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

[EagleDown]

Great stories Eagle. Living 'in the neighborhood' I'm sure our foot prints have crossed. It's especially interesting to read about places one's been to. Keep 'em coming.

C-dad

You got it c-dad!! I started this thread because I read a post that treasure stories were mostly BS. Actually, that offended me a little since, while reading the post, I could think of several off hand. I know that they're there (somewhere) and sometimes all it takes is the right person reading the so called BS, and shortly we're reading about a cache being found.

Besides, in about 3 more months, I'll see my 75th birthday. And though I don't entend going anywhere soon, just in case, I'd hate to see all of my experiences wasted.

Incidently, thanks for your encouragement, it's allways great to know someone is enjoying my stories.

Eagle

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Upgraded Night Vision Monocular Digital Infrared Monocular Telescope for 100% Darkness with 8X Zoom - Grab it through Amazon!

[Relichunter1]

Eagle, thanks for the great stories of your travels to Briceburg area. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed reading about the history of the area as I also live here in Mariposa.It just so happens I was down at Briceburg today right below the metal bridge sniping in the shallow water. I usually bring a small hand sledge hammer and various sized chisels and work the cracks. Some of the time I find small flakes that I pick up with tweezers. Hey Eagle, hope you include me when you come through this way, I don't think Shep would mind . Shep did you do well in Nevada ?

 

[shepcal]

Eagle, it would surely be a pleasure to meet you the next time up this way. I will guarrantee a soft pillow to rest your head on and your belly will be full and altho I like to have a few beers, I'm sure I can find a jug of homegrown wine around somewhere (not mine, but it'll be good!).

Relichunter1 or 2, no gold from RP, but 3 meteorites and a Sticking Tommy found up in a bush. Hate that! While detecting, get a target, dig, but can't find the target, but signal is still there, then find the target above ground. Put it on a board and will give it to a friend up there unless he already has to many in his home.

Eagle, my cell# is 559.658.0243. Call anytime

Please keep the stories coming. I do enjoy!

Shep

 

[bill-USA]

Shep, for those of us who originated back east and live happily in our ignorance, would you be kind enough to expand on a Sticking Tommy?

I have no clue what you might be referencing, other than it is detectable, and apparently caught somehow in a bush. (All of which is supposition.) Well, google just explained to me what a sticking tommy was.

And Eagle, with well over 1500 views on this forum, I have to conclude that there are a lot of us lurkers out here, eating up every posting.

 

[EagleDown]

Eagle, thanks for the great stories of your travels to Briceburg area. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed reading about the history of the area as I also live here in Mariposa.It just so happens I was down at Briceburg today right below the metal bridge sniping in the shallow water. I usually bring a small hand sledge hammer and various sized chisels and work the cracks. Some of the time I find small flakes that I pick up with tweezers. Hey Eagle, hope you include me when you come through this way, I don't think Shep would mind . Shep did you do well in Nevada ?

Ho Relichunter1, the more, the merrier.

Here's one quickey you might have heard of.

If you go back up the hiway towards Mariposa, perhaps a half mile, look to the North, across Bear Creek. There is a canyon that looks a mile or so long. Take a pair of binoculars and scan up towards the top of the end of the canyon. You should spot a tunnel portal and a flat area.
Anyway, (I think it was 1981 or 82,) there was a "flat-lander" that decided to go on up to Yosimite Nat. Park. (As he told me,) "I was passing through Mariposa when I noticed a mining supply sign just as I passed the Gold Coin bar and restaurant". "Just for the heck of it, I stopped to see what they had". He said, "On an impulse, I bought a pan and a couple of crevassing tools the owner recommended".

"When I got down here", (to Briceburg,) "I decided to go up the creek and see if I could find any gold". "Well, I went up aways then started digging in the cracks and crevasses. I found a few little flakes, here and there, then I got almost to that big canyon going off that way". (Points to the North.) "Then, I started find a little more in each pan of stuff". "You know, when I first got to that area, I saw something in the water, about 10 foot away, but I thought it was probably an old Olympia beer can, so I went on digging and panning".

"Anyway, after a couple of hours and just this little bit of gold, (shows me a little vial with perhaps a gram or so of flakes and small pieces of gold.) "I was getting tired and still wanted to see Yosimite Park, so I started getting ready to leave".

"Just out of curiosity, I waded out and reached down to pick up the "beer can" and couldn't budge it".
"I had to use the crevass tool to pry it loose from the clay or mud".

The Olympia beer can turned out to be a gold nugget weighing in at a little over three pounds!!

Puts a whole new meaning to the phrase: BEGINNERS LUCK!!

 

[EagleDown]

Eagle, with well over 1500 views on this forum, I have to conclude that there are a lot of us lurkers out here, eating up every posting.

