DESERT CHIVALRY
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
March 13, 1931.
By John T. Bristow
There were not conveyances enough to handle the influx of gold-seekers when I got off the train at Nipton, California, and a long walk across a dry sun baked waste lay ahead of me. I was on my way to the new mining camp of Crescent, just over the line in Nevada, and on my way to a fortune—maybe. Rainbow visions began to rise before me, and hot though it was I did not mind that six-mile walk one bit. I was not alone. She was young, slender — and pretty. And Elsie was a “gold-digger” too. There were others.
With Frank Williams, a former Wetmore boy, as partner, I was in from the start at the “hell-roaring” mining camp back in 1907. Born overnight, it was a stampede mining camp, growing from nothing to a tented city of one thousand people in a few weeks time—followed quickly with saloons, dance-halls, and whatnots.
Crescent was wild, mad, wide open.
When the big news broke, I beat it for Nevada. Frank and I and associates owned three claims in the very heart of the Crescent district. Also, I personally owned an adjoining claim on which Frank had caused one of his men, Paul Stahmer, to do the required ten feet of work to hold it for one year, at a cost to me of $100. The work was done on a $544 gold showing.
Having operated with Frank rather disappointedly in the lead-zinc-vanadium camp of Goodsprings, thirty miles away, through the years since 1904, I believed that here at last—at Crescent—I was about to pounce, in one fell swoop upon the legendary pot of gold. It was a fantastic notion, of course—but oh, the magic thrill of it!
Charles M. Schwab, Pennsylvania multi-millionaire steel magnate, who held mining interests in Nevada, lent encouragement with an on-the-spot pronouncement: “In the past the great fortunes have been made in manufacturing, but henceforth the really big money will be made in mining.” Also, operators from Goldfield, the Nevada camp that gave George Wingfield, a lowly cowhand, twenty million dollars almost in a jiffy—men in the big money up there said in my presence, “If we had such surface showings at Goldfield as you have at Crescent, any old claim would sell for a fortune.” I don’t mind telling you that I had fed rather too optimistically upon the glorious prospect of grabbing a quick fortune at Crescent. But the unveiling of facts there proved a solvent for the nightmare in which a lot of us had been living for months.
With fabulously rich surface showings — high assays, $500 to $20,000 to the ton reported almost everywhere — Crescent proved, in the end, the greatest bubble of them all. Countless thousands of dollars were expended, over a period of two years, in a frantic effort to bring out a profitable producer. But if there ever was as much as a shirt-tail full of ore shipped from that camp, I don’t know it. And though I never had the time nor the inclination to compare notes, I’ll bet Elsie had better pickings than any of the hopeful miners who wore pants.
It was with reluctance that we pulled out of Crescent. It’s most fascinating, this thing of prospecting for gold — like participating in a big-game hunt. Were I full-handed, even now, I would go back to Crescent and give our Shreve-port group another try. Someday, somebody is going to find the “mother lode” there.
There was honest effort—a lot of honest effort—as well as the usual faking, at Crescent. A $20,000 gold strike was reported near the summit, between our claims and Crescent. The first day out there, I was all for seeing this strike right away. My partner said, “Oh, wait until tomorrow—we’ll be going past it when we go over to Crescent.”
The next day, starting from our claims by way of a perfectly good wagon road down the canyon a ways, Frank took me by a tortuous climb, off the road, to near the top of the mountain. He pointed out the spot where the assay had been obtained. When I began to examine the shallow trench, he said, quickly, “It took all the ore in sight to make the assay.” Twenty steps farther on we reached the summit where we could look down on Crescent a mile below. And then we stepped out onto a very good wagon road. On inquiry, he said, “It’s the same road we left back there in the canyon.” I asked him how come we made that rough climb? Frank said, “You know, it’s about as much as a man’s life is worth to be caught showing up that strike to a tenderfoot.”
This was an eye-opener—the first clear signpost on a long and uncertain road.
At another time, later, Frank and I paid a saloon keeper in Nipton, the railroad station, twenty dollars to drive us over the Crescent district, for the full day. We visited our claims first, got dinner in Crescent—then to a saloon where drinks were 50 cents each, whether whiskey, beer, or water. The bartender simply counted noses or glasses, as it were, and summed up the charge. There were about twenty saloons in the camp, and our “host” deemed it his duty to visit them all. I am sure he dumped the $10 I paid him on twenty glasses of water for me. It was a spot where you couldn’t afford to shake your head and say, “No thanks.” When asked to drink, it was wise to call your drink.
