Lost Josephine Gold Mine Discovered in Utah

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The following is taken from Utah History to Go.




Miriam B. Murphy

Beehive History 16

Gold can be found in trace amounts in almost all rocks and even in ocean water, but finding it in quantities large enough to make mining profitable is rare. Erosion often washes gold out of surface rocks. Gold particles are about seven times heavier than rock particles of a similar size. As a result, nuggets and flakes of gold tend to sink to the bottom of water-deposited gravel and sand, especially in stream-beds. This gold is recovered using placer mining techniques. Lode mining, or hard-rock mining, recovers gold from veins or reefs that extend underground. The gold-bearing rock is removed from the mine using pick and shovel, blasting, and other methods.

Placer mining, widely used by the Forty-niners during the California gold rush and in the Yukon, was rare in Utah with a few notable exceptions, including Bingham Canyon. Precious metals were initially discovered in the Oquirrh Mountains by brothers Thomas and Sanford Bingham in 1848-49. More important to the history of mining were the discoveries made in that area on September 17, 1863, by men and women associated with the California Volunteers stationed at Fort Douglas and other individuals. They organized the West Mountain Mining District, the first in Utah, and staked numerous claims. Placer mining in Bingham Canyon began in 1865, and by 1871 a reported $1 million in gold had been taken from these claims.

Gold in Southeastern Utah

The most extensive use of various placer mining techniques occurred in southeastern Utah where prospectors began finding placer deposits of gold in the 1880s. Although stories of lost Spanish mines and secret Navajo mines in that area persist, the first gold rush in southeastern Utah began in 1883 after Cass Hite found placer gold in Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. On December 3, 1883, Hite, Lewis P. Brown, and seven others organized the Henry Mountains Mining District. Four years later Hite helped organize the White Canyon Mining District. Unfortunately, the gold found by prospectors along the Colorado River was very fine, making it extremely difficult to recover.

Cass Hite

Jack Sumner and Jack Butler found gold in the Bromide Basin on Mount Ellen in the Henry Mountains in 1889 and started another gold rush. A town called Eagle City boomed and busted quickly when the gold ran out. In 1892 discoveries in the LaSal and Abajo mountains triggered another gold rush, followed by news of gold in the San Juan River country.

Hundreds of individual prospectors panned and sluiced with great difficulty in the slickrock country with only limited success. Lack of water, except in the major rivers, made placer mining difficult, if not impossible. The Hoskaninni Company built a huge gold dredging works in Glen Canyon at the turn of the century, and the Zahn Mining Company ran the largest placer operation on the San Juan River in the early 1900s. All these efforts, small and great, produced little gold during the heyday of the southeastern Utah gold rushes, 1883-1911.

Tooele's Gold

Lode mining for gold was more successful. Two Tooele County mining areas are known for their gold. Mercur, one of the most important mining towns in Utah, did not fully exploit its gold ores until the 1890s when a cyanide processing plant was built there. When ore is crushed and treated with cyanide, the gold dissolves and can later be refined to produce almost pure gold. Daniel C. Jackling, Utah's copper king, and George H. Dern, mining engineer and later governor of Utah, were two of the major figures associated with the development of Mercur. After years of inactivity in Mercur, improved technology has periodically allowed gold to be extracted from old mine and mill tailings there when the price of gold has risen high enough to make such processing profitable.

Gold Hill on Utah's western border enjoyed a much shorter life as a gold mining town. The Clifton Mining District was organized in the area in 1889 and the town of Gold Hill established in 1892. As is so often the case with mining towns, Gold Hill's mines failed to produce as much of the gleaming metal as its founders had hoped. However, two world wars created a national need for the arsenic and tungsten found in great abundance at Gold Hill, and the town enjoyed waves of mild prosperity.