Or......, I've come in 1492 times to read my own posts. Thanks bill!!

Thanks Shep!!
Incidently, pure grape juice is great, I gave up the alcoholic beverages about 45 years ago. You know us injuns and booze.

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

Just as an example of how small this world really is, I was seated at my camp table, just finishing up the last of a pot of coffee, when I noticed a van pulling a camping trailer turn into the campground.

I watched as this tall, gangly individual got out. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat and a pair of “Farmer John” bib overalls. He was obviously older than me, so that put him in the category of being an “old man”. (lol)

He made a bee-line for my camp. Watching him walk toward me, I thought, “Man, he sure looks familiar”. Well, he introduced himself as “Bedrock Bill”.
“Oh yeah”, I exclaimed, “I read about you in one of Long John Lathams treasure magazines about 10 or 12 years ago”.

Anyway, we talked for awhile, and I found out that he did not really find that nugget while the author of the story about Lynx Creek was interviewing him. He told me of how he rolled his own cigarettes and while he was rolling one, he put the nugget in it. Then, while he was panning, (with the cigarette in his mouth,) he let the ashes fall into the gold pan. Of course, it didn’t take but a couple of minutes before the nugget fell in with the ashes. And that’s what the interviewer saw and thought he’d just then found it.

As it turned out, he made small hand cranked drywashers. And I will have to admit, they were pretty well constructed. He traveled around California and Arizona selling one here and one there. And the cigarette trick was one of his ways of getting people interested in buying one. He only wanted $50 for one, and if I didn’t own a dredge, I would have been tempted to buy one.

I never did decide whether he was an unscrupulous con-man, or if I should consider him an inventive entrepreneur. (lol) Oh hell, to be honest, I considered him to be a con-man. Or……maybe I still carried a grudge over my fruitless trip to Arizona so many years before. (lol)

Anyway, I had finished my coffee and put things away while talking to him. I told him I had somewhere I had to go and told him I’d see him later, if he was still there when I got back.

I already had the tools I thought I’d need, plus a good strong (railroad style) lantern in the truck, so I said my goodbyes and drove on up-river to Briceburg.

Across the river from Briceburg, you might notice on a map of the area, there is a road that ‘zig-zags” up the mountain. The maps list it as “Briceburg Road”, but most of us called it Burma Road. (lol) Switch back after switch back, all the way to the top. But, unless you want to hike up Hall’s Gulch, this is the only way to get to the top of the gulch. (I once started at the top of Hall’s Gulch and hiked down to the river, and that was an ordeal to remember.)

I had made an earlier trip up here to look for the “lost mine”, but wasn’t able to locate it. But, Pete told me it was up here, and I was determined to find it.

A couple of years before this particular trip, there had been a forest fire that pretty well razed the top of the mountain in this area, so I had hopes that some of the brush would be gone and make it a little easier to find.

If you should make a trip up to the top in an attempt to find this mine, just stay on the main road, (Briceburg Road,) until you come to an area where you have to drive across the bed of a creek. It’s was mostly washed bedrock the last time I was up there. Anyway, that creek feeds into the top of Hall’s Gulch.

Find a place to park, (you might even find the remains of my fire-pit from the last time I was there, in 1983,) that was always a good place to park and set up camp.

Anyway, I walked about a hundred foot towards the gulch, and there it was, bigger than life. The last time I came up, the brush was so thick that it totally hid the portal of the mine. (It will be on your right side, as you head towards the gulch.) The fire had burned off almost all of the brush on the top of the hills around there.

Incidentally, I recommend that you bring your own drinking water. I had a prospector friend that stayed in an area a short distance from this gulch. He was found by his brother, almost dead from arsenic poisoning. It turned out that he was getting his water from a nearby creek. An analysis showed that the water had an unsafe level of arsenic in it. Of course, arsenic is also a pretty good indicator of “Lode Gold”. So that might bear a little investigating. (lol)

So, I returned to my truck and got out my light and a rock pick, plus a couple of small canvas sacks, (for samples,) and headed back to the portal. I got about 10 feet inside of the mine, and spotted a pile of slough, I believe from the ceiling. And there, laying across the top of the pile was a fat rattle-snake. I went back outside and found myself a good stout branch about 4 feet long and went back in and evicted the snake. (With prejudice!!) (lol)

After going in and studying it for a while, I figured that whoever was mining here was working a gouge. That is, a place where the mountain had split and separated to form a big crack. Over a period of hundreds, or even thousands of years, the gouge had filled with eroded materials. Though I found a bit of gold in the samples I collected, I wasn’t really interested in mining it. Mainly due to the fact that during the summer months, the creek here is dry, so, a sluice box is out of the question. About the only time there seems to be water is during the winter and early spring. Unfortunately, those are also the times that you could conceivably be snowed in for awhile.

