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The first mining stories out
of the El Paso Mountains
in the Western Mojave talk of discoveries
in the narrow canyon known
today as Goler
Canyon
or Goler Gulch. There are many
different versions of the original story.
The most popular tells
of John Goler crossing
over the arid Mojave desert
after surviving the horrors of
Death Valley
in 1849. Weakened from
thirst and hunger, Goler and companion
found a few gold nuggets as they were looking for water.
Supposedly, Goler was so afraid of Indians he hurried away, but
had time to leave his gun to mark the spot where he had found the
nuggets. When he was safe and
sound in
Los Angeles
he began displaying the gold and a small map where he had supposedly
found them. Future
investors were told there would be no problem locating Goler’s
potential gold mine because
of that gun he had left standing
on the hill at the canyon mouth.
Goler’s
Lost Gold
Goler and a man named Grant P. Cuddeback set out with a well equipped party of men to find the fast
becoming famous canyon. Unfortunately,
the
Mojave desert
turned out to be riddled with many canyons that fit the description of
the one on Goler’s map, and no gun could be found at the entrance to
any of them. The now
disgruntled party, returned to Los Angeles, none the richer for their efforts. Still positive he could re-discover
the area where he had found his gold nuggets, Goler organized another
party, only to be disappointed a second time.
Throughout the years that followed, freighters coming back and
forth from the successful mining camps north of Mojave, told stories of
seeing a lonely man and his burro prospecting in the eastern
El Paso
foothills. While
camping at Mesquite Springs, Freighter
“Slate Range Jack” ran into Goler with more nuggets said to have
been found 5 miles to the east of them. Many a man outfitted himself with prospecting supplies and headed
into the Western Mojave in search of
“The Lost Gunsight Mine” or “Goler’s Lost Gold.
In 1893, when a bonanza was finally found in a dry narrow gulch
in the Southern El Paso Mountains, many believed that this was the
site of John
Goler’s lost mine, and named the camp that grew up around it Goler.
The
Wild Dutchman’s Mine
A few miles from Goler, a
man named Charley Koehn was homesteading in Kane Springs.
As men showed up to try their
luck at prospecting in Goler and surrounding areas, Koehn found he could
make his riches by providing some of the supplies they needed.
His little rock house and store soon grew to a frame and canvas
store located right in the new mining camp. As time went on he opened
other establishments in the nearby booming mining camps, and
brought in machinery to set up a 10 stamp mill near his original
Kane Springs homestead.
Charley Koehn was an
interesting character, who earned a reputation as the “The Wild
Dutchman” when he successfully fought claim jumpers off of the lake
named after him using a mobile fort he had invented himself with buggy
parts, and his old pistol. Many
thought of him as an nasty
old man who was always fighting some one or something.
Those who liked him, however, saw an unusual sense of humor.
He enjoyed telling stories of hiding liquor under a hens nest, so
he could go down to the chicken coop and drink with a
guest, afterwards telling his temperance minded wife
that the guest provided the liquor, which helped to relieve his
shingles. In
later years, as Koehn sat in San Quenton convicted of attempting to
murder a Superior Judge with
a homemade coffee can bomb, he still knew how to play a good joke.
Letters with the location of a lost mine were written by him to
one friend, then he wrote another about the joke he was playing on the
first, saying that the lost mine was really where he had marked the map
he had sent him. Soon
men were searching all over the vast desert countryside looking for the
lost gold mine somewhere near the x on the map they had been given by
Charlie Koehn. Afterwards,
he would kid the men in another letter, about the joke he had played on
them, but there were those who still believed that “The Wild
Dutchman” actually had a
mine, it was just a matter of finding which one of them had the right x
on their map.
Nosser’s
Lost Gold Mine
While prospecting along the
side of
Red
Mountain, Judge James B. Nosser Jr. suddenly ran across pieces of float spotted
with gold. The daylight was giving
out, so he made note of where he was and hurried back to the spot the
next morning. From the
surface he was able to pick enough rock
rich with gold, to fill several ore sacks.
By the end of that second day,
he had combed the area quite well, and
was convinced that he had found all that existed in that
location. On the third day
as he sold his ore, others watched with interest, and they continued to
keep track of every move he made for several days that followed.
