OF ALL the great men of the Mother Lode,
The greatest of all, ‘tis said,
Was a moth-eaten codger without any hair
Whom they called Mokelumne Ed.
On the eight hundred foot of the Roarin’ Mine
He stood at the end of a drift,
And spat wide and handsome and cursed the breast
Just left by the previous shift.
Not a color was there or a sulphuret,
Not a fissure to follow or trace;
He knew he had come to the end of his rope
As he studied that barren face.
So he went up on top and he fired the men,
He felt that life was a fake;
But he packed up a burro and started out
To make him another stake.
He wandered along to Columbia town,
A camp of an ancient day,
Where the lime stuck out like the stones on the graves
Of the men who had passed that way.
This little old town was a placer camp
And the old fellows sure were keen;
They had worked the diggings time and again
And scraped the bedrock clean.
And after them came the China horde
Who could live on a Lima bean,
And they panned what little the white men left
Because it was barren or lean.
So there wasn’t much chance for Mokelumne Ed.
In that land of the long ago,
Where the wraiths of the miners who swarmed the place
Seemed to pass in a ghostly row.
He sat himself down to his noonday lunch
In the graveyard close by the church
That rested high on a gravel bank
Like a white bird asleep on his perch.
And thus, as he sat on a crumbling stone,
And spat on a grassy mound,
A thought flashed into his sunburned head:
He was sitting on holy ground,
And the gravel that lay just under his feet
Was surely a virgin bed,
For the old chaps no matter how tough they were
Didn’t sluice out the graves of their dead.
So he put up his camp close down by the creek
As a base for his furtive search,
And started a tunnel a long ways off
To end just under the church,
So that passers-by, who saw his work,
Would never suspect his lay,
They would think he was only another poor nut
Who was digging his life away.
For two long months he shoveled and trammed
And at last he reached his goal
Where the ancient channel would be exposed
At the end of his gopher hole.
But what did he find but a ‘niner’s pan
And close by a rusty pick?
And when he uncovered an old mine car
His heart was truly .
For some old timer had figured the same,
And put in his secret bore,
And beaten Ed to that sacred place
Just fifty years before.
Though sore at first, he soon came to
And considered it all a joke,
For there ain’t no luck in robbing a church,
Or stealing a blind man’s poke.
So he hied himself back to the hard-rock game
Where there’s smoke and dust and grime,
And he worked all alone in the Roarin’ Mine
For he hadn’t a son or a dime.
He worked two shifts on every day
In that slaty, barren land,
And one day broke into a pocket of ore
With nuggets as big as your hand.
Old Ed at last had made his stake
And he wanted the world to know,
So he started out on a gilded trail
To see how much he could blow.
He imported a band from Frisco
And a musical show from the East
And he gave all his friends a champagne souse
That rivaled Belkazzar’s feast.
He built him a house with a bathtub
Where a man could sit and boil,
He sure had a rip snortin’ hell of a time
Till he started to dibble in oil.
The first well he sank was a gasser,
The second was dry a, a shake,
The third well, they say, was the outlet
Of the waters of Great Salt Lake.
And so if you ever happen
in the region of Poker Flat
Just drop in on Ed and give him a chew
And stop for a friendly chat.
—WALTER S. WEEKS
August 4, 1928— Engineering and Mining Journal 183
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LUCK IN MINING TMJ 6 30 1929
THE MINING JOURNAL
WON AND LOST
By Jos. N. Baxter, Denver, Col.
In 1878 Webber and Sullivan, two miners from Alma, Colorado, were on the Continental Divide driving a tunnel near the “Orphan Boy Mine,” when hearing that there was intensive excitement at Leadville, they left Alma and located a claim at Leadville, which they called “The Orphan Boy.”
Before doing much development they sold out for about $200,000, put the money in gunny sacks with hay packed on burros and came over Argentine Pass through Georgetown to Denver and started for New Mexico to buy cattle.
Arriving at a city of tents called Deming, they went into a large tent to get a drink and found therein H. A. W. Tabor and August Rische of Leadville playing billiards. They urged them to come up and look at their “real silver mine” and finally yielding did so and found they were mining from a very large deposit silver ore running $2,200 per ton. They were persuaded to buy the adjoining property after taking some samples to Albuquerque for assay, which ran $2,500 per ton in silver. Sullivan nearly killed his horse getting back quickly to buy the property for $100,000, which they took out of the hay sacks.
Webber said they took out of the mine over $100,000, and then used all that and all they had in the sacks trying to find some more. They had exhausted the deposit, which was an overflow, and Tabor’s mine met with the same misfortune and helped to ruin him, who had been rated as worth nine millions at one time.
Webber and Sullivan worked back to Denver stone-broke, though they had acquired an ample fortune and lost it.
Opportunity Knocks Twice
I have given you one “Luck” story about Webber and Sullivan, and will give you another about Webber.
Several years ago I had some ore in my office from a Colorado property, a sample of which (25 pounds) I had sent to Swansea, Wales, for a determination and received a certificate that it contained platinum, indium and palladium, with gold, although I had sent some to New York, Philadelphia and Denver assayers, who found none of the precious metals in it.