Though I had satisfied my curiosity and determined that the mine actually did exist, I still have a couple of questions in my mind.

First of all, the mine didn’t extend much more than 30 feet into the side of the hill. But, judging from the samples I took out, one or two persons could have made a living working it full time.

Another question would be; how old was it. I had no way to determine that.

Then, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, I just had to climb up to the top of the hill, over the mine and found a deep pit that looked as though someone was digging down to the mine. Why?? The mine itself appeared to be good and solid, with no true danger of cave-ins. Or was the pit dug later, by someone else??

Oh well, perhaps you will go up there, find the mine and resolve these questions. If you do, I hope you’ll let me know the answers. (lol)

I think my next post will be about the old “Spanish Mine” I found down near McCabe Flats.

See you then. (lol)

Eagle

 

[shepcal]

Bill-USA, a Sticking Tommy or some called it a Tommy sticker, was a candle holder hand forged by blacksmiths. It had a wraparound to hold the candle, a hook to hold whatever (later they hung headlamps from it) and a sharp point on one end to stick into a beam or crack in the mine wall. It's about 6.75" long. It's not worth much except to me. Found by me in a mining area and not far from the old Emigrant trail. Because it was found within a couple of miles of the trail, it could of been from an early settler traveling thru, cause anyone wanting to hang a candle somewhere temporarially used them in the 1800's.

Shep

 

[Relichunter1]

Eagle, I have tried researching the histroy of Briceburg and it's mines and placer diggings for some leads but have not had much luck. I have even gone to the Mariposa history museum and spoke with the head historian and she admitted herself of the fact that very little is known of the early mining in the area. I did not know the Spaniards worked this area, but do know of an area in San Gabriel off of highway 39 in Azusa where I used to go and meet up with Jerry Hobbs from Azusa Gold and Al Marconi who had a small shop in Follows Camp. We would go and explore some of those mines, I for one did not venture in them other than make sure the older fellas came out alive. The story was that the Spanish padres from the local missions in the valley would use natives to dig for the gold. They would dig a hole barely large enough for one to crawl in on his belly and they would scrape the bedrock for the gold (coyote holes) they call them. It would be interesting to find some evidence of Spanish mining in this district , that is prior to Mexican governments take over of California. Shep, hey meteriotes are good too , I hear some of them are very valuable. Eagle thanks again for the stories, keep them coming.

 

[EagleDown]

Halito Relichunter1,

Thanks My Friend!! I”ll keep them coming until I run out of things to talk about.

I ran into the same problem years ago, when I was trying to find out more about the history of Mariposa. I went into the newspaper archives, county recorders office, sheriffs’ office, etc. etc. I found it amazing that a town that played such a large part in the “Glory Days” of California had so little information available about its original livelihood, that is to say; Mining!!

By the way, the next time you’re poking around Briceburg, go down-river to McCabe’s Flats. At the upper end of the campground, on the opposite side of the road, you’ll see a shaft, with a pipe “A” frame above it. Down close to the water, there should still be the entrance to a mine that this shaft goes to. (The BLM might have it blocked by now.) Then, just about directly across from the first driveway into the camping area, look to the right. You should see an almost hidden roadway, sloping up away from the campground. Follow the road up as far as you can, then go to the right. You’ll come on to where some extensive mining has been done. I would imagine there should be some artifacts here and there. The last time I was sleuthing around there, I found two tunnels with pipes running into them. I also found a large, perfectly squared in the corners, hole, going straight down in the bedrock. An outdoor privy?? Or perhaps an elevator shaft?? About six feet down, the hole was filled with leaves, so I have no idea of how deep it might have been. So watch yourself. I wouldn’t want to fall into that one.

As for the Spanish mining, those suckers were like a swarm of locusts when it came to looking for gold and silver. They hit CA, AZ, CO, NM, etc. If you research deep enough, you’ll find that Mariposa county, originally was the largest county in CA. See wikipedia for the following, and additional information:
________________________________________________________________________

Mariposa County was one of the original counties of California, created at the time of statehood in 1850. While it began as the state's largest county, over time territory that was once part of Mariposa was ceded to twelve other counties: Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Madera, Merced, Mono, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, and Tulare. Thus, Mariposa County is known as the "Mother of Counties".
______________________________________________________________________________

With all of the area it originally encompassed, it’s surprising that we don’t live in the “State of Mariposa”. (lol)

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

“Lost Found Spanish Diggins”

The year is 1983. I had been working in SanBernardino when I was struck by a
re-occurrence of the “Gold Bug Fever”. (lol)

I knew that there was only one way to pacify my cravings, and that was to go find some gold. It was late October, and the only place I knew well enough to head for at that time of year was Mariposa.