Piute County was the scene of another gold rush. The Gold Mountain Mining District and its central town of Kimberly flourished in the early 20th century. The Annie Laurie Mine was a famous gold producer. In 1902 a new cyanide mill in Kimberly processed 250 tons of ore a day. According to George A. Thompson, writing in the Frontier Times of June-July 1974, Gold from Kimberly's mines was shipped in bars 6"x10"x10" valued at over $20,000 each, on the Shepard Brothers Stages to the railroad in Sevier, eighteen miles to the northeast. The heavy yellow bars were stacked on the floor of the stagecoach, between the passengers' feet. An armed guard always rode ahead of the coach.

But Kimberly, too, enjoyed only a short if gaudy career. Its boom was over by 1907.

A Major Gold State

As shortlived as Utah's gold rushes have been, the state nevertheless continues to produce gold in impressive amounts. In 1944 Utah gold amounted to 34.5 percent of the U.S. total. In 1983, Utah mines produced 238,459 troy ounces of gold valued at $101,107,000 and amounting to 12.2 percent of the total U.S. production. Gold production dropped sharply in 1985, the last year for which data is currently available.

For the most part Utah's gold production has never been keyed to great finds of free gold in placer deposits or rich lodes underground. In Utah, gold is most often found in the same ore bodies that produce silver, lead, zinc, and copper. The Bingham copper mine, for example, has been a steady producer of gold for many decades; and in their heyday the mines of Park City and Juab County's Tintic Mining District produced large amounts of gold in addition to their silver and other metals. In mining and refining copper and silver--historically the most important metals in Utah's economy--mine owners have come as close as one can outside of fairy tales to possessing a goose that lays golden eggs.

Utah Gold Production

Selected Years Ounces*  Value 1870  14,512 $ 300,000 1890 32,895 $ 680,000 1900 192,155 $3,972,200 1920  97,454      $2,014,600 1940 355,494 $12,442,300 1960 368,255 $12,888,900 1983 238,459 $101,107,000 1985 135,489 $43,039,000 *Troy ounces from 1946 on.

The explorers and surveyors of the American West are an august company that includes the great Lewis and Clark as well as a host of other renowned pathfinders. Men like Fremont, Long, Stansbury, Pike, Abert, and Beale opened up the west as surely as the mountain men who preceded them and the sutlers and traders who followed them. One of the most promising of these early explorers and surveyors was an Army engineer and West Point graduate named John W. Gunnison.

The idea of an intercontinental railroad stretching from coast to coast was not new in 1853. Fremont’s expeditions during the 1840’s were focused on finding the best route through the mountains for a railroad. In 1853, when an expedition was mounted to survey the west-central portion of Utah, John Gunnison was a natural choice to lead the party. His credentials were impeccable. He had cut his teeth as a surveyor for the Stansbury Expedition in 1849 and he knew the central Utah area well. Gunnison assumed command of the party, which included two survivors from Fremont’s disastrous fourth expedition of 1848, Richard Kern and Frederick Creutzfeldt. Kern was the expedition’s artist and topographer while Creutzfeldt served as botanist. The Gunnison expedition entered Utah Territory in the fall of 1853, passing through the town of Manti on its way to Fillmore. From Fillmore, the party traveled west, reaching the Gunnison Bend of the Sevier River, southwest of present-day Delta. To the west, Gunnison could see the wrinkled peaks of the House Range rising up from the Sevier Valley. To the southwest, he could see the meandering course of the Sevier River as it disappeared toward Sevier Lake. This was a good place. They made camp.

The following morning, the Gunnison Expedition awoke to the sounds of war cries and rifle shots. The end had come. A band of 30 or so Pahvant Indians descended upon the hapless explorers, killing all but four of the party. The dead included the leader, John Gunnison, and the two veterans from Fremont’s expedition, Kern and Creutzfeldt.

