The Railroad-Tracks-in-Space Mine

Over the past few days some of the history of the "Railroad Tracks in Space" mine has emerged, with the help of old maps, a 1902 CA Bureau of Mines report, and the Internet.

This is the mine with nearly-level ore-cart runs running along the side of Fulda Canyon, near Lost Camp, and within the 600 acres owned by Siller Brothers lumber company, where a massive and monstrous timber harvest is planned. Lost Camp is a ghost town, embedded within a complex of hydraulic mines, in Section 23 of T16N, R11 E. The Railroad Tracks in Space, which is properly known as the Red Rock Mine, is in adjacent Section 24, just to the east.

The country rock is steeply-dipping strata of the Shoo Fly Complex, the oldest rocks in the Sierra, here metasediments, along the lines of meta-sandstone, meta-shale, with some chert. It is called a "complex" because it is not one discrete formation, but several. The nearly vertical strata strike north and south and have endured several episodes of deformation. Here they have been intruded by a system of quartz veins which follow the north-south strike, which veins must likely be assigned to that same system which is also found farther west, on the flanks of Sawtooth Ridge and within Humbug Canyon. Many "hard-rock" mines exploited these gold-bearing quartz veins, most notably, the Rawhide Mine and the Pioneer Mine. The source of the quartz may have been the granitic plutons to the north and east, visible around Lake Spaulding and Loch Leven Lakes, which intruded the Shoo Fly and other metamorphic rocks in the Jurassic or Cretaceous.

So much for the geology. Now for the historical evidence.

Around 1900 the first good topographic maps of this part of the Sierra were published, and the renowned Waldemar Lindgren used this topographic base to complete a geologic map of the same region. On Lindgren's map one sees the body of Eocene river gravels at Lost Camp, and, just to the east, a red stripe running north and south, denoting a quartz vein, with a crossed pick-and-shovel symbol, denoting a mine, and the words, "Red Rock."

The CA Bureau of Mines published a "Report of the State Minerologist" in 1902 which lists many of the mines in California, county by county, with tables of information. Here we find the Red Rock Mine to have had a water-powered, ten-stamp mill; a workforce of four men; the mine superintendent being one N.B. Willey; and the owner(s) in Philadelphia. The mine is listed as patented, that is, the lands there had passed from public to private ownership, in a process which involved demonstrating a viable commercial potential for the mineral deposit.

Not all mining claims were patented. For instance, at Gold Run, more than half of the dozens of claims were patented, the rest were not, and it is those unpatented claims which comprise the moderately large BLM holdings in the southern part of the Gold Run Diggings. These claims were never patented because they were "worked out," that is, the miners had finished hydraulicing away the gold-bearing gravel.

Parenthetically, the hydraulic mines at Lost Camp itself were patented in 1872, by Osmyn Harkness, who also had claims at Gold Run. This man Harkness is found in the remarkable record of the 1881 case, State of CA vs. the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, in which 27 volumes of testimony were written down. These may be examined on microfilm at the Auburn Library. Harkness gave testimony about the early history of the Gold Run Diggings, remarkable testimony, for, in 1881, he could remember events in 1852 day by day.

Last Friday Ron Gould and I had found the very ditches which supplied the water which powered the ten-stamp mill at the Red Rock Mine. Then, in a telephone conversation, Steve Hunter told me of the remains of cabins higher on the ridge, which may have been used by the miners themselves. The Red Rock Mine was coming into focus.

I chanced a Google on "N.B. Willey" and found references to man of that name who was Governor of Idaho in 1892. It hardly seemed likely that a man would go from being governor to mine superintendent.

It seemed to me that I remembered the name, N.B. Willey, from the old Placer County newspaper articles in my book, the "Dutch Flat Chronicles." So I opened the text file on my computer, and searched for Willey.

I found two items. One was significant:

*******
Colfax Sentinel
October 2, 1896
Gen. Geo. H. Roberts and his son, A.C.B. Roberts, with Gov. N.B. Willey were down from Blue Ca–on Tuesday. The General is largely interested in mining all through the mining country and is one of the owners of the Redstone mine, near Blue Ca–on. The mine has been closed down for a time, but will resume work in a few days.
********

The mine is incorrectly named the "Redstone." Set that aside, mark it off to human error. What's interesting is the reference to "Gov. N.B. Willey." It can only be a certainty that Idaho's governor, and the Red Rock Mine's superintendent, are one and the same.