So I returned the keys to the shop I’d been renting, loaded the “cab over” camper onto the truck, hooked up the utility trailer full of supplies and equipment, and away I went. Of course, on the way to Mariposa, we got the first rain we’d had in several months. It poured like it was trying to make up for lost time. And, it rained all the way to Mariposa and the Merced river.

Now, let’s skip ahead about 2 weeks. Nothing exciting to tell, I don’t remember a day of those 2 weeks that it didn’t rain. (lol) Actually, a week or so before, it had settled in to a almost continuous light drizzle. Then, late one afternoon, though it was still totally overcast, the drizzle stopped. It was then, out of sheer boredom, I decided to take the rifle and see if I could nail a deer. Venison would be a welcome break to beans and rice. (lol)

I got out the rifle and walked down the road to an area where there was a well used deer trail. I went up a small gulch a short distance and found a spot up against an embankment, where I’d be out of sight should a deer come down the trail.

I had been there for about 45 minutes and decided to have a cigarette. Since there was a breeze coming down the gulch, I didn’t worry about spooking any deer up higher. I went to light the cigarette, but the breeze blew the match out. So, I turned my back to it, struck another match and cupping it in my hands, managed to get the fire to my cigarette.

I was standing there, facing the embankment when I noticed the rain had washed out a bit of the embankment, and right up under the roots of an old live oak, there was a hole about the size of my head. Hmm, I thought, that’s curious. Since the hole was only about head high, I stood on tip-toes and tried to see in. No dice. So, I picked up a fist size rock and dropped it in the hole. By the sound, I figured the rock must have dropped at least 5 feet before it hit bottom.

And thus, began a series of events that boggles the mind.

If you’ve read all of my previous posts, you’ve probably noticed that I just seem to wander through life willy-nilly, and “things” just seem to happen. It’s kind of like someone “up there” wants me to be happy, so They just keep sending things my way. (lol)

In any case, there wasn’t much I could do about my new discovery, other than to wait until spring and try to find someone to help me dig it out. So, I just sat it on the back burner and let it simmer for the rest of the winter.

The following April, the weather was great, but there would be no dredging for a while as the river was roaring. So, I did a little exploring, finding out all kinds of neat things. Like an old mill site down-river. And a lot of tunneling above McCabe Flats. The site of an old cabin further up-river. (Actually, the foundations.) And other things.

About the middle of April, a man showed up at my camp. He said that he had been up in the area a couple of times and had noticed my camp both times. He asked if I was going to be there all summer, and I replied yes. Then he told me that he had a construction company, and business was off. He had a couple of pieces of construction equipment that he was in danger of losing to the bank, and wanted to know if he could bring them up and leave them with me until business picked back up.

I asked what kind of equipment are we talking about? He told me he had the biggest tire mounted back-hoe that Case made. It had a telescoping boom with a 30 foot reach. He also had a Caterpillar 977-H, track mounted front end loader. My next question was, “can I use them while they’re here”?? To which he answered, “I don’t see why not”.

(You see where I’m headed here??) (lol)

Somewhere around the first of May, a large Case back-hoe came rolling into my camp. Yep, he wasn’t fooling. He said he would have the 977-H up in a couple of days, then asked me what I entended to dig. I told him to follow me, and I took him to where I had discovered the hole. He told me to wait and returned to my camp. In a few minutes, he came back, riding the back-hoe. I showed him where I entended digging and he turned the boom in that direction, put out the out-riggers and took a couple of buckets of materials out of the enbankment. Then, we found there were two large flat boulders, standing on edge, one on top of the other one. They were both fairly round, but flat. They were about 4 feet across, and about a foot thick. From the way they were situated, it was obvious that they had been placed there intentionally.

When the boulders were out of the way, a man-made tunnel was plain to see. He dug a hole in front of the tunnel for any materials that happened to fall, and finished clearing the portal. While he was finishing the clearing process, I went back to camp and got my spot light. By the time I got back, he had shut the back-hoe down and was waiting to see what I had found.

But, it’s dinner time, so I’ll have to tell you about that later. (lol)

Eagle

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

O. K., the mine is open, and I have a light, I guess it’s time to go in and see what we have. No bending over here, I would guess that it was about 7 feet from the floor to the ceiling in the center of the tunnel. I admit that I got a little nervous when I realized that the tunnel was not in “hard-rock”. Whoever had done this, had tunneled through ancient alluvial. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since Don had been working ancient alluvial, less than a hundred yards from here.

I checked outside later, and there was no sign that this was anything more than the base of a mountain. No alluvial showing on this side of the gulch at all.