As he gazed westward the evening before the massacre, Gunnison may have been contemplating a route through the House Range into the Tule Valley beyond. The House Range stretches some 60 miles in a north-south direction and forms the western boundary of Sevier Valley. It extends from Sand Pass southward to the Wah-Wah Valley. Along its entire length the range is no more than 10 miles wide. House Range is transected by three major passes. Dome Canyon Pass is the northernmost pass, Marjum Canyon lies eight miles to the south, and Skull Rock Pass, south of Sawtooth Mountain, forms the southernmost and main portal through the range.

The House Range still holds many secrets. Prospectors have roamed these mountains for over two centuries. Evidence of early Spanish mining activity still occasionally surfaces. Caches of old Spanish tools and mining equipment have been discovered in the central part of the range, near the only major gold-producing area in the entire county.

Millard County has never been a major producer of gold. Only 500 ounces are officially recorded for the county. Most of this production hails from the small placer deposits of the House Range. Located in North Canyon and Miller Canyon, the gold placers were worked extensively during the 1930’s. Surely more than 500 ounces of gold were taken from the two canyons during the depression years, not to mention the efforts of the early Spaniards in the area. One story in particular has come down to us regarding an incredibly rich placer deposit somewhere in the House Range. In a single transaction, the discoverer of this placer sold more than 300 ounces of gold – 60% of the total recorded production for the entire county! The discovery occurred sometime during the late 1930’s. A Mexican sheepherder working in the House Range stumbled upon a glory hole of placer gold somewhere on the slopes of the mountains. The deposit must have been rich for the Mexican turned up in the nearby town of Delta with several sacks of fine gold dust. On one of his visits, the sheepherder sold more than 20 pounds of gold to a local doctor. Of course, the Mexican never revealed the location of his find and soon dropped out of sight. He was never seen again. Prospectors have searched the House Range for many years but the Mexican’s lost placer remains hidden to this day.

Shared Courtesy of:  dailyoddsandends

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 https://dailyoddsandends.wordpress.com/category/utah/

Utah…Lost Treasure….The Lost House Range Placers..

Posted on November 5, 2015 by 1stminstrel

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Joseph Seely Former Mayor Dies Suddenly

Mt. Pleasant Pyramid

January 8, 1932

George Johansen Funeral Program

Home of Henry McKenna Sr. and wife Charstie Olsen ~ Researched and Compiled by Tudy Barentsen Standlee

(added by Kathy Hafen)

A Letter of Congratulations from Mrs. H. C. Jacobs (Bertie) to Maggie Erickson

On the occasion of Maggie Ericksen and Peter Azel Peel's Engagement

*from the Alice Peel Hafen Collection*

Home of Neils Peter Madsen and wife Carolena (Caroline) Frandsen ~~~Researched and Compiled by Tudy Barentsen Standlee

The Lives of Six Pioneer Girls

Becky Bartholomew
History Blazer, September 1996

The life stories of six cousins--Clarissa Wilcox, Martha Wilcox, Mabel Wilcox, Luella Hurst, Ida Hurst, and Mary Young--born in three Utah towns between 1863 and 1893 reveal what it was like to be a girl growing up in pioneer Utah.

First memories: Martha was only five years old when someone came to the house to tell her mother that Mormon president Brigham Young had died. Martha remembered that moment all her life.

Clarissa received her first pair of buttoned shoes at age five. Her father, a shoemaker, cut them out of the bootlegs of a man's discarded hightops because leather was so scarce.

As a young girl Luella was afraid of the Indians who went house to house begging. Actually, Utah Indians by that time were friendly, but Luella had heard stories from male relatives about the Indian wars of previous decades, and they filled her with imaginary terrors.

Play: When not helping their mothers, the girls played games they called nip-cat, pomp pomp pull-away, Sister Parute, and rounders (a ball game). They also played hide-and-seek in the sagebrush.

Treats: For treats the girls ate parched field corn and homemade molasses candy. As an old woman Clarissa confessed, "I couldn't stand to eat another bit [of molasses candy] to this day." They also gathered grass and shrubs on which honeydew had condensed during the night and then boiled it down into a sweet syrup. As they grew older and went to community dances; the girls sometimes went at intermission to buy crackers, cheese, and tinned salmon for refreshments.

