Re: The Many Lost Treasures of Mariposa, CA
Well, sort of a busy day today, so I didn't have time this morning to continue. Sorry about that. I'm not really sure about the time sequence of this next one, but it was shortly after the finding of the rock/shale slide covering the tunnel. Actually it would be called an addit as there was no other entrance or exit. Just thought you might like to know that.
I had gone to L.A. and traded Mr. Keene my 6" "stove pipe" underwater dredge for his newest designed dredge, the Keene 4" surface dredge.
I went back Bagby for the weekend just to poke around, since my new dredge wouldn't be completed for me until the following week. I had heard of Coulterville, but had never been there, so I decided to drive on up and check it out. On the way, I could see down into a rather deep gulch on my right and since it looked interesting, I determined to check it out on my way back from Coulterville. I wish I had a metal detector back then, as Coulterville was almost a ghost town. Very few people were living there and I only recall one business open and that was basically a saloon and grill. I drove off of the hiway, down the "main street", to the end of pavement, then turned around and drove back out. I noticed several foundations where there were once cabins, but back then it was just bare ground. It wasn't hard to imagine a bustling little mining community complete with horses tied to the hitching post outside of the saloon. Maybe even gunshots coming from the saloon as an angry miner took on the traveling card shark.
But then it all faded away as I turned back onto the "Golden Hiway", (U.S. 49,) and headed back down the hill to Bagby.
A little trivia here; back in the days, hiway 49 was nicknamed the million dollar hiway, because, (they said,) every mile was laid over a million dollars worth of gold. Hey, they said it, not me!!
Anyway, I remembered the gulch I had seen on the way up, and found a place to park without going off the road and down the hill, side ways. Then, I got out my big steel goldpan and the tool no prospector or metal detectorist should be without, the old U.S. Army latrine shovel.
I walked across the hiway and slipped and slid down the side of the gulch to the bottom. Sure was glad I left the cowboy boots at home. I only wear good ol' brogans when I'm prospecting now.
At the bottom, I realised that there was no running water, only small pools here and there. But, there was enough pan out some samples. So, I pulled out a clump of bunch grass and washed the roots off in the pan. Took about 5 minutes to pan it down to the heavies. Hmmm, this is weird, I can pan the "black sands" right off of this grayish stuff. I even notice a few micro flakes of gold on top of the gray material. I tried to swirl the materials around in the pan to see if there was any larger pieces of gold but this stupid gray stuff didn't want to move.
Actually it was getting me just a little curious. So, using my knife blade, I scooped it out and put it in a vial. Then, I panned out the roots of a couple more clumps of bunch grass with the same results and put that in the vial too.
Well, I was there looking for gold, and a place to dredge, and what I was getting was not what I was looking for, so I climbed back out of the gulch and continued my ride back down to Bagby.
Sunday afternoon, as I was packing to head home, I put the vial gray stuff in an inner pocket of my pack, and to all intents and purposes, forgot about it.
I'll have to jump forward in time about 4 years at this point so that you will understand why I am telling this story.
The areospace industry had pretty much collapsed and I had been laid off. My brother-in-law had offered me a job in Florida (the state of my birth,) and I had returned home for the work.
I had been back in FL for a couple of years and one day, I was going to take my wife and kids to the beach for the day. She needed something to pack stuff like paper plates, extra diapers, etc. so I remembered my old prospecting pack and got it out of the garage. While wiping it down and out, I noticed a lump in one of the inner pockets, unzipped it and found the vial that had about a half oz. of "that stupid gray stuff" still in it.
The following Monday, I took it to work with me and during my lunch break, I took it down the street to a jewelry store where a friend of mine worked. I showed it to him, and he was as mystified as I was.
He said that he had a friend who was a metallurgist and could have him check it out for me. I told him O.K., left it with him and returned to work.
Jack called me the next morning, shortly after I got to work and said that his friend had checked the materials, and asked me to stop by the store during lunch. When I arrived, the first question he asked me was, "Where did you get this"?? When I said California, he lost a little of his obvious excitement. I asked why he wanted to know, and he replied that he was hoping it was somewhere close by, because it was almost pure platinum. Of course, platinum wasn't as near expensive as it is now, but he said that if I got that much out of 3 or 4 pans of materials, I could work it full time and be a rich man. Yeah, tell me this now, when I'm married with two toddlers and in Florida.
It was several more years before I returned to CA, but not for platinum, I had bigger fish to fry.
But, that's also another story.
After we ran away my dad told me it was a hermit. 
What a day.
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
