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Much Ado About Nothing: The San Juan River Gold Rush, 1892-93
Much Ado About Nothing: The San Juan River Gold Rush, 1892-93
THE SAN JUAN IS A RIVER OF PROMISE: Water in a high desert environment holds the key to extensive agriculture, large populations, and advanced economic development. At least, this belief motivated settlers from Colorado, Mormons from southwestern Utah, and Navajo agents from New Mexico at different times during the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century. These groups also hoped that the river would serve as a visible, permanent boundary to keep white intruders off Navajo lands and to keep an expanding Indian population away from the public domain to the north. And through it all, the river appeared deceptively peaceful, even cooperative, as its sluggish waters flowed calmly during most of the year.
Unfortunately, the SanJuan delivered on few of these promises. Approximately every ten years, unpredictable raging torrents destroyed most agricultural progress or economic development. The firm boundary that Indian agents sought proved porous to the livestock industry and the settlement patterns of the Navajo; in 1905 and again in 1933 the government had to add large areas north of the river
Freight boats on the San Juan River. Charles Goodman photo, courtesy of Manuscripts Division, Marriott Library, University of Utah. to the reservation As for large populations, many families came and went, but relatively few remained for long or concentrated in one place. The waters of hope dried quickly in the hot desert air of the Colorado Plateau.
No better example of hope leading to disillusionment, and of boom followed by bust, exists in this riverine corridor than the gold rush of 1892-93, which rivaled similar explosions in other parts of the West. Even this rush, in the calm of turn-of-the-century southeastern Utah, had its precursors and aftermath. From the early 1880s through approximately 1920, gold miners searched with various degrees of intensity for precious minerals along the San Juan River drainage. Gold had always been present there, but it was not often found in a coarse enough state to mine profitably. Rather, it was an extremely fine dust found in alluvial deposits mixed with sand and debris deposited by the river. While this flour gold could be found on the sand bars along the river, most nuggets, if any, were located on the ancient lateral gravel terraces that lay sometimes over 200 feet above the high water level.1
Still, despite the difficulties in procuring it,just the mere presence of gold evoked dreams of riches to be plucked. The height of these dreams occurred along the San Juan in the rush of 1892-93, which, to borrow a title from one of William Shakespeare's plays, proved to be much ado about nothing However, that there was "much ado" at the time is without doubt Rumors were rampant Enticing newspaper headlines and railroad advertising from the Four Corners area fanned the flames of the gold rush through deception, hearsay, and blind competition. Little was ever gained.
Interest in the area began with a few peeks under the cloak of secrecy. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Jonathan P. Williams, a trader, arrived in Winslow, Arizona, with some coal samples. After they were analyzed, a local businessman took the results to Albuquerque to seek investment capital from mining interests. The mineral deposits seemed to be of some value, so shortly thereafter, officials from the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad announced their intention of building a line to the coal field The railroad freighted surveyors, workers, machinery, and lumber as close as possible to the area, ostensibly to begin work at the mine site.
While all of these activities were plausible, and in fact the coal samples had been seen, apparently an old prospector by the name of French had some doubts as to what was actually taking place The amount of equipment, the secrecy of the group, and the fact that the machinery was sent at night aroused his curiosity. Taking two men into his confidence, French followed the next shipment out; the party he followed stopped at a coal mine, spent the night there, then moved on to the SanJuan River.
As French suspected, something else was going on. The coal mining equipment turned out to be hydraulic machinery for gold mining Williams had found gold as well as coal, so he and his associates decided to use the coal as a cover for gold production. The group had sworn their workers to silence. Karl Snyder, an Albuquerque lawyer and member of the coterie, took a circuitous route to the San Juan county courthouse, where, under some pretext, he was made deputy county recorder. This allowed the group to legalize their claim on sites in total secrecy
But French had uncovered the plan When they learned of his presence, the businessmen offered him and his friends $5000 if they would stay for ten days until the recording work had been completed. One of French's group considered the glitter of gold more inviting than greenbacks, however, and he returned to Winslow. The secret was out.2
This initial report of gold was the first of many that encouraged interstate rivalry, a get-there-first attitude, and many a miner's dream While the diggings were in Utah, primarily between Bluff and the confluence of the San Juan with the Colorado River, the first reports emphasized that miners from Arizona were getting all the benefits of this gold. Imagine the feelings of the people in Salt Lake City when they read a Flagstaff, Arizona, dispatch reprinted in the Deseret News announcing that there was "great excitement" along the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad line because of the rich finds on the San Juan "Five hundred citizens from Flagstaff, Williams, and Winslow have left for the new El Dorado. The placers extend for fifty miles from the mouth of the San Juan and 200 locations have been made. The new gold fields are reported as being the richest ever found."3
Another Arizona paper created a feeling of even greater urgency with a headline guaranteed to incite envy It trumpeted: "A Rich Gold Find Miners in Arizona Panning Out Fabulous Amounts Every Day," and then reported that "excitement is at fever heat over a gold find" along the San Juan. "Trainmen and telegraph operators are deserting the railroad, crippling it. Even officials of the Atlantic and Pacific have caught the infection. . . . Business is seriously interfered with. Friday one man washed out $700 and another reported $2,000 as a result of thirty-six hours' work."4
Additional communications began giving the exact number of outfits leaving for the goldfield each day, suggesting that there were no more animals for teams available in the area. Railroad workers supposedly commandeered horses being shipped to miners in Winslow Estimates claimed that between 500 and 1,000 men from Arizona were already on their way. 5 This tide of interest swept to the north, swirling against the red rocks and snaking into the canyons of the San Juan. While no one will ever know the exact number of miners in the canyons at this time, the gold rush appears to have peaked in the latter half of December through the mid-part of January.