Clothing: In warm weather small pioneer children mostly went barefoot, especially in towns like Moab where they could not have kept the sand out of their shoes anyway when they went to fetch a bucket of water.

Their mothers made all the families' clothing. In summer the girls wore calico dresses (not slacks or shorts) and in winter dresses made of a homespun material they called "lindsey" (actually linsey-woolsey). One girl's mother would get up early on winter mornings and warm the children's clothes on the stove.

Clarissa somehow got the idea that the only dress appropriate for special occasions was black satin. One year her mother made her a black satin dress, and for the rest of Clarissa's life she always owned such a dress. The year before she died her granddaughter made her a maroon satin dress. It took some persuading before Clarissa agreed to wear non-black.

Work: Martha, when eight years old, was sent on an urgent errand. But on the way she met a friend, and they lallygagged until Martha's mother finally sent someone else. When Martha got home, fully expecting to be punished, her mother just told her to go and play. Martha felt so bad she told her mother she needed "a good licking." So her mother sent her to cut a fresh willow stick. Martha brought back a green one, and her mother gave her several stinging lashes. When Martha yelped, her mother asked, "What's the matter? Didn't I give you enough?" Martha answered, "I didn't think you would whip me so hard." "Well," said her mother, "you asked for it."

At age nine or 10 the girls got their introduction to serious work. Mabel, as the oldest daughter in her family, and Ida, because her mother was a midwife and gone frequently, took over most of their families' household duties: cooking, cleaning, scrubbing clothes on a washboard, milking cows, and tending the younger children. Early morning and late evening work was done by the light of coal-oil lamps.

By age 10, especially if there were few boys in the family, the girls began to help in the fields. At first they weeded or dug potatoes, then (for 25 cents a day) gleaned the wheat after the harvesters had gone through. By age 14 they were able to help shock bundles of grain or hire out in other peoples' homes. Since her mother died when Martha was 13, she spent her teenage years cooking and keeping house for her father and older brothers.

Schooling: School was held only a few months a year in one-room, log schoolhouses. The girls started at about age seven and usually quit by 13 or 14 to work. Most did not go past the eighth grade, but they learned the skills needed to survive in their day.

By today's standards these six cousins had hard lives. They could not even go to the store and buy material to make their own clothes. But they had loving families, lots of friends, and games and dances to enjoy.

Source: Histories of Clarissa Jane Wilcox Meiling, Martha Anna Wilcox Westwood Foy, Mabel Wilcox Johnson, Alice Luella Hurst Nielson, Ida Susannah Hurst Patten, and Mary Ethel Young George; in Montel and Kathryn Seely, Seely History, vol. 2 (Provo: Community Press, 1996).

Mabel Wilcox - From The Lives of Six Pioneer Girls

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Mt. Pleasant's Own Red and White Store

Mt. Pleasant's Own Red and White

The following comes from Wikipedia:

This Red and White Spice Tin

sells for $84 on Ebay 

Red and White stores were independent grocery stores in small towns. The company did centralized buying and distribution for the small stores to allow them to compete against large chains that were consolidating their power in the 1920s. All members of this group had the words Red and White as part of their names, usually with the owner's name or town name as well. The firm started around 1925.The corporation Red and White, headquartered in Chicago procured branded products for the independent grocery stores. The headquarters were located at the Mercantile Exchange   Building at 308 West Washington Street. 

The Old Rock Barn Caved In Finally ~ Barn of Niels Christensen and Wife Melvina Johansen ~ Researched by Tudy Barentsen Standlee

Depot Closes ~ Mt. Pleasant Pyramid June 1976

Donna Graham Brunger Passed Away

Donna Graham Brunger was born in Mt. Pleasant, Utah to Loyal and Ellen Vida Seeley Graham April 12, 1929. She left this life peacefully on February 26, 2016. She spent most of her life in Milburn then in Mt. Pleasant the last few years of her life.