Anyway, I proceeded about 20 feet inside and saw an addit going off to my left at a 90 degree angle, directly toward the river. (Which incidentally, was about thirty feet lower than where I was at the time.) In another 6 or 7 feet, there was another addit angling forward, to the right of me, at about 45 degrees. It had a slight downward taper to it. Another 10 feet and there was a solid wall of alluvial.

Hmmm, more questions. Why would anyone go to all the trouble to hide this tunnel if that is all there is to it?? Though I had a strong feeling I was missing something important.

That night, sitting by the campfire, I couldn’t get it out of my thoughts. I must have entered that mine and looked around a hundred times in my mind. But the question remained, WHAT DID I MISS Another mystery to “put on the back burner” for a while.

Since this is about my “Spanish Mine”, I’ll now have to jump forward about four years. I had a local friend who showed up one evening for a visit. (I was living in town at this time.) We were sitting, trading prospecting stories back and forth, so, it was only apt that I told him about this old Spanish Mine. We got to speculating on what they could have conceivably been up to. The night was full of “maybe this”, and “maybe that”. (lol) And then, like a brilliant flash of light, it hit me!! I knew what I had been missing!! I had looked straight at it, and it had never even registered as to what I was seeing. I had been taught by Medicine Men, and all of my life I had practiced seeing what others missed. Now, I felt like a total idiot.

James just sat there with his mouth open while I called myself idiot, blind wachichu, moron, etc. When I finally ran down, he simply said; “What”? And that sent me into a fit of laughing.

Still gasping for air after my outburst, I said, “James, the tunnel didn’t end where it appeared too!! “How do you figure that”? he asked. I said, “While we were talking, I was in there mentally, looking at everything I saw before”. “And this time, I saw what I had been missing”.

I explained, “The solid wall of alluvial had a two or three inch gap between the tunnel ceiling and the wall”. “And what does that mean”? he asked. “That” I said, “means the tunnel was back-filled, and during the last 3 or 4 hundred years, the back-fill has settled, leaving a gap at the top of it”.

I was absolutely sure that as dry as it was inside of the tunnel, there was no way the back-fill could have settled that much in a mere one hundred years.

We were both fairly excited over this revelation, and spent the night talking about the possibilities. Before I knew it, it was after 6am and James had to be on his way. But, we came to an understanding before he left.

We decided that he and his brother would go to the mine and see if they could figure out a way to get beyond the “wall”.

And now, I have company, so I’ll have to wait to tell you what we found out.

Later. (lol)

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

I had spent the week building a 12’ X 26’ walk-in cage and storage structure for my exotic colored Parakeets. I had recently bought six pairs from a friend in Merced, who was moving out of the state.

Then, Saturday evening James called, wanting to know if he and his brother could come by. I told him, “Come on up”. They arrived shortly after dark and after hearing what they had to say, I’m even more convinced that we’re talking about a very old Spanish Mine. I could remember reading a story about a Spanish Mine that was found in Colorado. (I read this story in the late 60s,) and I was struck by the similarities in the way the tunnels were laid out. The only major difference was that the Colorado one was in “hard-rock”, and my find was in super-compacted, ancient alluvial.

Anyway, let me describe it to you, the way James described it to me:

“Well, we got down to the river about 6am. Our pick-up was loaded with every tool we could imagine needing for digging in the mine. We passed McCabe Flats and started looking for the place you said the barbed wire fence was down. We drove right past it, then had to drive on down-river, almost to Good’s Gulch before we could find a place wide enough to turn around and go back up-river.

Then, I recalled that you said the `first’ gulch after McCabe’s Flats. So, we drove back up to the first gulch, got out of the truck and found that someone had put the fence back up. So, we climbed over it and went up the gulch a little ways.

(A small note from me here: Horace “Horse” Myers, an old time rancher in the area, leased thousands of acres of land from the government for his “free ranging” cattle. So, the fence was there to keep the cattle away from the river and/or people who might like a “spotted deer” to take home for dinner.) (lol)

Anyway, back to the mine:

“We went in and took a look at the wall you told me about, and after discussing it, we decided that the quickest way in would be to widen the crack enough to crawl through. So, we took in the smaller hand tools, like the rock picks and short handled shovels, and a wheelbarrow. By the way, that hole just outside of the portal came in real handy for the materials we dug out.

Luckily, the back-fill wasn’t near as hard as the undisturbed alluvial is. But, it still took us nearly 5 hours to carve out a crawl space big enough for us to get through with-out getting stuck. The good news is; the back-fill is only about 20 feet to the end of it.

About now, I was expecting some bad news, (like,) but the tunnel ended there (or something equally disastrous.) (lol)

Anyway, we crawled on through to the other side, with our flashlights, and then stood in the main tunnel. Another 20 foot or so, there was large round room, about 20 feet in diameter. the room had what appeared to be a pit, going straight down. It was about 15 or 16 feet across, but it also appeared to be back-filled, almost to the top.