Within a week the news spread to surrounding states. A press release from Denver reprinted in the Salt Lake Tribune indirectly urged Utahns to awaken to the possibilities lying on their doorstep. The Denver paper reported that "in every [mining] camp" in the Four Corners region people talked only about the finds in southern Utah. Consequently, "many outfits have already started for the new fields, and by Saturday it is estimated that three hundred miners will have left . . . for the New El Dorado." As in Arizona, workers and officials on the railroad in New Mexico "have thrown up their positions and headed a great army of gold hunters" to the profitable fields.6 To some people in Denver, even Christmas was forgotten as the city filled with hopeful gold seekers and "all west-bound trains were loaded with eager prospectors."7
By late December, Utah had also caught the gold fever Perhaps one reason for the slow start was the vast distances between any real urban area in Utah and the San Juan country. More likely is the fact that Utah's predominantly Mormon population had a deeper set of roots wrapped around family; the LDS church had historically counseled its members not to become involved in get-rich-quick schemes and the rough, migrant lifestyle of mining communities. Towns in the surrounding states did not have this attitude and so perpetuated an ongoing love affair with mineral exploration that adapted easily to new rumors and possible finds.
Other attitudes encouraged the gold fever and found voice in newspapers, boosting circulation by appealing to raw-boned courage as much as to the get-rich-quick-interest of the times Thinly disguised was a growing mystique of the area that challenged the manhood of those attempting to go to San Juan. There were "terrible stories" told of "weird wonders, such as the abodes of the cliff dwellers and the massacre of a half dozen miners by the savage and bloodthirsty Navajos . . and the many strange murders that haunt the memory of this grand canyoned stream . . . whose perpendicular walls defy the exploration of the most daring. This fabled country has a terror that almost freezes the imagination even of a person smitten with the gold fever ."8 Hyperbole was the order of the day.
If the landscape were not frightening enough, the acts of men were One story carried by many of the major papers told of a gun battle on the SanJuan. Differing versions swore that as many as eleven men had been killed and more wounded in a fray that lasted a full day. Forty participants were said to have fired more than a hundred shots Initial reports even named two of the "killed," a George Ferguson and a James Cody (or Cady), known as "Blind Jim."9 Later accounts dropped both the number of dead and the length of the battle but raised the number of shots fired to over 200 Eventually the number of dead dwindled to one.
The fracas arose (as with most mining camp difficulties) over the rightful ownership of a rich gold claim sporting large nuggets Some versions had independent miners fighting workers from the Gable Mining Company while other accounts suggested more of a free-forall among independents. In either case, these stories gave legitimacy to the claim of an immense gold find on the SanJuan, where a series of low-grade quarrels over the discovery of nuggets one day could erupt into violence the next.10
What could be more convincing than an account of blazing guns over treasure in the wilderness? What could be more "western"? Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour could not have written better headlines for public consumption than appeared in the newspapers of the time. Readers learned how "Blood Drips on Gold" and how the participants were "Baptized in Human Gore." Next the paper proclaimed that
In reality, there was not an ounce of truth in the story. Men who were there at the time knew nothing of the incident; no graves could be found; and a month after the supposed battle, newspapers retracted their story, saying the "slaughter of men" had "no foundation in fact whatsoever."12 Still, it would be interesting to know how many men packed their gripsack and headed to the fields because of their faith in the fight.