The main object of the drive—on my part, anyway — the thing we had paid twenty dollars for, was to visit a highly newspaper publicized mine two miles south of Crescent, where it was shamefully claimed immense bodies of rich gold ore running into the millions, were blocked out. But the desert twilight caught us still drinking Adam’s ale and the Indian’s “fire water.” Our driver knew his business all right—and I suspect Frank knew from the start that we would never fetch up at that mine. Nothing, absolutely nothing—but the truth—was barred in that camp.
I shall now leave the desert momentarily, and write candidly about my earlier “mining” experience. This, and other notations here—until we get back to Crescent—are throw-ins, kindred situations not contained in the printed’ article.
With our townsman Green Campbell’s enviable mining success as an incentive, it has ever been my hope that I might someday also strike it rich—and mining seemed to offer the best lure. I therefore joined a group of Wetmore and Horton men in an effort to rejuvenate a gold mine at Whitepine, Colorado, twenty miles north of Sargent on the narrow gauge branch of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad. With the Wetmore group—Dr. Augustus Philip Lapham and wife Elzina Brown-Lapham; Jay Wellington Powers and wife Helen Hoyt-Powers; Charles Samuel Locknane and wife Coral Hutchison-Locknane; and Mr. C. A. Mann, the owner, backed by Scott Hopkins, Horton banker, and other moneyed men of that city, I spent a week at White pine looking things over.
The mine was really six miles up the canyon from White pine—just beyond the abandoned town of Tomichi, not far from the “Top of the World.” Tomichi had been hit by a snow slide which wrecked a number of houses, killing several people. The residents, numbering about 1,000, had abandoned their homes and places of business, leaving the buildings intact—a true “Ghost Town.” Thinking in terms of the present, one might wonder why had the buildings been left to rot down? A mill had sawed the lumber on the site — and in that out-of-the-way place, the material was not worth salvaging.
The tunnel of the Mann mine was about 150 feet up-slope from the wagon road on the floor of the canyon, which road was also Main Street in Tomichi. To get up to the tunnel, the trail started several hundred feet up the gulch and then swung back around a projecting ledge where the footing was rather insecure. To negotiate it the men would use the lines off the harness. The women could remain at the wagon and watch the men fall, if such might be the case.
And here I pulled a boner—not my first, nor last, I frankly admit. I looked across to the “scary” ledge, and straight up to the tunnel—and then I started up on the run, the loose rock in places sliding me back almost as fast as I was gaining. However, I made the tunnel, completely exhausted. I did not sit down to rest. I fell down. And I crawled into the tunnel where there was ice—in July—and revived quickly. One of the men was hampered in that climb with a wooden leg, which afforded me ample time to recover before their arrival—but my own legs were still shaky as I eased myself around that projecting ledge, grabbing the strap now and then, while coming down. I don’t know how the first strap-holder got around without help—nor the last one, either.
Mr. Mann said I had taken a great risk; that he had called to me to come back; that the exertion required to negotiate that heap of sliderock was really too much for one unaccustomed to the high altitude; that he himself—a seasoned mountain man—would not have undertaken it for the whole mine. And, you know, after I had taken one peep at the spot of interest in the tunnel, I thought, “Neither would I.”
The prospect did not look good to me—nor was I fooled by the enthusiasm of my inexperienced associates, but I wanted to go along with them. The other Wetmore men thought enough of the prospect to locate adjoining claims, naming them for their children—The Marsena, The Gracie, and The Marguerite. I had no child, not even a wife—so no claim. But I then and there made a resolve to learn something more about that enticing mining game, perhaps elsewhere. And in the final analysis I suppose I have.
Doctor Lapham was the principal exuder of enthusiasm, an inborn trait which came to the fore again in a big way on the train enroute to Salt Lake City. The Doctor had spent some time in the smoker, and came back to the coach all “hepped” up. Rubbing his hands together in his characteristic manner, he said he had gotten—on the qt—a tip from the newsboy that an observation car was to be hooked on at Gunnison, for the trip through Colorado’s most colorful canyon. The observation car would be on a siding to the left of our train—and that the favored few were to make a dash for it the moment the train stopped.
The Doctor was always putting forth his best efforts to make us all comfortable—and happy. He said he had bought a book of views, paying $2 for it, something he really didn’t care a whoop for—but he wanted to reward the boy for his kind tip. With an eye for business, the newsboy had also tipped off other passengers.