She graduated from North Sanpete High School, Snow College and Brigham Young University. She earned a degree in social work and psychology when she was 47 years old. She worked at the sewing plant in Mount Pleasant and the turkey plant in Moroni to earn money for her tuition. She was a counselor at Central Utah Counseling Center for twenty years. She married Norman (Tommy) Brunger, January 1948. They were later divorced.

Reading, sewing, gardening, farming, and church service were some of her interests and hobbies. She had a driving ambition to write a history book about the north end of Sanpete County titled “Milburn and Its World.” In 2000, she developed health problems but continued to see it completed. She was an active member of the LDS Church and gave service two different times as a Relief Society President as well as served in many other ward and stake auxiliaries.

She is survived by four children: Paulette (Michael) Park, West Jordan, UT; Tom L (Mary) Brunger, Orem, UT; Randy Ray Brunger, Mount Pleasant, UT; Annette (Steven) Muir, Solon Ohio; 10 grandchildren and 18 great grandchildren. Brother, Grant E. (Shirley) Graham, West Jordan, UT; and sister-in-law Darlene Steusher Graham Bullough, West Valley, UT.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Loyal and Ellen Vida Seeley, brother Berkley and four sisters, Baby, Alice, Marie, and Vida Loy Graham.

Viewing will be at the LDS Church, 1465 West Bristol Ridge Drive (8420 South) in West Jordan, UT at 9:30 a.m. The funeral service will be 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at the same location. Interment at Fairview City Cemetery at 3:00 p.m. under the direction of Broomhead Funeral Home.
In lieu of flowers, Donna requested donations given to a worthy charity in her name.SERVICES
Visitation

Saturday, March 05, 2016
9:30 AM

LDS Church
1465 West Bristol Ridge Dr. (8420 South)
West Jordan, Utah

Get Directions on Google Maps




Funeral Service

Saturday, March 05, 2016
10:30 AM

LDS Church
1465 West Bristol Ridge Dr. (8420 South)
West Jordan, Utah

 

MT. PLEASANT-- The Mt. Pleasant Pioneer Association has chosen to spotlight Donna Brunger for her hours of faithful volunteer work she performs at the Mt. Pleasant Relic Home.
Brunger was born in Mt. Pleasant April 12, 1929, to Vida and Loyal Graham. She attended Fairview schools, was valedictorian at Fairview Junior High School and again at North Sanpete High School. The honor earned her a scholarship to Brigham Young University (BYU). She graduated from Snow College in 1971 and from BYU in 1974 in social work and psychology.


She raised her family of four children, Paulette, Tom, Randy and Annette, in Milburn. Brunger worked for Central Utah Counseling Center for 20 years, taught at Snow College, served as chair for March of Dimes and cancer fundraisers, is a member of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and served twice as Relief Society and LDS Stake Primary president.

Brunger has written short stories published in the Ensign and Sanpete Saga. At the present time, she is writing a history of Milburn in northern Sanpete. She has been a faithful volunteer at the Relic Home since about 1999 and is currently there on Fridays, assisting in going through old local newspapers and making copies of obituaries to go in a file.

Stubby And Friends ~ From the Alice Hafen Collection

L to R:  Stubby,  Joanne Hafen, Cameron Maxwell, Tommy Ericksen, Donald Hafen, Peter Hafen

History of Martha Christine Gottfredson Tuft ~ Pioneer of the Month March 2016

Jens and Karen Pedersen Gottfredsen

George TUFT died on December 1, 1897, in Sanpete County, Utah, when he was 50 years old.

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The address below ( 85 East 100 South)  is wrong.  

The correct address is 306 E. 100 S.

also see:
http://mtpleasantpioneerofthemonth.blogspot.com/search/label/Gottfredson