The Lost Carson Mine

And I have to say, I've gotten very bored with treasure tales from only areas at low elevation which are close to major cities and easily accessible. Those stories and search areas have been beaten to death, so I would rather focus on areas where few people ever venture as it is much more likely there is still something to find in those areas. Whether it is the subject of the stories there, or new prospects being discovered.
 

I have illustrated exactly where searchers need to go to find a verified gold source with regard to this tale, but I doubt a few people other than myself and a few other readers here would ever actually visit that site to search it. I could be wrong, due to the presence of some trails in the area, but I intend to find out for myself.
 

UncleMatt said:
And I have to say, I've gotten very bored with treasure tales from only areas at low elevation which are close to major cities and easily accessible. Those stories and search areas have been beaten to death, so I would rather focus on areas where few people ever venture as it is much more likely there is still something to find in those areas. Whether it is the subject of the stories there, or new prospects being discovered.
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You are clearly on the right track with this strategy. Good luck.
 

I hope I end up with more than just good photos and video and having enjoyed my time in the high country :laughing7:
 

Matt, I found a hunk of that brown sugar quartz but it was on the Silverton side of Stony Pass. I
was in a caravan and couldn't stop and look where it came from.
 

Thanks for posting about that lastleg! Can you give us a GPS point or an approximate location? What watershed was that on for example? Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post in a public way with those details.
 

That is quite a ways off from the area Carson supposedly found his strike though, over 14 miles away...
 

We started from Creede and stopped for lunch at Big Timber reaching Stony in middle afternoon.
I was last in line going down Stony about 1000ft from summit when I spotted the brown sugar
specimen about football size beside the trail. Naturally I stopped to pick it up and still have it in
my rock garden. The quartz lies on a chunk of rhyolite country rock. No visible au.
 

Of course going down Cunningham Gulch you're looking up at mines above where this float
could have come from. We overnighted at Silverton before going on to Eureka before turning
east for Lake City and back to Creede.
 

Driving an '88 Landcruiser, the other three couples had jeeps. I kept watching for the trail leading
to the Highland Mary mines but the trail is very steep and narrow. So I just made sure we didn't
slide off into thin air.

The most hair-raising trek we made back in the '90s was from Creede over the Divide to Old Carson,
the gold camp which was still being mined then. The final lunge up to the Divide was over loose
talus for 300 yards. Only critters up there were the marmots whistling to each other that some fools
were on the way. From Old Carson you descend through New Carson which mined for silver. The
trail winds up down by Lake City.
 

Something interesting to note about the ore Carson found is that it could be detected with a metal detector due to the large grains of free gold in it. And if there is still float in the Twilight Creek watershed, it could also be located with metal detectors. When you look at how far down the watershed you have to go from the head to reach Lime Creek, you realize the vein/outcropping must have originally been fairly large, and must have been exposed to erosional forces eons ago for a large sample of it to reach the mouth of the creek at Lime. As I posted earlier, a fist size sample of this ore was found on Twilight Creek Near Lime Creek that assayed at thousands of dollars per ton at gold prices in the early 1900's. As well, there are several places coming down that watershed where you find low lying areas where small ponds and pools form, as well as benches left behind as erosion occurred over thousands of years. All such location cry out for thorough searching with metal detectors, which would probably produce more such samples of rich sugar quartz impregnated with free gold grains. If large pieces reached the mouth at the lime, it is a sure thing more remains trapped in the watershed above...
 

Now that I think about it, there may also be ore in the Lime watershed below the mouth of Twilight Creek...
 

I would agree except for my personal experience with such holes. I have found many in existing watersheds in the area, but not one had any gold in it. I think what happens is that any gold that falls into these holes gets ground up so fine that it end up getting washed out. And this includes holes over a foot deep down through solid granite bedrock. I have seen holes you would swear have been created by huge drill bits, but they are really created by rocks spinning in place in the current. And when the original spinning rock wears away, more rocks fall in the hole that also end up spinning and digging it deeper. I usually find gravel and very fine sand at the bottom, nothing more. I have cleaned out over a dozen, using my metal detector and panning the fines, and never found any colors at all. Its frustrating that such holes do not tend to capture gold!
 

Another thought has occurred to me about Carson's vein, and that is he might have cleaned it out already. The last trip he made into Silverton he wasn't carrying much, and its hard to believe a guy would walk away from a rich surface outcropping after putting out the effort to get up that high on foot without getting as much as you could. Its also possible he had to leave some ore behind he had already broken out of the vein, if he wasn't feeling well enough to make enough trips up and down the watershed to retrieve it all. That may explain why people later found float down Twilight Creek, because it got washed down from a pile of ore he left behind.
 

UncleMatt said:
Another thought has occurred to me about Carson's vein, and that is he might have cleaned it out already. The last trip he made into Silverton he wasn't carrying much, and its hard to believe a guy would walk away from a rich surface outcropping after putting out the effort to get up that high on foot without getting as much as you could. Its also possible he had to leave some ore behind he had already broken out of the vein, if he wasn't feeling well enough to make enough trips up and down the watershed to retrieve it all. That may explain why people later found float down Twilight Creek, because it got washed down from a pile of ore he left behind.
Click to expand...

HH! Good Luck to ALL of you; ALL of this info is GREAT! To see ALL of you working together... I envy you!
 

UncleMatt said:
Another thought has occurred to me about Carson's vein, and that is he might have cleaned it out already. The last trip he made into Silverton he wasn't carrying much, and its hard to believe a guy would walk away from a rich surface outcropping after putting out the effort to get up that high on foot without getting as much as you could. Its also possible he had to leave some ore behind he had already broken out of the vein, if he wasn't feeling well enough to make enough trips up and down the watershed to retrieve it all. That may explain why people later found float down Twilight Creek, because it got washed down from a pile of ore he left behind.
Click to expand...

Hola Uncle Matt

Good point! If Levi Carson died in 1904 your assumption may have merit. clearly perhaps not even his family had knowledge of the location and he the Old man worked it when time and fiances from his usual occupation of being a farmer dictated it. He could of been mining the site on a seasonal basis due to the altitude and prevail weather conditions in the mountains?

Kanacki.
 

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