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

[Lanny in AB]

Eagle--great story about your detecting and the straw-hunt. There also used to be a little activity where they'd put coins in sand (dig a pit, fill it with sand) and let the kids have at it--my dad told me that they'd always do it in the summer on special holidays--it was tons of fun watching the kids in there digging and really making that sand fly.

I recall a story of a mining town in Montana (Ruby?) I visited where they used to take $5 gold coins and do the same thing for the kids on the Fourth of July. If I recall correctly, a guy wrote up an article about how he'd found one of those sand pits and he retrieved a couple of those $5 gold coins!

Enjoyed your story Eagle--nicely done.

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[EagleDown]

Lanny, thanks for the kind words. I'd never heard of the sand pit, but hey, why not? Funny how you can read something and while you're reading, an old memory will pop up isn't it?

While I was reading your post, I just had another memory "pop up".

It seems that in (about) 1976, a dredging friend told me he was going up to the Yuba river to see what the prospects would be like. I guess he was gone about a week. When he returned, he invited me over to his camper for a visit. Then he told me a tale of riches that my first inclination was to tell him he was BSing me. But, being the nice person I am, I just let it go.

Anyway, he told me that while he was there, there was another man who had been there dredging during his whole vacation. About 30 days. So far, he hadn’t found enough gold to pay for one day’s worth of gas. Well, the day before he was scheduled to head back home, he flipped a coin to decide if he would move his dredge and stay one or two more days. The coin dictated that he would in fact move his dredge and stay a little longer.

All of the time he was there, every day he had looked at this big boulder that was about 100 yards down-river. So, he moved his dredge down behind the boulder and started dredging. That day, he picked up over 3,000 ounces of gold. (No, that’s not a “typo”.)

You can see why I was skeptical about his story, huh?

That was, until about one and a half months later, when I received my latest issue of the California Mining Journal. And found in it, basically the same story. BUT, with verifications,

And, I have no idea why that story popped up while we were talking about pennies and $5 gold coins. Perhaps because this is the kind of story that keeps us going, against all odds, just waiting for our star to shine.

Eagle

 

[Lanny in AB]

Eagle--what a fantastic story about the dredger--at today's prices, he would definitely have been able to retire, back then, not so much--which is too bad. But, what an incredible find, and it's so cool that your friend met the guy that found all those ounces.

And, it is amazing how during the writing process, one thought links to something else that's not similar. I know when I'm writing gold tales, there always seems to be a dozen other threads that pop up while I'm trying to finish one.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Hefty1]

Great story Eagle
Just goes to show.....Never Give Up!!!

Hefty

 

[EagleDown]

Remember the place where you found some gold this past season. Watch this video.
It might make you decide to go back there this next season.

Nothing like the power of water to get things moving.

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~

Un-believable & Un-expected

It was early summer of 1988 and the lease was expiring on the mobile home I had been living in. I drove out of the woods/hills to the home of my land lord. Boy was I in for a surprise!!

I went up the steps onto the redwood patio and rang the door bell. I knew something was up, as I had been in this house several times in the past, and, had some enjoyable visits I might add. But this time, when my landlady came to the door, uncharacteristically, she didn’t invite me inside.

I told her I was there to pay the rent and update the lease agreement. After some hesitation, she told me that they had decided to not renew my lease. I inquired as to why, but she wouldn’t give a definitive answer.

Well, no problem, I had a mining friend that had a little cabin that had been in his family for about 75 years or so, and he’d already told me that he would be happy to rent it to me. (For less than I had been paying where I was.)

I ultimately found out from her son that the reason she wouldn’t renew my lease was; when I rented the place, she thought that I was Italian. But when she found out that I was Native American, she didn’t want me there because: “Those Indians practice Witch-Craft”. (A Jehovah witness doesn’t want anything to do with witches or sinners I guess.) (lol)

Anyway, I knew a lot of people thought I was a “recluse”, but that wasn’t truly the case, it was that after my wife passed away, I lived the way I would have preferred if I had never got married. That is, in the woods and/or mountains, with no neighbors close enough to be visiting or otherwise disrupting my thoughts. So, like the mobile home, the little cabin was ideal for me.

A few days after I moved in, my Miwok Brother R, came out to see me. While we were talking, he asked if I knew that just down the road from me, there were some old stone foundations. Since I had just moved in, I hadn’t really had the opportunity to do any exploring of the area, and I told him so.

At his suggestion, I got out my Garrett ADS11 out and made sure the batteries had a good charge, then we walked about a quarter mile up the road to just before it crossed a little creek.