Besides appealing to the courage and tenacity of prospective diggers, the newspapers provided numerous "true accounts" of the mining operations and the riches obtained by industry. Experts—either through training or experience—corroborated these claims as trustworthy. One such report confidently stated that five-ounce nuggets were occasionally picked up in one mining camp. There was, of course, an eyewitness for all of this. Mr. C. E. Parsell, "a conservative man [with] vast experience [and who was] not of an excitable temperament," testified that there were many one ounce nuggets and many more that ran a quarter to a half ounce each.13
W L Austin, "patentee of the Austin process, for treating rebellious gold and silver ores, and one of the very best metallurgists and geologists in America," rendered his opinion bolstered by scholarly credentials He believed that San Juan was one of the "greatest mineralized sections to be found on this continent."14 The fact that he had a product to sell to miners undoubtedly whetted his enthusiasm
Perhaps the most zealous of all those touting the gold rush were the railroad companies. Whether the miners found gold or not, they would, in most cases, need to use the railroads to get to the jumpingoff points for the gold field Railroad executives knew where gold could be found—in the pockets of those headed for the diggings. The Rio Grande Western, for instance, advertised the San Juan strike at a "lively rate," sending a representative to Montana and Idaho, while their California agents were "to hustle and to sing their little song of the gold-laden San Juan."15
Next, the railroads began a battle over the best route to the gold fields. From the point of view of the Salt Lake Herald, the Rio Grande Western provided the most efficient way into the fields The trip sounded easy. All one had to do was take the train, at the special rate of $8.50, from Salt Lake City to Thompson Springs, some thirty-five miles from the Colorado/Utah border, then follow a good wagon road through Moab to Monticello then Bluff. The train even offered a special rate for pack animals and general outfits.16
Denver papers reported that every railroad company coming into the city had issued a bulletin "with what purports to be a map of the country, showing by some contrivance the fact that their road is the most direct route."17 The Rio Grande Southern, for instance, offered to forge a new path to the gold region. The road would start in Dolores or Mancos, would be 100 miles long, and would have its western terminus at Bluff City, "in the heart of the gold region."18 Nothing ever materialized.
The best route conflict in Utah eventually shrank to two possibilities; one jumping off point was in Salina and the other in Green River. Train travel was possible to both towns, stores catered to the needs of miners, and the printing business boomed as well One newspaper reported that "Salina businessmen have printed 10,000 dodgers, advertising the advantages of that route to the San Juan country."19 The Salt Lake Herald announced that a map would shortly be issued by the Western, showing various routes from Ogden as well as distances by team from Thompson's Spring, Green River station, Salina, and Elsinore.20
Out-of-state boosters followed suit. Albuquerque, Farmington, and Winslow established new stage lines along the Atlantic and Pacific Railway, as did Durango and Dolores, Colorado, on the Denver & Rio Grande. 2 1 The first stage to and from the gold fields returned to Dolores in four days with one coach, six horses, and twenty-one passengers. 22
While much of this excitement was self-perpetuating, there were those who were not fooled A few lone voices in the wilderness would later be able to announce smugly that they had tried to warn the masses, but at this point in the frenzy, few listened. A few examples of these warnings will suffice Cass Hite, a miner who had spent years on the San Juan before the rush, did not believe one word of the fabulous accounts. In a letter to Denver's Republican he tried to set the readership straight by pointing out the impossibility of these claims. Hite believed that any gold found in sedimentary formations was characteristically fine flour gold, that coarse gold did not travel far from its point of origin, and that any gold that had moved a considerable distance may have started out soft and heavy but before long would have been ground to a very light consistency.23
Others joined in trying to stop the "senseless stampede," as one paper called it, while another attacked the "San Juan fake." Eyewitnesses told of spending days on the river with little to show for their efforts, the gold being "so fine and light that so far it has been impossible to gather it."24 One person testified that many of the articles he had read about the gold fields ended with the statement that "the SanJuan is no country for a poor man." He went on to refute this with, "It is the greatest place on earth for a poor man, and the longer he stays there the poorer will he become." 2 5 Still, there was little staunching of the flow of humanity along the river and into the canyons.
Later, some sought revenge for having been fooled. One Dr. Shores grabbed a headline in the Salt Lake Tribune that summarized his story. It read: "Another San Juan Pilgrim Returns—He is Angry and Will Pursue the Author of the Fake." The article referred to him as an "owl" and "a wiser and more satisfied man than when he left three weeks ago." He complained that the SanJuan country was inaccessible and held uncountable hardships, all of which he would have gladly endured if there had been something at the end of his trials. There was not—"not a single redeeming feature." According to the article, the doctor had employed a Pinkerton detective "who will never rest night or day until the miscreant who started the SanJuan craze is brought to justice."26 There was no further report on the progress of the case.