When it became apparent that he had no more ore to bring in,
rumors began that Nosser had lost his gold mine.
For several years, Nosser returned to the original spot at the
side of
Red
Mountain
where he had first found the float, but try as he might, there was
nothing to be found. He was
convinced that lost gold mine stories were not really lost at all, they
were only small pockets of
rich ore that were easily picked over by a miner in a short period
time., leaving nothing of interest to come back to.
The
Lost Wishbone Mine
A stranger came in fresh
from prospecting in the El Paso Mountains
one day, and handed a small rock sample to the assayer.
It was too small for an accurate assay, so it was set
aside on a shelf until the prospector could bring back more
material from the same area. The
assayer forgot about the
rock until the shelf was almost completely cleared of samples.
Since the prospector had never returned with more ore,
the rock was thrown in a waste
basket which was later dumped on
a rubbish fire at the back of the assayer’s house. When he went back later
in the day to make sure the ashes were completely dead, he noticed gold
stuck to a charred chicken bone, and realized that the fire had
melted the gold from
the insignificant rock he had thrown away. Unfortunately, the assayer had been so busy when the prospector
had brought in the ore, he had neglected to find out where the rock had
come from. So far as anyone knows
the rich gold deposit from the Lost Wishbone Mine is still waiting to be
discovered to this day.
The
Lost Swede Mine
Somewhere between Searles
Station and
Red
Mountain, father and son prospectors discovered not a ledge of gold, but a ledge
of silver. Their burro’s pack
was filled with as much silver as it could carry into Johannesburg. There it was turned in for
groceries and cash. The next
morning the word was out, and the two had company following them back to
their diggings. For two
days, the men searched with no luck,
and they went on to
Death Valley
hoping to try their luck there. Their
disappointed followers returned back to Johannesburg
to the stories of the Lost Swede Mine. The legend persisted in spite of the fact that the assayed silver
resembled the silver from the Kelly Mine in Red
Mountain.
The
Twins Lost Gold Mine
The Hickie twins were
amongst the Garlock children who visited with the woman known
affectionately as Aunt Em. Emma
Connors grazed her goats
along the El Paso
foothills behind her house, and invited the children to help her do so.
The twin girls, as well as other children from the mining camp,
loved to hear her stories
of her childhood cross country covered wagon trip. When
noon
came around she would fix lunch for everyone, which of course included
her famous cheese from her own goats.
During their visits, if the goats would wander, the children
would pick up small rocks to throw at them to encourage them to get them
back in to the herd. One
of the Hickie twins had picked up a rock that fascinated her with it’s
beauty, so she kept it in her apron pocket until she got home.
When her father saw the rock, he realized it was full of gold.
He crushed and panned the rock that night, anxious for the next
morning to ask the girls where they had been so he could go back and
find more gold. Of course
when the sun rose and the girls were questioned upon waking, they only
knew that they had picked up many rocks far and wide that day.
Word got out, and every miner in town began trying to bribe an
answer out of the girls by offering them candy. Many searched the foothills in vain looking for the Twins Lost
Mine. Old timers in the area
still believe that some day someone will strike it rich in the hills
above the townsite of Garlock.
The
Prospector & the Gold Nugget
When prospectors weren’t
actually out searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,
they would spend their time in the saloons sharing drinks and tales both
tall and true about their riches.
It was common for them to
carry around a nugget or two to show off to the other miners. C. C. French, better known as Frenchie owned what is known as
Colorado Camp, where both low-grade coal, and gold was said to have been
found. Frenchie traveled
around in a beat up old pick-up and was well known around
Mesquite
Canyon. He carried a gun to
protect him from Della Gerbracht who thought she owned the canyon, and
he carried a large gold nugget which he sold one-tenth to one half
interest for $25.00 and up a
month. With money in
his pocket he would travel with his dog known as either Bowser, or Bow
Wow, and head to Mojave for supplies. His favorite past time was a game of Coon-Can, and most of the
money went for that instead of food, of course.