At this spot, the hill sloped down towards the creek, so there was no cut embankment to climb up. I looked around and noticed that some one had used this area as a dump. I guess they figured that the cans and bottles would continue down the hill, to ultimately be carried off by the creek. I waited until we were up the hill, beyond the tin cans and bottles before I turned my detector on. I turned the sensitivity all the way up and the discriminate off, as I had no idea of what we were looking for. When I decided we were ready, I started swinging the detector left and right. We covered about ten feet up the hill, in a straight line, when I got a sharp blast in my ears.

I called to R. who had walked a short distance ahead. He turned and came back to where I was. I told him that I wasn’t sure of what I had found, but there seemed to be a pretty good size piece of iron here. While we were talking, I was trying to locate the center of the signal, but it extended for about 10 feet across the slope of the hill. The odd part was, the signal seemed to be only about 2 feet wide for its intire length. That is, until I got to the farthermost end of the strip. At the end of the signal area, when I swung the loop to my left, I picked up a signal that was just as strong as the one I had been following. I tracked this new signal down the hill, back towards the creek and found that it was pretty much the length of the first one.

So, what we had was something “L” shaped, with half of the “L” going across the hill, and the other half going down the hill. (Try your imagination on that for a while.) (lol)

I have things to do right now, so I’ll try to finish this tonight.

Eagle

 

[Hefty1]

Darn commercials!

 

[EagleDown]

Darn commercials!

O.K., Just don't kill the messenger.

Here's the final instalment.

 