If Shores had reason to be upset, the Utah Navajos had grounds for war. In 1884 President Chester A. Arthur, through executive order, had set aside all of the Utah lands south of the SanJuan River as part of the Navajo Reservation. At the time, no one seemed terribly concerned about what was considered a wasteland. But by 1892 the glint of gold had gilded that picture, setting in motion political events that would return to the public domain that part of the reservation believed to hold precious minerals
Interestingly, on December 28, 1892, only days after the initial news of the "discovery," the Salt Lake Herald reported that a change to the reservation boundary had been made "within the past sixty days." The placement of the land west of 110 degrees longitude back into public use had been "manipulated very quietly by some persons immediately interested in the move. .. . It is presumed that parties have been locating claims in that country and working important discoveries, and that they obtained the influence of prominent men to secure a release."27 A settler in Bluff was even more blunt To him, "It is a great stampede, and I think it has been worked for a purpose."28
The Navajos may not have understood the political shenanigans, but they did understand encroachment. Conflict resolution took two different forms for them. In one instance a man known as Navajo Frank went to Mancos to discuss the issues. According to him, the problem and its solution were clear. The newspapers reported, in a style entertaining to its readers, his broken English Frank is reported to have said,
Although the prose may have amused its readers, the meaning is clear and perceptive.
In response to this announcement, Captain Ben K. Wetherill, a member of the well-known trading family in the Four Corners area, advised compliance with Frank's suggestion and respect for established boundaries. He believed that once the Navajos were aroused they could be dangerous. Wetherill noted that they generally stayed on their lands and that white prospectors should not come onto it. He ended by saying, "Frank talks in earnest, and if there is a feeling against the white men, all the old timers who know anything about the Navajo will keep on the north side of the San Juan."30
Unfortunately, the conciliatory advice on both sides was often ignored. As more whites flooded into the area, the balance of power shifted, decreasing the chances that the Navajos could successfully curtail the white encroachment. A newspaper report dismissed any action by the Navajos as irrelevant because "there are so many white men in the country now that the savages are not feared."31
The Navajos, however, did not sit passively by, ignoring the encroachment upon their lands There was no widespread violence, but there were accounts concerning the trespass of boundaries. One claimed that "the Navajos have driven out every party of prospectors crossing the San Juan River. David Miengies' outfit made their way back on foot, the horses and pack outfit having been run off by the Indians. Miengies says the Indians are massing and mean trouble."32 Another report told of the Indians driving prospectors from the south side of the SanJuan, destroying claim markers and scattering the miners' horses and burros.33 Thus, the Navajos waged an aggressive defensive policy to maintain the lands given to them
Ironically, the most sensational report of Native American violence over mining was one in which no Euro-Americans actually took part The incident arose over a raid organized by Navajo Henry Ever since the rush began, Henry had tried to arouse the Indians, and now he planned to attack the prospectors and any Navajos friendly to their cause. Unfortunately for Henry, he ran into a group of Navajos who did not share his feelings. After pulling a gun on one man, he and his followers became embroiled in a fight that ended in Henry being chopped to pieces with an ax; many of his associates were seriously injured.34 While this incident was atypical, it certainly illustrates how divided the sides could become Once enthusiasm for the rush subsided, however, both the Navajos and the Anglos relaxed their vigilance, and life returned to normal
The prospectors confronted more than angry Navajos in their quest for gold. One aspect of the rush that portrays their determination to overcome physical odds was the transport of men and supplies to the fields. Some methods were ingenious, others dangerous, and still others labor-intensive, but all pitted man against the land. As the rush progressed, a burgeoning network of roads crisscrossed the rough canyon country, skirting the river and slicing across the high desert region of southeastern Utah Roads for horses, pack mules, and, in a few instances, wagons started to appear in some of the most impossible places. Paths snaked up Comb Wash, crossed over Lime Ridge, branched off to Mexican Hat, or continued on to Clay Hills or the mouth of Slickhorn Canyon.
