That brings back a memory for me ,
working the School teacher mine up on the ridge above the old Mission mine, we were workin a spot that some guys found a bunch of gold on the surface, we went up and were doing asessment work for Joey jameson, sinkin a shaft on the spot I guess we were at about 12 foot or so we hit a 6 oz plus pocket.
we were working at night as the heat n bees up there were very bad that year.
So the way we first worked the spot was to bleep the ore, as we were finding mostly course gold, I would have 2 piles trash n ore, the ore would be hauled down to mitchels mill.
So one night I was heavy on the bleepin of crumbs, and had one piece that was honkin off but just couldn't get it in my hand it kept moving over on me till it slipped down into a void in the waste pile under 10 tons of waste needless to say that's where it stayed. anyways that was the start of the Mexican jumping nugget story up at the school teacher mine.
Long story short my partner Mitchell was working at the salt mines an took some yahoo up there to brag a little about our hole, he tells the guy about the nugget, the guy comes back to our mine that looked like a park with all the stacked rocks n coffer damns we built for 2 years he tears our mine dump to pieces trying to find that one nugget, destroyed our mine without permission from the owner to even dig there.
So I run into him out at the salt plant and he tells me you didn't leave much up at that hole, im wondering what the heck hes even talking about, a week or so later I went out to the mine to haul ore,and do a little work on the hole and I see what he was talking about the guy totally wiped out our mine unstacked the waste pile threw it down the hill, and took our ore stock pile of about 4 yrds or so of hard rock pay and drywashed it into the waste pile.
So I hear from Mitchel this guy was running around showing off his 1/4 oz os so he got from destroying our mine and basically loosing our stock pile for us, as we couldnt recover much of the ore it was just to much waste rock to make it worth digging again.
Anyways a few months later I hear that someone broke into this guys house n stole his gold, and that's the story of the Mexican jumping nugget. thanks for bringing back a memory for me.
Hope you enjoy
GT................