Returning to the Internet, I found several sites which describe Governor (Norman) Willey's involvement in labor disputes in Idaho. For instance, see

http://www.kued.org/productions/fire/photos_stories/coeur.html

From another site I gleaned the following:

*******
A bitter labor dispute grew out of company efforts to try to operate Coeur d'Alene lead silver mines in face of union opposition to a lower wage scale. Efforts to bring in organized, outside workers, protected by company armies, provoked considerable trouble. (Idaho's state constitution had a provision, growing out of the national railway strikes of 1886, against admission of private armies to the state. But no serious effort was made to enforce the law on this matter.) When the miners discovered that their union secretary also served the companies as a Pinkerton agent, the whole conflict literally exploded. On June 11, 1892, in an open war, a force of miners dynamited an abandoned mill at Gem. At this point, the mine owners prevailed (without any difficulty) upon Governor N. B. Willey (a mine superintendent from Warrens) to proclaim martial law.
*******

So, here was a little about our superintendent of the Red Rock Mine. What about the "General largely interested in mining," Geo. H. Roberts?

I found (using Google) that, during Willey's term of office as governor, in the early 1890s, one Geo. H. Roberts had been Attorney General of Idaho. This is beyond the pale of possible coincidence. But could service as a state Attorney General earn one the honorific title, 'General'? I didn't really know, but I doubted it. Then I struck gold with the following reference to our General George H. Roberts, excerpted from a query on a genealogical site:

*******
... a Civil War veteran who, it is said, was the youngest breveted-General from the Civil War.

His name was George H. ROBERTS and he was "on the staff" of
Gen. Joe HOOKER. He was wounded three times, at least one of those
happened at Gettysburg. All I know of that injury comes from a
newspaper article about his return to Gettysburg for the 50th
anniversary. It says he "took a long walk down a familiar dusty
road ... vaulted over a stone wall ... and walked again through the same
orchard where five decades ago, he had left a crimson trail of his
own blood." (Not much to go on, huh?)

But then this wonderful story: "General ROBERTS was seeking
the farm house where two Pennsylvania-Dutch girls had hidden him and
nursed him after he had staggered wounded through their kitchen
door. Standing at the entrance now and filled with bittersweet
memories, he pulled the bell cord, wondering as he did so if the two
women were still living here ... The door opened to reveal a stout,
comfortably dressed woman, her cheeks had the same rose, wrinkled
bloom as the apples in the orchard through which he had passed.
General ROBERTS removed his hat with a gallant flourish and bowed,
before inquiring for the ladies Ellen and Lizzie RIDENBOUGH who had
lived there as girls 50 years ago. He started to tell her his name
but before he could finish she cried, 'Lizzie, be comin' now. Here's
our George ROBERTS.'"

The rest of what I know about George ROBERTS is that he was
born in Philadelphia on 13 Jul 1841 of Welsh and Quaker ancestry.
His grandfather was said to be the Lord High Sheriff of Wales who
came to PA with William PENN. He joined the Union Army when he was
22 and a student at the Univ. of PA, with his family purchasing him
a commission as 2nd LT.

After the War, he married Julia CULBERTSON, daughter of a
renowned fur trader on the Upper Missouri, and became attorney
general of NE and then the first attorney general of ID.
*******

Such is what I found about the Red Rock Mine. Steve Hunter mentioned debris near the cabin sites which suggests occupation much later than 1896 or 1902. It seems possible that the Red Rock Mine was worked intermittently through the 1930s. The ten-stamp mill is gone, and descending to the ore-processing area, and cutting the lines of the two ore-cart runs, is a kind of bulldozed skid trail, with small trees growing in it. Steve and I guess that this skid trail is coeval with the last timber harvest on Fulda Ridge, which we think occurred in the 1950s or 1960s. No trees were taken from the ore-processing area at that time. We conclude that someone, either the owner of the property, or perhaps one of the logging crew, used a bulldozer to remove the stamp mill.

It is known that Wendell Robie once owned the 600 acres at Blue Canyon/Lost Camp/Fulda Canyon. Perhaps Robie himself had the stamp mill brought out.

Such, then, is a little history bearing upon the Red Rock Mine.

Visit to Fulda Canyon

East of Lost Camp, Texas Canyon descends to the North Fork of the North Fork American River (NFNFAR). Still farther east is Fulda Canyon, with headwaters up above Emigrant Gap. Between Texas and Fulda is what I call Fulda Ridge. To the south and east of Fulda Ridge is that remarkable gorge and complex of canyons, where Fulda, the NFNFAR, the East Fork of the North Fork of the North Fork, Burnett Canyon, and Wilmont Ravine, all converge within a narrow compass of cliffs and many waterfalls.

This makes for one of the strangest topographical features in this part of the Sierra, strange, difficult to get to, wild, strange, and very beautiful. The entire complex of canyons is incised into metasediments of the Shoo Fly Complex, which are all turned up on edge and sometimes folded sharply.