Some routes were death-defying. Take, for instance, the one pioneered by A. C. Honaker and Charles Goodman that went to their mine located at Sheep's Head Bar, fifty miles west of Bluff. The site was almost inaccessible, lying 1,600 feet below the rim of the canyon. But the men used powder and tools to cut a trail to the river with the hope that gold-saving machines could be brought in and the "fun" begin.35 The result of this engineering feat, known as the Honaker Trail, begins about eight miles below Mexican Hat and traverses down the face of the escarpment for two and a half miles. Despite the builders' high hopes, not even pack animals but only humans were able to use the trail.36
Other miners resorted to lowering supplies by rope down the cliffs to the banks below Bert Loper, who came to San Juan in 1893, describes the difficulty in using this system.
In the contest of man against the land, the latter had thrown down an interesting series of challenges.
Miners also brought their equipment and supplies down the river in boats made locally. A. L. Raplee, a miner and oil explorer, later recalled that these craft were about eighteen feet long with a four-andone-half-foot beam, were flat-bottomed, and drew about six inches of water. Trips were made all times of the year, but in the summer it could take fifteen hours to travel twenty-five miles because of the lowered channel, slower current, and numerous sand bars.38
Slowness wasjust one of the problems that Otto J Zahn had in the late spring of 1905. He built a fourteen-foot raft of bits and pieces of drift timber secured with baling wire. On his raft he loaded a 250pound hopper and launched off, alone, into the flood water for his placer camp fifteen miles downstream. His only steering device was a thirty-foot rope that he would pull against when the current ran his craft ashore. After he dislodged the boat, he would hop aboard until it ran aground again.39
Walter E. Mendenhall and Alonzo A. Savage had similar problems. They built a boat fourteen feet long, three and a half feet wide, with a draft of eight inches. Mendenhall also constructed a small raft, but he did not load it, intending to use it for an elevator or pump on the edge of the river. As the miners traveled downstream, the raft hit a submerged rock and became fastened so solidly that they had to disassemble the craft in order to dislodge it. The voyagers arrived in camp, built their water elevator known as a "Chinese pump" on the edge of the river, and believed their effort would bear fruit It did, for three or four days. Then a flood descended one night and washed the elevator and framework down the river before the men could save any of it. At that point, it was back to the pan and rocker.40
A few of the miners even managed to go up the river against a strong current, using poles, oars, and ropes. Frank H. Karnell remembers building a boat in Bluff, filling it with one thousand pounds of supplies, and floating it down to his camp above Mexican Hat. He used the same boat for making his wayupriver, two to three miles at a time, to work various placer sites on the gravel bars. At one point, he and his partners used three boats to ply the SanJuan; they were not alone Frank recalled twenty groups sailing past him at different times during this period.41 Few, if any, of these travelers ever brought their boats back to Bluff, the point of origin.
The exact number of miners along the San Juan during this period will never be known. As newspapers estimated that the area held enough gold and land to employ ten thousand miners, eager participants poured in from every direction. Near the height of the rush an estimated two thousand to three thousand men, "with more arriving every day,"worked their sites Other estimates vary from a low of seven hundred to a high of five thousand, with one person claiming that on NewYear's Day alone one thousand miners passed through Bluff.42
Charlie O. Parker reported through the Salt Lake Tribune that the Gable Company had more than 250 men working for it. But after a few days of work, employees would quit, so the company could only hold on to its "broke men, as everybody with a few dollars is out staking off claims." Parker went on to estimate that there were then 3,000 men working along the river and that he knew of one man who sold out his claim to a Denver company for $10,000.43
By March most of the boomers had left the diggings to the more determined and affluent miners. Yet somewhere between the boosterism and bleak reality lay a partial success. Buck Ames and two other men worked 62 hours on a claim fifty miles below Bluff and earned $5 a day;44 a Mr. Rowen from Salt Lake City brought to Mancos $1,440 worth of gold dust taken out with a rocker from a sandbar about thirty miles below Bluff;45 and "C.H. Hollett of the San Juan country is in Ogden, and . . . has in his possession two small bottles of gold valued at between $50 and $60, which he panned out in three days."46
William Hyde reported the amount of gold in San Juan sand by pointing out that typically a "pan of dirt [would] wash out in which he counted seventy colors with his naked eye."47 A few months later, Walter Mendenhall averaged a dollar per yard of gravel that he ran through his gold-saving machinery; he estimated that within a year he had taken out four or five thousand dollars' worth And Bennett Bishop believed that during this same period fifty men along the river were pulling wages of from ten to twenty-five dollars a day in gold.48 There appeared to bejust enough gold to sustain a level of enthusiasm for hopefuls and diehards, with reports of wealth continuing to flow for years to come. The shifting sands and gravel beds of the river always held possibilities. In 1898 an article in the Mancos Times reported that "397 pennyweight of San Juan Gold" was shipped in from Bluff. Headlines in 1904 announced a similar transaction when a "half pint of gold" was brought in byJames Hyde, a Bluff merchant. A year later mining engineers publicly announced that in "over two hundred tests made in bars covering a distance of nearly 20 miles along the SanJuan River, not a single barren pan of dirt was found."49
Most incredible of all was a newspaper article entitled "How Gold Nuggets Grow," which stated that when gold was left in its natural environment, it attracted other gold particles and grew in size. Examples of this phenomenon had been "observed" in mines in California. The article closed by speculating that people might abandon regular farming to establish gold farms where they would grow nuggets for a crop. 50 In the goldfields, hope sprang eternal.