(Personally, I’ve often wondered if “they” might have put all of the accumulated gold [ingots?] that “they” couldn’t carry, in this pit, and covered it for later recovery)

We didn’t want to stand in the pit since we didn’t know for sure that it wasn’t “booby trapped” in case someone stumbled upon it. So, we used our flashlights to look around as much as possible, without crossing over to the other side of the pit.

The main thing we found was; on the other side of the pit, the tunnel continued on, straight on into the mountain. We couldn’t tell how far it went, but it continued as far as the beams from the flashlights would go, and that had to be at least 200 feet or more. And now for the “bad” news.

All of the back-fill needs to be removed to get some fresh air into the tunnel. We could only spend about twenty minutes inside, because the air was so stale. There didn’t seem to be enough oxygen to be comfortable”.

~~~>I<~~~

So, there you have it. Perhaps by now, you will agree with my assessment that this is an old Spanish Mine. I am positive, beyond any doubts, that it was already hidden there, long before gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

Now, here is MY bad news; When I went up to the Merced River this past August, I had no trouble finding where the old Spanish Mine is, but, I found that the BLM had expanded the campgrounds and not only leveled the South side of the gulch, (for camping spaces,) but had used the materials to fill in the portal of the Spanish Mine.

When I can afford to make another over-night trip to Briceburg, I’ll post it ahead of time so that anyone who wants to see the location of the mine will be able to meet me there and get a guided tour of the area by the one person who probably knows the mines of the Merced River, better than anyone still living.

Love and Respect,

Eagle

 

[Relichunter1]

Eagledown, you must be speaking of the two camp sites on the east side across the main camp ground . Is this where the Spanish mine was located? lol yes the sun sets in that direction.

 

[EagleDown]

Eagledown, you must be speaking of the two camp sites on the north side across the main camp ground . Is this where the Spanish mine was located?

Actually, I didn't have a compass, but from the sun, I thought it was more on the East side of the road. (lol)

Head down-river from McCabe flats. On your right, there will be the campsites. Just after you pass the down-river entrance to the campsites, there's an "unimproved" area, then the base of the mountain. In the base of that mountain is where I found it.

Eagle

 

[calisdad]

What an intriguing story. I'm going to have to run down there for a look see but I'm off for some fishing till mid next week. Thanks Eagle.

C-dad

 

[EagleDown]

What an intriguing story. I'm going to have to run down there for a look see but I'm off for some fishing till mid next week. Thanks Eagle.

C-dad

Hey, no problem my friend.

Unfortunately, there's not much to see. Of course, if you know where to look, you can see where the BLM filled the portal. But to the average visitor to the area, it would just look pretty much like the rest of the area. It would probably show up on a ground penetrating sonar, but, I have no way of knowing how much materials they might have shoved into the portal.

Eagle

 

[Relichunter1]

What an intriguing story. I'm going to have to run down there for a look see but I'm off for some fishing till mid next week. Thanks Eagle.

C-dad

Calisdad, hey don't forget your fishing pole. Saw some nice browns anda few rainbows in the deep pools on the Merced the other day. The water level has dropped and they're all in the holes. My buddy caught a nice rainbow last week...around 16-18 inches long, small mouth bass are plentiful too. Good hunting. R.H.

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

"Ghost Mine"

I’ve spent several days thinking about this next one and wondering if I should include it in my stories. Mainly because, though I believe I can still find it, I don’t know how to guide you to it. (Unless in person.) (lol) Add that to the fact that with the escalating prices of gold and silver, there have been many thousands of acres claimed, mostly by people who have never seen their claims, other than on a map.

I did take a look on BLM’s online claim maps for this area, and the only claims I could see were all placer claims. But, since this is apparently a very rich Lode Claim, it might be open for claiming.

So, I decided that since these stories are mainly to let people know that there are honest to goodness “treasures” still here and there all over the U.S., what the heck. So, here goes……….

I was just driving around the hills, exploring for possibilities, when I happened to notice what appeared to be (at first glance,) a couple of deer trails going off to the left from the road I was traveling. I drove about 100 ft. further before it occurred to me that from what I had glimpsed of the “trails”, they were too evenly spaced to be deer trails. Tracks like that could only have been made by vehicles of some sort. So, I hit the brakes and backed up for a better look at them. Sure enough, there were two regularly spaced ruts leading off through the pines and oaks.

Due to the trees and brush, I wasn’t able to drive into the forest, so I parked there and prepared to do a little hiking. (Hoping it wasn’t very far.) (lol)

Thankfully, it turned out to be less than a ¼ mile before I came upon the first of several buildings. Actually, two of them at first. They appeared to be bunk-houses, probably for the work crew. (I never went into them, I have this thing about trespassing, even though it appears abandoned.) Just call me chicken. (lol)