After Frenchie gambled his
money away, he and his dog
would head back to Colorado Camp picking
up a hitchhiker on the way. The
con would start all over again. This
time Frenchie would talk his new found friend into a half ownership as
he did the others, put him to work underground in his mine while he ran
the drywasher topside. There
was always a speck or two of
gold to share, but basically, pickings were lean. Frenchie would pass it off by
saying they were
“in a poor streak.” Eventually,
the hitchhiker would get wise to the fact that he was doing all of the
hard work while Frenchie had
it pretty easy and he would move on leaving Frenchie to look for another
poor soul to buy half of his mine.
It was said that there was probably no mine in Mojave that had more half owners than Frenchie’s
did.
Old
Joe
Like Frenchie, Old Joe
decided to come into a saloon and
show off his gold. After a
long stretch spent in the
El Paso
Mountains
digging for gold, he had not just one nugget, but a bag of high grade
ore which he placed on the bar, and quickly drank up.
The other miners watched in excitement, with thoughts of
following Old Joe the next morning so they could have their share of
rich claims. The barroom
girls got to Old Joe, first however, and talked him into taking them up
to his claim and blowing up the mound that he swore was solid gold.
The girls wanted a souvenir chunk of Old Joe’s gold hill, and
Old Joe was happy to oblige. He
would never miss a few pieces of ore, anyway.
The next morning, all of
Garlock was awakened by the sounds of a tremendous explosion. Still dark out, men grabbed their lanterns as they went out to
see what had blown up. Just
as daylight hit, they found that Old Joe and the girls really had gone
out and dynamited the top of his gold mount as they had talked about the
night before in the saloon. Unfortunately, after the explosion there was no gold to be found.
The old timers remembering Old Joe said
“Old Joe either shattered his gold into bits, or in his
liquored state, blew up the wrong hill.” Either way, Old Joe’s gold
mine had become just another “lost gold mine” story.
Burro
Schmidt’s
William Henry ”Burro”
Schmidt came to Last
Chance
Canyon at the age of 24 from Rhode Island. He had been told he would
die of tuberculosis if he didn’t find a dry desert climate to live in. On the north side of Copper
Mountain
he began hand digging a tunnel that eventually led to nowhere except the
other side of the mountain. Burro Schmidt was so
obsessed with digging his tunnel that he spent 32 years digging it.
It measures 2,087 feet from entrance to exit, and became famous
in Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Burro
Schmidt himself also became known as the “Human Mole”.
The tunnel was kept open as a tourist attraction by Burro Schmidt
until the 1950’s when he sold his claim to a man name Lee who did the
same. In more recent times,
Tonie Seger owned the tunnel and delighted in sharing stories of Burro
Schmidt and his tunnel to visitors. Tonie died in 2003, but at the date
of this writing the tunnel is still open to visitors, and one hopes it
will still remain so. While
walking through it, one can pause at the short
side tunnels and speculate if one of them was actually the
entrance to the "Crystal
Room", which was supposedly dynamited shut so he could keep the wealth inside
for himself forever. It’s
also said, that Burro Schmidt may have had secret mines elsewhere in
Last
Chance
Canyon, which would give the modern traveler to the western Mojave an
opportunity of their own to look for a lost treasure.
Bibliography
Burrowing Burro of
California’s
Copper
Mountain
by
Al Davis
Desert
Bonanza
by
Marcia Rittenhouse Wynn
Arthur
H. Clark Company
Exploring
the
Ghost
Town
Desert
by
Roberta Martin Starry
Engler
Publishing
Garlock
by
Paul B. Hubbard
Out
of Print
Garlock
Ghost Town
by
Roberta Martin Starry
Published
by Roberta’s Desert Shop
Garlock
1967
Gold
Gamble
by
Roberta Martin Starry
Engler
Publishing
Goler
Gulch Gold
by
Mary Frances Strong
Desert
Magazine, September 1973
Goler’s
Lost Gold…
by Ada
Giddings
Desert
Magazine, March 1952
Thanks
to Roberta Martin Starry and to Daphne Worsham for preserving these
stories and making them readily available for my research, and
for others to enjoy as well.
Thanks
also to Randy Seden whose aunt and uncle, Marion and Charlie Behrens,
provided the photo of miners in Goler Wash from their family archives. |