The traditional "lost" mine also engendered hope, and San Juan had its own. The story revolves around Indianan Samuel Brooks, who came to southeastern Utah to earn his fortune. He went to the Comb Wash area and set up camp along one of the intermittent streams. Lady Luck bedded down with him; in a few days he found uncharacteristically large nuggets on top of the ground in a dry gravel wash Exuberant with his find, he took his samples to Bluff to buy supplies The test on the majority of his nuggets proved them to be fool's gold. However, after a second trip with another batch of minerals, he had positive proof of what he had come for—gold.
When Brooks returned to his camp, he noticed that a pile of rejected fool's gold had been taken by two individuals wearing moccasins. Concerned for his welfare, he began carrying a weapon and keeping close watch on the surrounding area. In the meantime, a well-known Paiute from the area, Posey, attempted to trade gold nuggets to a Bluff storekeeper who recognized them as the same fool's gold that he had tested earlier
Brooks continued to pick up his nuggets, gathering more than one hundred pounds. Then one night, while preparing his meal, he was ambushed, but he managed to get under cover and stop the bleeding. After some time, three Indians, with weapons ready, approached the camp Brooks shot one; the other two escaped unscathed, but his action earned him enough time to pack his stash and gear on twoanimals and set out for Bluff. There, the settlers cared for his infected wounds.
Brooks had had enough, and so with his gold he headed back to Indiana. However, before leaving he described to friends the area of his discovery. He said that it was south of Bluff in Comb Wash, around Chinle and Walker Creeks—"about four miles this side of that great rock that looks like a church; [from there] you turn into them sawtoothed ridges."51 Brooks drew a map that later proved to be difficult to follow; then he took his gold, went east, and bought a large farm where he spent the remainder of his days. John Nance heard of Brooks's story and decided to try his hand. Three weeks later he returned to Bluff with the same type of gold nuggets that Brooks had found. Unfortunately, Nance went to Holbrook, Arizona, with his gold and was killed in a saloon brawl without ever telling anyone about the location of his strike.52 Exactly howmuch credence can be given to the "lost mine" stories remains for the reader to determine.
The real question for most miners did not concern the location of a lost gold mine but rather how to wrest flour gold from the San Juan. Traditional panning methods tantalized but never produced sufficient wealth to hold the freelance miner. One ingenious individual went back to an expensive yet ancient technique of placing cattle hides hair side up in the shallow part of the stream flow. When water ladened with silt washed over the hide, it deposited its heavier load. After a few days the miner removed the skin, then dried and burned it, recovering the gold from the ashes. Reportedly, he obtained a full pound of gold from this process, but it cost him thousands of dollars. Both expense and effort proved to be too much to sustain this operation.53
As in countless other attempts to obtain wealth from the landscape, the situation called for better, more sophisticated technology and more investment capital to sustain the operation. New methods for extracting gold were as numerous and distinctive as the names that graced the equipment. Some of the titles of these gold-saving machines taken from newspaper accounts over the years include: the Straum Machine, the Mendenhall Machine, the Kennedy Gold Saving Machine, the Bennett Amalgamator, thejessup Machine, the Austin Process, the Ernsberger Machine, the Automatic Gold Separator, the Fitzgerald, and the Comet Amalgamator.
Thus, in a land that freely provided nothing, it took green dollars to milk wealth from the brown waters of the SanJuan Beyond the traditional pan, rocker, and sluice box, the second phase of mineral extraction began in early 1894. By this time the get-rich-quick boomers were gone It was now technology's turn to pit itself against the resources of a stingy land.