My friend, Webber, came into the office and said, “That ore does not look like platinum ore to me. I found it in a grey sand which came from a tunnel within 10 miles of your property.” I replied, “Tell me your story. A man was in the other day who said he had found a large per cent of platinum in a grey sand which came from that district, but never found the man for whom he had tested the sand.”
He replied, “In 1878, before I went to Leadville, I was running a tunnel and came to a cross-vein about 8 inches wide of a heavy grey sand. I found considerable of it and found some of it heavier than the gold in the pan. I took a small sample of my pannings or concentrates and sent it to the Vivians at Swansea, Wales, and forgot all about it. Later I was induced to abandon the tunnel and go to Leadville, where I located a mine with Sullivan and sold it out for a handsome price. We decided to go to New Mexico and buy cattle, having a good stake from our mine, and were of the opinion we could not hope to duplicate our good luck in mining.
“In New Mexico we were induced to abandon our cattle scheme and put all we had into a mine, and came out broke. On reaching Denver I found returns from the sample I had sent to the Vivians and they said it ran 8 per cent platinum. Of course, what I had sent them were concentrates, but the value of the sand concentrates, 160 pounds or 5 per cent, figuring 12 ounces to the pound, with platinum at $100 per ounce, would be about $190,000 per ton, but I was not interested, as we had made and lost our stake. I will give you the name of the property and you can have it.”
A short time after I went to the district and found the abandoned tunnel, which had caved in badly, and found the claim as located and verified his story to that extent.
Opportunity may knock but once for some people, but my friend, Webber, wouldn’t let her come in when she knocked the second time.
EDITOR’S NOTE—Almost every old timer in western mining knows a luck story; some of good luck and some where a black cat crossed the trail. Tell us your luck stories, in a letter, an article, or merely as notes, for we want to work them up for The Mining Journal readers in from 300 to 500 word articles. A one-year subscription to The Mining Journal will be given to each one whose luck story is accepted for publication. Send in
your stories.
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NEVADA MILL TO BE TORN DOWN TMJ 7 15 1930
CUSTOM MILL AT MILL CITY, NEVADA, TO BE TORN DOWN
Judged by citizens of the town as an objectionable feature, the historic old custom mill at Mill City, Nevada, is to be torn down. During its heyday, the mill served the old Dunn Glenn Mine, then one of the largest producers in Humboldt County, but with decline of the mines, the mill has been deserted, and the town practically abandoned. Built about 40 years ago by James McDonald, 25 years have passed since the mill was closed, and during that time, it has been stripped of machinery, and reduced to a dilapidated condition.
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ARIZONA IRON HORSES DONTAED TO MUSEUM TMJ 7 15 1930
IRON HORSES OF EARLY DAYS PRESENTED TO LOCAL MUSEUMS
Two ancient locomotives, that played an important part in the development of Arizona’s mines, have been given places of honor, and will be preserved along with other relics of the early days.
The first one was placed at the old Governor’s Mansion at Prescott, Arizona, now a museum. This engine was used at Mayer, 40 years ago, and has hauled out many a train of rich ores.
The counterpart of this engine was presented to the Arizona Museum at Phoenix. This locomotive saw several years of active service around Congress Junction, during the heyday of the Congress Mine.
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PAINTING: "THE LURE" HOW TRUE IT IS TMJ 10 30 193
“THE PROSPECTOR AND HIS BURRO” ON PROGRAM AT MINING DINNER
Everyone who is familiar with the writings of the late Will C. Higgins, founder of the Salt Lake Mining Review, recalls his stories of “The Prospector and His Burro” which used to appear regularly in that publication. In fact, prospectors and burros have long been recognized as the vanguard of early mining in the Western states, and have thus become the subjects of stories and of pictures.
It is of interest, therefore, to note that the picture here reproduced, was painted in 1912 by an artist then living in Seattle, and that the original is owned by Percy E. Wright, a consulting engineer, whose home is in that city. The picture, as autographed by the artist, Will Mellen, is called “The Lure,” and in the original, the colors and the shadows of the Arizona sunset are beautifully brought out, as are also the yuccas and other vegetation such as the desert affords.
The artist’s ideas for this and for other subjects depicting mining were gained while he was working in the mines, and on mining surveys.
At a dinner given on September 18 by Capt. John C. Benson, president of the Cherokee Development Company, of Angels Camp, California, in honor of his son, John F. Benson, Secretary, and Resident Manager of the company, this picture was used on the front cover of a very attractive program, the cover being in gold, and under the picture were the words:
“The days of old, “The days of gold, “The days of forty-nine—--——’t
There were more than fifty invited guests at this dinner, which was held at the New Washington Hotel, these guests being principally local people who are interested in the Cherokee company, the men, their wives, and their daughters attending. Those from California, were John F. Benson, wife, and little daughter, from Angels Camp; and Mrs. Parry Small, of San Francisco.
Of the Cherokee organization, those on the program were Capt. John C. Benson, President; Carl M. Johanson, vice-president; John F. Benson, secretary and resident manager; and Percy E. Wright, consulting engineer, Seattle; and B. H. Bennetts, metallurgist, Tacoma, the latter being chairman of the North-Pacific Section of the A. I. M. & M. E.
Mining on the California Mother Lode, and recent developments in gold mining and metallurgy, were the subjects discussed.
Col. Robert M. Watkins of the Cherokee organization, Seattle office, acted as toastmaster.
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