[EagleDown]

~~~\/~~~​

Un-believable & Un-expected
>Discovery<​

By now, we realized that we had something we wouldn’t be able to dig up with our hunting knives, so we went back to my cabin for a quick sandwich, a pick and a couple of shovels.

It was about a half hour later when we got back to the site of our mysterious angle. R. was a certified Indian Archaeologist, so we agreed it would be best if he took the pick while I waited for him to loosen up enough soil for me to gently scoop out with the shovel. He started in gently, breaking up only the first couple of inches. When he had gone the full length of the signal area, I started taking out the loosened materials. This wasn’t as easy as I’m making it sound as we were digging in good old red clay. Fortunately, it was at that time of year that it had enough moisture in it, that it wasn’t quite like picking through road bricks. (lol)

We were down almost 7 inches, when I heard my shovel scrape against something metal. At this point, R. took over and after a few minutes had uncovered the long blade of a “cross-cut” saw. We thought it was odd, for the saw blade was standing upright. Just the position it would have been in for cutting through a fallen tree trunk.

My Brother decided it would be better if we widened the trench so that we would have a little more room. Well, lo and behold, about 18 inches from and parallel to the first blade, we uncovered another one. And, like the first, it was standing upright too.

Now, I was beginning to get a little interested. (lol)

We continued removing materials and found this “trough” was lined on both sides with cross-cut saw blades, stacked on top of each other. 3 on the left and 3 on the right. (We later reasoned that the blades were to keep the sides from falling while the other items were placed in the trough.

And items there were!!

We never were sure why the troughs were dug at an angle as these were. Who knows what goes through a persons mind when they’re trying to hide something of value?? Perhaps they reasoned that if Indians came by, they might see signs of something having been buried there. And if they tried to dig it up, after uncovering one trough, they’d think that was all and leave the other trough intact.

In any case, the first trough had several picks, three or four shovels, a couple of sledge hammers, and I don’t remember all of what was there. Needless to say, it was full up to about 14 inches of the top, with neatly stacked tools. One of the oddities was; there was not the first tool that showed any sign of wood. It was like the handles were all removed before they were buried.

The trough that was dug heading down-hill was a little different. Though it was also lined with cross-cut saw blades, and had a few mining tools in it, we also found 2 bullet molds (balls.) A set of balance beam scales, an iron, long handled ladle of the kind used for pouring molten metal. I could see in the ladle, there were minute traces of gold. I know there were many more items in these troughs, but these are the only ones that stand out in my mind.

R. started stacking the tools preparatory to refilling the troughs, while I made the walk back to my cabin to get R.’s pick-up truck. By the time I got back, the troughs were filled and we loaded everything up to take to his home.

When we arrived at his place, the first thing we did was, spread a large tarp on the ground. Then we laid the picks, shovels and sledge hammers side by side on it. R. took the water hose and start knocking the clay off of the tools.

I was just standing there watching, when my eyes saw something stamped in one of sledge hammers.

I told R. to shut off the water for a minute while I took a look. On closer inspection, it turned out that all of the sledge hammers and picks were stamped with the icon that most artifact hunters hope for; CSA

By this time, it was starting to get dark, so R. while preparing to give me a ride back home, said he would like to keep the bullet molds there, along with some of the other tools so that he could soak them in kerosene and oil and get them to working again. I told him to keep all of it as I wasn’t really interested in artifacts and they would just give me something else to lose or give away. And frankly, I would have donated my share to the Mariposa Museum as I had no use for them.

R. gave me a ride home, and I never mentioned our find to him again. A couple of years later, his mother called early one morning to let me know that R.s body had been found just off Colorado Rd. He had been shot the night before. It was found later that he had stumbled upon a meth lab and had been shot 7 times with a .22 cal. rifle. This was one of those rare times that the perpetrator was apprehended in a matter of days, and is now doing life in a California state prison.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened to our finds, but I do intend to go back by this next summer and if it’s still as open as it was, I’ll pound it like a 10 penny nail.

For some reason, for years, I’ve had the gut feeling that there’s some gold buried around there somewhere.

Eagle

 

[EagleDown]

I was just reading my last post, checking to see if there were any major errors that required editing, when it ocurred to me; I broke the first law of metal detecting;

ALWAYS RESCAN YOUR DIG BEFORING CLOSING THE HOLE!!!!!!

That's probably the reason for my feeling that there's gold buried there, somewhere. It stands to reason, that if any bags of gold were buried (under the tools,) after perhaps 130+ years, there would be no traces of materials to give a clue that there was something else in the clay. Yikes!!

I sure hope that when I go back up that this area is still "unimproved" and I can dig the troughs back out and re-detect them. (Plus the rest of the area, which I never did detect.)

Eagle

 

[Hefty1]

Hi Eagle
That is a strange story about how those tools were placed
But sounds like a great find. What does CSA stand for?
And sorry about your friend.

You have a wonderful Holiday Eagle.
Hefty

 

[EagleDown]

Hi Eagle
That is a strange story about how those tools were placed
But sounds like a great find. What does CSA stand for?
And sorry about your friend.

You have a wonderful Holiday Eagle.
Hefty

Thank you Hefty!! CSA is/was the logo for; Confederate States of America. (Civil war.)
Wishing the best for you and yours this holiday season!!

Eagle

 

[SushiDog]

EagleDown....I read your stories with much interest and sadness.....with respect to your late Miwok Brother....I don't know how long ago he came to his demise, but he should have come back to you in a dream.....I hope this is the case....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

EagleDown....I read your stories with much interest and sadness.....with respect to your late Miwok Brother....I don't know how long ago he came to his demise, but he should have come back to you in a dream.....I hope this is the case....SushiDog

January, 1990. Two days after my birthday. And, yes. We've walked the forest paths together more than once.

Thanks!

Eagle

 

[SushiDog]

I am glad you and your brother have had these spiritual journey's together Eagle....these are very special and private moments together....I just feel so sad about your brothers demise, and the shameless, and wreckless deeds of others to take away a precious life....with respect to what you did after your wife passed away....my wife Kimiko has asked me what I would do if she passed away first, and my response to her is what you did with your life after your wife passed on....IF that does happen in my life, you can just call me "Hermit Pete" from now on! (smile).....and with respect to being discriminated against because of your ethnicity....well....welcome to the club....we experienced that too....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

It's not really about becoming a hermit my friend, I thought of it more as "Peace and Quite".

Friends and ones seeking Spiritual guidance or healing were always welcome. But, I needed my quite time for healing also.

Hey, maybe, I was more of a guru without a mountain top.

 

[SushiDog]

Hey Eagle...."to each his own"....as long as one finds what they are LQQKing for....(smile).....SushiDog

 

[calisdad]

Very interesting Eagle.

Why do you suppose there was no trace of wood? My first guess would be a wild fire as they didn't have the protective services we have now and its still a major problem. Buy why go back and bury them? Hmmmm.

 

[EagleDown]

Very interesting Eagle.

Why do you suppose there was no trace of wood? My first guess would be a wild fire as they didn't have the protective services we have now and its still a major problem. Buy why go back and bury them? Hmmmm.

You know, I've thought about that for over 20 years now and still don't have a clue. I've often wondered if it was perhaps a Rebel outpost sent to collect gold for the war effort. It was in a place where I would think they were pretty well hidden. Maybe they were hitting the miners and taking their gold, and this was just their base camp.

The worse part of it is; there are few records of mining in the area of Mariposa, so it's not like you can go to the newspaper archives and read about why a CSA outpost would be here, or even about the miners being robbed. Who knows, it might have been a recruiting post for the South, and they filled their spare time mining.

As far as the wood was concerned, these particular mountains were heavily forrested until the turn of the century, when the logging companies came in with the help of the rail road. So, there would have been no problem in aquirring wood for handles. Besides, when I was a youngster, we would burn the broken handles out of the tools to replace them. It's takes awhile. Plus, they were placed in the troughs and buried. Not much of a chance of a fire affecting them. So, your guess would be just as good as any of mine.

Eagle

 

[maui]

eagle, hi my friend and thanks much for some more great stories. been off here for awhile, computer
problems. thought they were fixed but still have alittle trouble.
you take care of yourself my friend. ron