Two men, D. H. Lemmon and Major J. W Hanna, serve as examples of those who put their money where their faith was. The two men used a Kennedy machine that required an engine both to pump water from the river fifty feet away and to separate gravel from the high bars above the river bank. Sand and silt in the water clogged the filters and quickly wore out the packings on the pump Yet the miners wanted this sand because it held the gold. At one point, Hanna believed "the finest sand is no more nor less than a gold quartz." In order to retrieve it, he considered using a cyanide mill, but no further mention is made of this deadly chemical being utilized for mineral extraction.54 The experimenting went on By August 1894 Lemmon and Hanna had completed extensive testing of the large gravel beds along the river and had chosen a spot near Bluff. There they placed two Kennedy machines and "an electroplate of large capacity" that were said to save all the gold that funneled through them.55 The men believed they could process between 200 and 250 cubic yards of gravel a day at a value of over fifty cents per cubic yard.
In September Major Hanna pronounced himself a success In a newspaper interview he declared he had spent $7,000 in experimentation over a year's time. He estimated that there were now two hundred men along the river working both the high and low banks for seventy miles downstream. "A man with a rocker made out of candle box makes $3 to $7 a day With improved machinery he can do better."56 Hanna went on to describe his operation on the high sand bars. Wheel scrapers pushed boulders and sand to the machine where the large rocks then fell through to the river while the sand passed through three sets of screens. A copper plate with quicksilver amalgamated the gold, saving it for further processing. According to Hanna, at this point in the venture he had recouped his expenses. 57
Hanna and Lemmon would mine for a few more years, but they eventually gave in to defeat Others, such as Charles Spencer in the early 1900s, would take up the banner of gold, swearing that crushing rock, dredging the river, and amalgamating chemically held the solution to the problem.58 However, more expensive schemes and greater technological investment still could not wrench enough precious metal out of the river to make it pay. Machines reported to process fifty cubic yards a day were to be replaced with multiples of machines that could do a hundred cubic yards daily. At one point Spencer estimated that eventually these river sites would be churning out $5,000 worth of gold a day. But Spencer, like Hanna, was good for only a few years before he also climbed out of the business.
While men and machines worked along the river and found poverty, the people upstream prospered. The peaceful Mormon town of Bluff assumed a bustling, mercantile atmosphere as the demand for goods of all types increased. Freighting from Mancos, Cortez, and Durango took on new proportions as everything from clothes, tools, and food for miners, as well as hay for horses, poured into the community. While overland freighters held the lion's share of the business, some goods arrived by boat from Farmington—a trip that in itself would have been an adventure
Close on the heels of the gold-seekers came alcohol, gambling, and other vices that the Mormon citizenry felt obligated to curtail Albert R Lyman, a young boy at the time, watched the drama of "good and evil" unfold. When a load of whiskey arrived in town, the Bluff City fathers purchased it from a would-be saloonkeeper, locked it in an old shoe shop away from the thirsty throats of a gathering clientele, then made the mistake of letting an outsider ascertain the kegs' location in the building. That night, a man crawled under the store, drilled through the floor, punctured the barrels, and filled the jugs passed to him by the waiting crowd. Lyman reports, "The plot worked like a charm, and before morning, more drunken men wallowed in the streets than Bluff ever saw before or since."59
While "evil" triumphed in the streets of Bluff that morning, Lyman was later able to witness the "good." An entry in his diary dated December 30, 1893, recorded, "Pa baptized a man today. The boom brought him in and he has stayed ever since That boom brought many men to the sound of the gospel Five of them have been baptized; thus we see the hand of the Lord in all things—that He ruled over the SanJuan boom for God."60
Even MarshalJoe Bush appreciated the swelling influx of humanity along the river Having chased desperadoes for years in this rugged terrain, he saw these new people as an aid in doing his job Bush believed that "this stampede will be a God-send to the country, as it would ultimately rid it of those objectionable characters" that had for so long escaped justice.61
Thus, at least a few people could spot the golden lining in the mirage of the San Juan craze. There were far more who did not. As disappointed miners wended their way out of the canyon country and left a handful of diehards behind to continue the search, there was a good deal of bitterness. The boom that went bust had taken a toll on their wallets, time, and energy. Perhaps some of these men even carried a copy of Shakespeare's Much Ado and agreed with one of the final lines: "Man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion." And in agreement, the river just rolled on.
NOTES
Robert S McPherson teaches history at the College of Eastern Utah-San Juan Campus and is on the editorial advisory board of Utah Historical Quarterly. Richard Kitchen received his MA in history from Brigham Young University and is currently working on his Ph.D at Arizona State University.
1 C. Gregory Crampton, historical Sites in the Glen Canyon Mouth of the San Juan River to Lee's Ferry. Anthropological papers #46 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, June 1960).