The “observation” car was only a coalcar having temporary backless board seats placed crosswise of the car. One had to climb over the seats, or step across from one plank to another to get to the rear end of the car—all right for the fellow who had so recently clambered up the tunnel dump, but very awkward for the women and the man with the wooden leg.
Many of the passengers looked at the thing and went back to the coaches, and some abandoned their seats and went inside after the train started—but our men folk, being well to the rear and encumbered with helpless women whom they did not wish to lose just then, couldn’t even do that once the train headed into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a narrow gorge with 2800-foot almost perpendicular walls, following the serpentine course of the Gunnison river, on a steeply down grade, switching the “observation” car like a whipcracker from one black wall to the other. Hot cinders rained down on us so that we could look neither to the right, or the left—nor up. Now, Lap’s newsboy came aboard crying, “Goggles, goggles, goggles!”
And the appreciative Doctor gave the boy some more money.
We had done Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou and Pike’s Peak—and Cripple Creek. And we had all climbed “Tenderfoot” Mountain while waiting over-night at Salida for train connection—and I individually had literally sat on the proverbial powderkeg for three hours during a twenty-mile overland drive. Mr. Mann had provided a spring wagon for the other members of the party, and I, being unexpected, was conducted to a freight wagon going our way. When told, near the end of the journey, that I was sitting on a box of dynamite I blew up—in spirit. But nowhere had we experienced anything so disappointing as this “observation” car ride. It is anchored in my memory as the one really big scene that beggared description.
NOTE — The railroad through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison has been abandoned, and sightseers may now view this colorful canyon from their automobiles over a highway—a “highway,” mind you, more than a half mile down in a narrow slit in the earth.
Then, again, my newspaper friend, William Allen White, of the Emporia Gazette, toured the western mining districts and wrote enthusiastically about some newly discovered mining opportunity in the west, known as Thunder Mountain. It stimulated my desire. I wrote William Allen, asking him if he would, as one newspaperman to another, advise me to try my luck at Thunder Mountain? His personal letter to me was even more optimistic than was his editorial. Like Horace Greely, his advice was substantially, “By all means go west, young man, and give it a try.”
But I did not fetch up at Thunder Mountain. On the advice of another friend, I dumped the proceeds from the sale of my newspaper, sight unseen, in a hole in Nevada — while the wise Mr. White kept on publishing his Gazette; wrote a best seller book, “A Certain Rich Man,” and got rich himself. His name and fame are to be perpetuated in the erection of a public library building in Emporia; while I, his misguided friend, still have my laurels to make. And, incidentally, as a mining man, after that first big blow, I never again heard of Thunder Mountain.
Now back to the desert—and the printed Crescent story.
Our contribution here at Crescent, with a minimum of outside help, was a 500-foot tunnel driven into the side of a mountain—the rock shot with high assay in gold and silver and copper. But the cost of this work, though a dead loss and highly disheartening, was as nothing compared to the outlay for the 2197 feet of tunnels and shafts we have driven—also with a minimum of help—through solid rock on our Goodsprings claims, where production, though quite good at times, has never caught up with expenses.
And the end is not yet.
You can take it from me that a man has to be insensible to pain to laugh this off.
On the train away back in the valley on this my first trip to Crescent, the conductor had pointed to a distant cluster of white flecks barely discernible through the shimmering, sun-drenched haze that lies always, like a pall, over the desert, and said to me, “There she is—the biggest thing in all Nevada!”
I had become chummy with the conductor, and that chumminess increased mightily when we learned that we were both on the way to become millionaires—as we visualized it then—through the mining route. He told me that he knew my mining partner, that he had engaged Frank Williams to look after the assessment work on some claims he himself owned over in the Goodsprings district. And when I asked the conductor his name and made a move as if to write it down, he shook his head negatively and threw out his hands in a gesture of utter uselessness, and said, “Oh-hell, man, you couldn’t forget it as long as you are in this country. It’s Dry—just plain William Dry.”
My friend’s parting words to me were a mixture of jocularity and serious hope. “Well, so long, old top,” he said. “See you again when we fetch up at the end of the rainbow.”
And do you know, the next time I saw that conductor, two years later—and I might say before either of us had made any appreciable advances on the rainbow’s elusive end — he recognized me at once, and in offering his hand, said: “It’s Dry.” And I said, “Oh-hell, man, don’t I know it!”
And so it was.