The next building I came upon was wide open, so I wasn’t as hesitant about entering it. Very interesting. There were four pairs of concrete mounts rising about 2 feet from the concrete floor. At the left end of the building, as I stood in the door looking in, there was a big (and I mean big,) diesel engine on a set of mounts, and on the right end of the building, there was another big diesel engine. The two sets of mounts between them were empty, though I could tell that at one time, they too had engines on them.

Through examining them, I found that the one on the left end had run a generator. No guesswork here, the generator was still on it. (lol) 240 volts. This mine had been a big operation at one time. But, to my Eagle eyes, it didn’t appear to have had anyone around for at least 30 years. (I found this place in 1984.) Anyway, the engine on the right end of the building ran a piston type air compressor.

I could see pipes leading from the diesels, going out the back wall of the building, so, I went out one of the large back doors to see where they led to. Out back, there was a tank, about 7 feet across and about 3 foot deep. In the center of the tank, there was a multi-tiered tower like contraption. It had (I think,) 5 tiers, with each one a little smaller than the one below it. I figured that the water for cooling the engines was pumped out to the top tier where it overflowed over the 4 sides, and down to the next tier, where it flowed over the 4 sides and down to………..well, you get the picture!. (lol)

Anyway, all of this water ended up in the tank much cooler than it came out of the diesels. Then it was pumped back to the diesels water jackets, thereby keeping them cool.

Just beyond this “cooling tower”, I found a hole in the ground that when I looked down into it, I could see a horizontal tunnel leading off in two directions. One direction was toward the engine shed, and the other, directly away from the shed.

A little further down the hill, about 10ft. lower than where I was standing, I could see another rather dilapidated building. Over half of the roof had sunk in, but the sides were still standing. I walked about 100ft to get to the entrance and after assuring myself that the rest of the building wasn’t going to fall in on me, I went inside.

Once inside, I found a chute leading from an ore bin, (really, two of them,) into the building, where I determined a ball mill use to be. The materials from the ball mill fed into a metal chute about 8ft. long, and then into a tank. I’m not quite sure how the rest of this arrangement worked, as the pipes were gone. But, there was a row of 3 pelton type wheels with vertical shafts. The materials were fed into these, where rotating vanes in the tanks constantly stirred the materials so that the gold would be collected by the mercury in them. (Since pelton wheels are so efficient for pumping water, perhaps they created enough water movement to suck the water and materials from the “flotation tank”.) I’m just guessing here.

Anyway, I decided I would return the next day with a shovel and a couple of buckets. The “floatation tank” had at least two buckets of materials, straight from the ball mill and I wanted to see if they were really doing any good.

I did return the following day, but I’ll tell you about that later. (lol)

Eagle

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

Ghost Mine (Continuation)

I wanted to get an early start on this, so daylight found me a at Briceburg, ready to head on up “Burma Road”. (Briceburg Road)

I was taking along 2 five gallon buckets and a short handled flat shovel. I figured that this would be enough to get a fairly good sample out of the “floatation tank” in the old mill.

I had driven only a short distance up the grade when I realized I needed to unload a bit of the pot of coffee I’d had with breakfast. So, being somewhat bashful, the first gulch I came to, I stopped and walked a short distance up it, to where I was out of sight of the road. While I was standing there, answering natures call, I noticed a live-oak just a little beyond me. I finished and walked over to take a closer look at it and found that, presumably, someone had taken four little live-oaks, (when they were just seedlings,) and tied them in a knot. They had kept growing that way and were then about two inches thick, from the base to the knot. Then above the knot, they continued about 2 foot or so, still two inches thick. My thought was, “if I knew how to cure them without them cracking, that would make one heck of a base for a coffee or display table”.

Anyway, that’s just one of the many things that I’ve stumbled across in my life, so I thought I’d throw it in here for the interest factor. (lol)

It was about 9 am when I arrived at the “deer trails”, and it was already warming up pretty good. I got out the buckets and shovel and started on up the old road. Some of the pines that were growing between the ruts appeared to be only about (maybe) 20 years old, though in these exceptionally dry areas, it’s really hard to be sure. And I didn’t want to cut one down to count the rings. (lol)

After reading over my last entry, I noticed I had left out a fairly important part of what I found at the “Ghost Mine”. Near the mill, there were two raised hoppers. Both of them had open tops and doors on the bottom for dumping the materials. A set of mine rails went up an incline to near (between) the tops of the hoppers. My guess was that an ore car went up between the hoppers where the ore was hand graded and tossed in the hoppers. I figured the one on the left was for the “barren” ore, as a set of tracks came out from under it and led off to the tailings pile. There were no tracks under the other hopper. I don’t know if they were taken out, or if they just filled wheel barrows with the good ore and took it over to the ore bins and dumped it in.

