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.”