EagleDown said:
Hemisteve said:
Eagledown,
If you are so inclined, do you have any stories on the northern goldfields you would like to share?
Thanks
Steve
Hokay Steve, I don't know if this is far enough North for you, but, this next story is just for you.
Eagle
~~~\/~~~
Poor Mans Creek
(An oxy-moron?)
Note: The following story is especially note-worthy due to the fact that yesterday, thanks to a post made by Sushidog in this thread and in Lanny in AB’s thread:
http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,453.0.html What makes this so interesting to me at this time is, the post that was made
has a link to the Sacramento Bee newspaper. And to get to the location in this story, you have to pass through the town where the nugget was found, a beautiful little town that I’ve visited several times. I doubt that it’s changed very much since the big “gold rush”. The town?............Washington, California.
About 40 years ago, I came across a journal kept by a “49er”. His name is lost to memory, but his story lingers on in my mind.
The author of the journal/diary and his companions were among some of the earliest hopeful prospectors to arrive in the Northern California gold fields. At that time, Sacramento was a bustling mining camp with the almost constant sounds of construction going on, amidst the sounds of the tent saloons.
They left Sacramento in the early morning hours, headed in a NorthEasterly direction with the intent of posting claims on the richest digs found so far.
The Yuba River!!
A couple of days out found them at a flat that was cut through by “Poor Man’s Creek". Since they still had some ways to go, they decided it would be best if they set up camp there, rather than get caught in the mountain forest after dark. So, they unloaded their pack-mules and prepared for night fall.
After they got everything ready for night, one of them started getting the fixings ready for their evening meal, while the other three decided to do a little panning to see if they could find any gold.
The basics of the story was; they were finding 3 to 5 pound chunks of gold. As a matter-of-fact, they were finding so much gold that they spent 3 days camping and prospecting there.
After the third day, they loaded one of the pack-mules with as much gold as the mule was able to safely carry and chose one of the partners to lead the mule back to Sacramento to cash in the gold and buy more supplies, while the other three went on to the Yuba River ahead of him, because they had heard how much richer it was in the diggings there. (lol)
A case of abandoning a sure thing, to follow a dream.
Strange are the ways of greed.
Anyway, I made a trip up to Poor Mans Creek in the early 1980s, just to “check it out”. As I said, the town of Washington is about the same as it was back in the late 1800s. I was kind of amused when I drove by the old hotel which now fills in as a boarding house, and saw the long haired, bearded, hippy looking miners, sitting on the old wooden bench in the front of the place. It was like a flash out of the past.
Right after Washington, I crossed a bridge over the (believe it or not,) Yuba River. Now that left me in a quandary. How could they have crossed the Yuba River, and still be headed for the Yuba River
Hey, it was HIS story, not mine. I never checked the area enough to determine if there might have been another way to Poor Mans Creek where they didn’t have to cross the Yuba River. And, they might have been headed for what is now known as the middle fork of the Yuba River.(?)
Anyway, I continued on up the mountain towards the town of Graniteville. About a mile before Graniteville, I crossed Poor Mans Creek. Up the road just a little further, I found a nice camping spot under the pines, and right beside Poor Mans Creek.
I had a friend with me and he wanted to put in the little 4” dredge he had brought along, so we set up camp and floated the dredge right at the edge of the camp ground. We gassed up the engine and I fired it up while he dragged the hose and suction nozzle out into the creek.
After about 5 minutes of dredging, he came upon a crevasse in the bed-rock about 5” wide, going across the streambed. He dredged in the crevasse for about 10 minutes, then came out of the water saying that it was too cold for him. This was in the early part of Spring, and I guessed the water temp. to be around 35 degrees. So, I didn’t blame him one bit.
Anyway, when we cleaned out the sluice box, we found a lot of “pickers” and smaller, plus one nugget of approx. one quarter oz. He said that he had not reached the bottom of the crevasse yet, so I have no idea of how deep it might be. The thing about this area is; the stream cuts through a big alluvial fan that has been there for at least 100 years and could use some serious metal detecting. I would bet that there’s at least one five pound nugget that the “old timers” missed.
Eagle
Next I live in Greensboro North Carolina, The last Confederate Capitol.
