see the typos. Yikes!!

I wish you were there too. It was really something. If we were able to dredge in CA, I think I could go back to the same spots and probably find as much as before. And, maybe even more, since we left the holes where the crevasses were more accessable to the flow of gold than they were before.

Thanks for your kind comments!! Now I need to get back to Word and finish the conclusion of this little story.


Eagle

 

[SushiDog]

Thanks EagleDown for responding to my post.....I apologize to you, and to the board for my lack of memory of where I saw that post about a $50 gold slug being found in a stone wall.....I won't bother to ask any more questions because I am waiting with baited breath to "hear the rest of your story"....as the late great Paul Harvey would say on his broadcasts.....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

The finale of: A flip of a coin spells success

I’m a little hesitant about the rest of the story because it’s kind of an anti-climax.
But, it’s part of the story and deserves to be told. So………………

Needless to say, we did no more dredging that day. We took turns at picking the gold out of the crevasse, until there was no more to be found. Other than the gold pan, we had nothing large enough to carry that much gold. Pity huh? (lol)
So, that’s where it was piled. In the gold pan.

I cleaned the sluice box, while Pat kept an eye on the gold, then we gathered our equipment and returned to the camp ground. (With a folded towel covering the gold.) (lol) Hey, you just never know about people. (And that’s food for another story.) (lol)

When we arrived at the camp ground, I went to my camper and got out of my wet-suit while Pat was in his big cab-over camper doing the same. I had been outside for several minutes when Pat came out of his camper and called me over. I went inside and sat down at the dining table while Pat sat the gold pan down in front of me and took the towel off of it.

He asked me if it was alright if he kept the gold here (in his camper.) I told him,
it was his to do what he wanted to do with it. Anyway, we had no way to weigh it, so he asked if I would mind driving him to town so he could call Ron. I had a couple of things I needed anyway, so I said; no problem.

When we got into town, I headed into the Pioneer Market, while he used the pay phone. When I got back out, he told me Ron was coming back up and bringing some scales with him. After he did a little shopping, we drove back down to the river. He explained that though Ron had left, he still had about a week left on his vacation and had gone home early as he had some work to do around the house. So, he was free to return if he was needed.

Ron arrived around noon the following day and we all gathered in Pat’s camper. Ron had brought a triple beam Ohause scale to weight the gold. Even then, it took a while to weigh it all, as the bowl was rather small, (as compared to the amount of gold to be weighed.) As I remember, we put gold into the bowl 4 or 5 times before the gold pan was finally empty. Ron weighed it, while Pat jotted down the weights on a pad of paper. When Ron had finished, Pat totaled it up and it came to 39 oz and a few grams. Not too shabby.

I congratulated them on their success and was getting up to leave when Ron said; “Hey, wait a minute there. Part of this is yours”. I carefully sat back down (so I didn’t fall down,) and reminded them that I didn’t ask any payment for helping them. Ron told me that he and Pat had already discussed it and had agreed that I should have an equal share of the gold. And, that was that. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Of course, then we had to decide how to split it. I suggested that since Pat was the first to see it, that he should pick the first nugget out for himself. Then since Ron was his partner, he should have second pick, then me and so on, until we each had our share. They thought that was a good idea so, the game was on. (lol)

But, Ron held up the biggest piece and asked; “How do we split this one”??

What he held was a piece of quartz and gold that was almost perfectly round and about the size of a golf ball. Actually, though gold appeared to make up at least two thirds of the mass, there wasn’t enough “character” to it to attract me at all. So, I told him to set it aside, and when the rest was divided, He and Pat could fight over it. (lol) They got a good laugh out of that too.

Anyway, I ended up with a little over a pound of gold, as they did. Really, it felt great to deal with people like them, especially after many of the ones I had dealt with while I was a cop.

Not much more I can say about this experience other than I hope you enjoyed it.

Eagle

 

[SushiDog]

EagleDown.....pardon me for asking (it's my "sometimers" acting up again, not Alzheimer's yet).....where did this saga take place, and what year?.....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

EagleDown.....pardon me for asking (it's my "sometimers" acting up again, not Alzheimer's yet).....where did this saga take place, and what year?.....SushiDog

Hmmm, I had to return to the start of this story since your question got me to worrying about my Alzheimers. Anyway. the first sentence says; "It was early summer of 1979".

And, unless stated otherwise, all of my dredging stories so far have been about and on the Merced River, below Briceburg.

Eagle

 

[EagleDown]

My apologies all. I just re-read my posted story and found a typo. I had to change the total weight of the gold. I typed 49 oz when it was actually 39 oz.

Eagle