2 Salt Lake Tribune, December 28, 1893
3 Deseret News, December 13, 1892
4 Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1892
5 Salt Lake Herald, December 16, 1892
6 Salt Lake Tribune, December 24, 1892
7 Salt Lake Herald, December 25, 1892
8 Ibid., December 18, 1892
9 Ibid., December 29, 1892
10 Ibid., January 9, 1893
11 Salt Lake Tribune, December 29, 1892
12 Ibid., January 23, 1893
13 Salt Lake Herald, December 31, 1892
14 Mancos Times (Colorado), September 21, 1894
15 Salt Lake Tribune,January 3, 1893
16 Salt Lake Herald, December 22, 1892
17 Ibid., December 25, 1892
18 Ibid., January 5, 1893.
19 Ibid., January 8, 1893
20 Ibid., December 22, 1892
21 Salt Lake Tribune, December 24, 1892
22 Salt Lake Herald, January 5, 1893
23 Ibid., January 10, 1893
24 Ibid., January 18, 1893; Salt Lake Tribune, January 27, 1893
25 Salt Lake Tribune, January 30, 1893
26 Ibid., January 24, 1893
27 Salt Lake Herald, December 28, 1892
28 Ibid., January 18, 1893, reprint of letter to Joseph A. Young from Platte D. Lyman.
29 Salt Lake Tribune, December 26, 1892
30 Ibid., December 26, 1892
31 Ibid., January 8, 1893
32 Ibid., January 18, 1893
33 Ibid., January 17, 1893.
34 Ibid., January 29, 1893
35 Mancos Times, March 16, 1894
36 D L Baars, Geology of the Canyonsof the SanJuan River (Durango: Four Corners Geological Society, 1974), 79.
37 Bert Loper testimony, Colorado River Bed Case, microfilm, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah, 969-70
38 Albert R Lyman, "History of SanJuan County, 1879-1917," Special Collections, Harold B Lee Library, Brigham Young University, 78 A L Raplee testimony, September 1929, Colorado River Bed Case, 196
39 Otto J Zahn testimony, September 1929, Colorado River Bed Case, 867-68
40 Walter A Mendenhall testimony, October 1929, Colorado River Bed Case, 1599-1600
41 Frank H. Karnell testimony, November 1929, Colorado River Bed Case, 1764-1767.
42 Mancos Times, February 9, 1894; Bryant L.Jensen, "An Historical Study of Bluff City, Utah, from 1878 to 1906" (M.A thesis, Brigham Young University), 77-78
43 Salt Lake Tribune, January 19, 1893
44 Mancos Times, March 16, 1894
45 Ibid., March 9, 1894.
46 Salt Lake Herald, December 29, 1892
47 Mancos Times, November 24, 1893.
48 Ibid.; Walter Mendenhall testimony, October 1929, Colorado River Bed Case, 1613; Mancos Times, August 3, 1894.
49 Mancos Times, January 28, 1898; October 21, 1904; March 17, 1906.
50 Montezuma Journal, August 28, 1903.
51 Brooks's directions were confusing then and now Perhaps some clarity can be achieved by noting that Comb Ridge extends from start to finish for approximately 100 miles, beginning at Blue Mountain and terminating around Kayenta, Arizona The area known as Comb Wash today is on the north side of the river, but Brooks's directions seem to place his find on the south side near the "churchlike" Mule Ear Diatreme. This igneous formation is well-known for its garnets, which, like gold, are associated with igneous rock and not the sedimentary sandstone, the region's predominant rock This location makes Brooks's story more believable, but there is little evidence that gold actually exists there in any abundance.
52 "A Report of Gold In Comb Wash" (author unknown), a typed manuscript in possession of the authors
53 Mrs E.J (Billie) Yost to Otis Marston, December 5, 1955, correspondence in possession of authors Yost was writing about the experiences of her father, William F Williams, during the gold rush era.
54 Mancos Times, March 30, 1894; April 20, 1894.
55 Ibid., July 6, 1894; August 17, 1894
56 Ibid., September 21, 1894
57 While this process with the copper plate is not entirely clear, part of the operation was based on a well-established practice: quicksilver—mercury—dissolves the gold into an amalgam, and then the mercury is removed either chemically (nitric acid) or with heat The gold remains behind
58 Mancos Times-Tribune, February 7, 1906; Denver Post, July 29, 1907; Mancos Times-Tribune, January 5, 1912, April 5, 1912
59 Albert R Lyman, "History of San Juan County 1879-1917," Special Collections, HBL Library, Brigham Young University, 77-78
60 Albert R Lyman, "Diary," Special Collections, HBL Library, Brigham Young University
61 Salt Lake Tribune, January 14, 1893