On Friday Ron Gould and I drove up to the Blue Canyon exit on I-80, then south towards Blue Canyon, and east on an unmarked road near houses, just before the railroad is reached. This road-east is being watered for logging trucks, and we followed the wet and freshly-graded dirt down and across the tracks and saw the wetness continue towards Lost Camp itself. So we investigated. Had the Siller Brothers' timber harvest already commenced? But, no. The harvest is apparently on a small SPI parcel farther out on the ridge between Blue Canyon and the NFNFAR. Having found that the great rape of Lost Camp and Fulda Ridge has not started quite yet, we retraced our path and drove out as far as we could on a certain road cut into the line of the old Bradley & Gardner ditch, or Placer County Canal, which was the first big ditch to supply the hydraulic mines of Dutch Flat, arriving there, with bands and parades and speeches and sumptuous repasts, in 1859. Miners marched the streets of Dutch Flat bearing banners aloft upon which were blazoned the heraldry of their individual claims, some with mottos too, like "Root Hog or Die."

We parked at a locked gate in an area where all the large trees had been cut down a year or two ago, and, it would seem, some larger parcel had been subdivided. This is the exact pattern of progress in the middle elevations, the timber regions, of Placer County. Buy the large parcel, cut the timber, subdivide, sell; and then soon after come the gates and the "No Trespassing" signs,

Blithely trespassing beyond the gate, we followed the ditch-road on a meandering course in and out of several ravines at the head of Texas Canyon, until we reached Fulda Ridge. There we dropped away southward.

My 1866 General Land Office map shows a "Trail to Monumental Camp" bearing east from Lost Camp, and an 1862 newspaper article describes this same trail as leading to Onion Valley. Several past efforts to find some shred of the old trail had failed. Ron and I tried yet again, hugging the east side of plateau-like Fulda Ridge as we wandered south through tall pines, cedars, and Douglas Fir. This forest has not long to live. If it is left untouched after the Siller Brothers are through cutting, why, never fear, our grandchildren's grandchildren will live to see something like what is there today.

This pretty patch of forest has already been logged at least twice, the last time forty or fifty years ago, and what with the old roads and skid trails we had little hope of finding our lost trail from Lost Camp to Onion Valley. We did find two small old mining ditches, at around the 4400' contour, and the well-monumented "West Sixteenth Corner" on the line between sections 13 and 24. The lower of the two ditches is the larger and would such a fine trail in its own right. It drew from about a mile up Fulda Canyon, and apparently led to the hardrock mine of the "Railroad Tracks in Space," which Steve Hunter showed me a few weeks ago. I have since discovered that this was called the Red Rock Mine.

After exploring north on the lower ditch, we turned back south and reached a swale with a spring, heavy timber, dogwoods, and an old mining reservoir, and a section of eighth-inch riveted iron pipe, a century or so old. This seemed a likely spot for our lost trail to kiss along the way east to Onion Valley, but we could discover no trace. However, we did find the higher of the two ore-cart-runs, the wide, road-like run, both of which connect the main ore body, on the cliffs to the south, to the ore-processing area, well within shady Fulda Canyon.

We followed the old road with its dry-laid stone walls south to the ore body, where a monstrous quartz vein was stoped out from the ragged sunny cliffs plunging towards the NFNFAR. The vein has the same north-south strike as the strata of the Shoo Fly metasediments, and the same almost vertical dip.

We visited the wonderful Railroad Tracks in Space, where a tremendous view is had of the Gorge of Many Gorges, and then hung from the very railroad tracks while crossing little cliffs to gain the lower ore-cart run. We followed this back north to the ore-processing area, where rather large Douglas Fir, around four feet in diameter, are marked for harvest.

Sorry, our grandchildren's grandchildren will *not* live to see anything like these ancient monsters, after Siller Brothers reap their profits.

Ron and I thrashed north and down to Fulda Creek, arriving between a pair of pretty pools, with much in the way of sculptured rock and little waterfalls, and masses of Five-Finger Ferns, and Indian Rhubarb. After a lunch break we made a scramble down the creek itself to the confluence of Sailor Ravine. Gigantic boulders of the local Shoo Fly were a commonplace, sometimes thirty feet across, and seeming too large, really, for the size of the canyon, but, there they were. We saw ancient Douglas Fir marked for harvest all the way down to Fulda Creek, and on the slopes to the east.

From just below Sailor Ravine we began the climb back up to the flat top of Fulda Ridge, on very steep slopes which seemed to never end. Finally we reached the ore-cart runs and ore body, and from there it is relatively easy going up to the plateau, where we followed a bear trail, with its characteristic deep footmarks, the result of stepping in exactly the same spots over and over again. We followed it north to the Bradley & Gardner Ditch, and then the ditch and ditch-road west, back to Ron's truck.

It was interesting, while crossing a tiny patch of Tahoe National Forest land, to see signs nailed to the trees, warning people not to shoot, and warning that "Dogs Will Bite." These signs are on public land and were placed there by the person who has the cabin down below, and the new gate with the "You Will Be Shot" sign. Log, subdivide, sell, gate, "no trespassing," and now, an added twist, placing signs on public lands.

We never found the least trace of the Trail to Monumental Camp.