That meeting was in Superintendent J. Ross Clark’s private car, hitched to the flyer. We had exchanged some correspondence before, and Ross wanted to tell me in as hopeful words as possible that the officials of his railroad were still watching the situation closely and would build a branch line into our district—to our claims and to his claims — just as soon as the required tonnage was assured. You see, J. Ross Clark, too, was possessed of the desire to harvest a quick fortune and owned mining claims across the flat from our claims in the Goodsprings district.
That meeting with J. Ross Clark bore fruit for me, though—and it was the means of holding up the Los Angeles Limited for an hour, as well. Several years later I had an important engagement at Goodsprings and was delayed seven hours in Pueblo on the way out there, owing to a change in time of the Denver & Rio Grande trains. The best I could do then was to arrive in Salt Lake five minutes after the Limited’s leaving time, at one o’clock at night, with depots a mile apart. Failure to keep my appointment at Goodsprings would mean disappointment to others and a money loss to me, as well as a wasted trip. In desperation, I went to the up-town office of the Denver & Rio Grande, and asked the agent there to try to have the Los Angeles train held for me at Salt Lake. Nothing doing. That important personage swelled up to full capacity and said, “Evidently, if the San Pedro people wanted to neighbor with my Company they would change their leaving time.”
Next, I asked the conductor on the Rio Grande train to wire ahead for me—and I am happy to state he was a gentleman. Also he was a one-time miner. “Tried it once over at Aspen,” he told me. And right away there was a bond of sympathy, or something, between us. That conductor really wanted to help me. But, as he told me he had wired the San Pedro people several times without results, I had to think of some other way, for I wanted to make that Limited as a lost soul wants to make Paradise.
It was then I thought of J. Ross Clark. What was the good of making friends, if you could not use them? The Rio Grande conductor obligingly held his train for me at Green River, Utah, while I filed a message to the Superintendent of the San Pedro lines. We arrived in Salt Lake ten minutes ahead of time, and the conductor, pointing to a hack-stand, said to me, “Now hurry—the Los Angeles train may be a little late in getting away.”
At the San Pedro station I found the Limited all steamed up, ready to go—and I boarded it quickly, all out of breath. But there was no need for hurrying. Presently the conductor came along and asked me: “Did you come in on Rio Grande Three?” I told him I did. Then he asked, “First or second section?” I admitted that I didn’t know the train had been split up at Grand Junction. The conductor, wanting to be sure of his order, drew a yellow slip from his pocket, and re-read: “Hold for one or more passengers off Rio Grande Three.” He then said, “Yes, that’s it. I’m sure you are the man I’m holding for—but I’ll have to wait for the second section.” And it was an hour late.
I think perhaps Ross had put in his order the words “one or more” solely as a precaution against the possibility of being accused of showing partiality to his mining neighbor, in breaking rules. Anyway, J. Ross Clark had no call for worry. His brother, William A. Clark, a mining man, controlling, among other holdings, the fabulously rich United Verde mine at Jerome, Arizona, owned also forty-nine per cent of the San Pedro lines—and was at this time operating the road under a twenty-year control agreement. It is now in full control of the Union Pacific.
The Limited was not scheduled to stop at Jean, Nevada, my destination. The regular procedure would have been for me to go on down the line forty miles or more and then double back on a local train. But when the Limited began slowing down on approaching Jean, the conductor said to me, “No, don’t jump—wait ‘till she stops.”
The engineer climbed down from his cab. The conductor hopped off the train and yelled, “Hey, Bill, what’s wrong?” I knew what was wrong. And Bill knew; and the conductor knew; and possibly one other knew—but that was all. And whose business was it, anyway?
The lost hour had been made up before the train pulled into Caliente, Nevada, where it halted ten minutes. And, paradoxically, it gained another hour there in that ten minutes. Caliente—Mexican for hot—is where Pacific time begins.
Bill had left that division point “on time” and held to the fast schedule all the way. And I’ll bet Bill and his relief engineer landed the old Limited in Los Angeles on the dot — even though there were miles and miles of desert wasteland, with two high mountain ranges, and, finally, a beautiful irrigated valley with orange groves and banks and banks of rose.s, yet to be crossed.
As the Limited started to move again the conductor threw me a last cheerful word: “You’ll have only a little way to walk.” And I could only hope that there was no one to report that conductor—nor my friend Ross.
You see, it was Dry again.
All about lay the eternal waste of the desert and mountain slopes, barren and desolate, walled in that arid corner of the world.