In any case, I went on in to the old mill and filled one of the buckets with materials out of the “floatation tank”. When I went to move it out of the way, for the second bucket, it only took me a moment to decide that I didn’t want to carry two full buckets back to the truck. (lol) So, I shoveled out some of the materials into the second bucket, until it was light enough for me to carry comfortably. (Probably a little less than 2/3rds of the bucket was filled.) Then, I shoveled materials into the second bucket until it was about the same as the first. It was then that I discovered that it was virtually impossible to carry the two buckets AND the shovel. Fortunately, it only took me a few minutes to scout up a couple of pieces of wire. I tied one to the handle grip of the shovel, and the other one near the blade of the shovel, ran them across my shoulders and around my belt. Now, that’s better. The shovel could ride comfortably across my back, while my hands were free for the buckets. By trial and error, we learn. (lol)

Now just in case you’re thinking that I’m a “woose”, it was about a year after this little experience that I put a 92 pound bag of dry cement on my shoulder and carried it about a half mile up Bear Creek to the area I was dredging at that time. What I’m saying here is, the materials in the buckets was heavy. (lol)

I arrived back at the truck, and by dent of sheer willpower, lifted the buckets over the tail-gate and into the bed before I decided to sit down and take a break. It would have probably been easier if I had dropped the tail-gate first, but sometimes I could be a little hardheaded. (lol)

Anyway, I rested up for a few minutes, then drove back down “Burma Road”, and back to my camp. I was camped in the mouth of Good’s Gulch, and a short distance up the gulch, there was a nice pool of water, fed by a spring further up the gulch. So, I took a pan full of materials to the pool and started panning. Out of that first pan, I ended up with about a half cup of what appeared to be all iron pyrites. I took it back to my camper and set the pan down.

I went to the truck and took out a couple of the chunks of ore that I had taken out of the ore bins above the old mill. I took out my pocket glass to get a close look at them. Using the 5X loupe, I could see that the fist sized chunk of ore was streaked with iron pyrites. But, looking closely at the little stringers of pyrites, I could see little specks of gold here and there along the edges of the stringers. So, now, I knew what I was looking for.

I then went back to the materials and panned out enough to fill a pint Mason jar. Then I dumped the concentrated materials into a gallon sized plastic bucket, then drained the excess water off of them. Next, I poured in about a pint of straight nitric acid. I knew that the nitric acid would dissolve the iron pyrites, but wouldn’t harm the gold.

I stirred the acid and concentrates with an old wooden cooking spoon I had, until it was apparent that the pyrites were all dissolved. Then it was an easy task to pour the acid/pyrites into a container for later disposal. Now, I could use mercury to collect what gold was in the remaining concentrates.

I poured the remaining concentrates into a large plastic gold pan along with a small amount of mercury. after about 20 minutes of shaking and swirling, I had a nice size ball of amalgam, about the diameter of a nickel.

I put the amalgam in a water glass, then making sure that I was upwind of it, I poured in an ounce or so of nitric acid, and watched as the mercury went into suspension in the acid, leaving behind the gold.

After all of the mercury was gone, I poured the acid/mercury into a pint Mason jar so that I could recover the mercury at my leisure.

Now, I had a “sponge” of gold a little larger than the diameter of a dime. I flushed it off with water, then put it in one of my clay crucibles. Using a propane torch, I brought the crucible up in temperature, then played the flame on the gold. (I always liked this bit.) I watched as the gold “sponge” started falling apart, then started glowing red. I put a pinch of baking soda on it to serve as a flux. It only took a minute or so and I had a “button” of almost pure gold. Later, it proved to be .982% pure. Not much refining left for that.

I don’t remember for sure what the button weighed out to, but I do remember that it was a little over a quarter of an ounce (troy). Not too shabby for my somewhat primitive methods. I never worked the rest of the concentrates, I sold both buckets to a friend for the grand sum of $250. I know that he realized a very good profit on his investment. If I remember correctly, at that time, gold was about $200 an oz. and I figured that from what I took out, there was at least 10 ounces of gold still in the buckets.

It was about 1985 before I went back up to that area. Shortly before I got to the “deer trails”, I found that the BLM had put one of their gates across the main road going past that area. There were a half dozen padlocks on the chain, (for people who lived up there,) so, I turned around and went back to my camp.

In retrospect, if I had thought of it at the time, I could have filed a claim, somewhere beyond the gate and had the BLM allow me access also. Well, the right person might still be able to do that. Who knows?? I just keep remembering those two big ore bins at the mill, and all of that hand-graded ore that they were filled with. Plus, I never did climb up and take a look in the hoppers near the mill. The stuff that dreams are made of. (lol)

Eagle