Mountain of Gold

The RUSSIANS are COMING!

2011-09-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Goo-Day Mate! Off to Australia I went in 1986 to look at the great Argyle diamond mine in the Kimberlys of northern Australia. At the time, the mine was developing into the largest and most productive diamond mine in the world. I had always wanted to see Australia - I heard they had jackrabbits that made the Wyoming rabbits look small and could even carry our Wyoming fuzzy critters in their front pocket - now that's a rabbit!

On my nearly one month journey of Australia, I visited a couple of diamond mines with rocks very similar to those in the Leucite Hills of Wyoming. These were not kimberlites, but instead were lamproites. It was a great discovery that was missed by DeBeers because it didn't quite fit their exploration model. So an Australian group (Ashton) had to find this deposit. Exploration models are great, but so is an open mind.

While in the search for diamonds in the outback, we discovered that the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth was not really in Phoenix. According to Bill Bryson's book, In a Sunburned Country, the highest temperature ever recorded was in the Australian outback (145 degrees F). Note the group of people in the photo to the left - only two people were not under the only two shade trees for hundreds of kilometers. One was the photographer (me).

Some of the Argyle diamonds

So, we visited the Argyle mine - and believe it or not, they would not give us free samples! We later visited the Noonkahbah field of lamproites and then the Ellendale lamproites. It was a great trip even though there was no water in the outback to bathe in or drink - at least nothing that I was interested in (see photo below). Before and after the diamond field trips, we explored some gold camps in greenstone belts and examined auriferous shear zones, pillow basalts and some spectacular spinifex komatiites. While there, I met some people I knew, and also made some new friends.

One person I met in Australia was Dr. Valadiski who was a scientist from Russia, which was still part of the ominous Soviet Union in those days. I was surprised by his candor and enjoyed talking with him. For any Democrats who thinks socialism is a good idea, you should have your head examined. After talking to people who lived in this repressed society, it is amazing that anyone in our free society could think there is anything beneficial. And it is frightening to think that our polititicans could even consider this. Makes one wonder who some of these burocrats are working for?

So while I was in Australia, apparently a reporter from the Casper Star Tribune, a local paper from central Wyoming stopped by my office looking for information on diamond exploration activity in Wyoming. He was told I was at an Australian diamond conference, and I would be back in two weeks.

Two weeks later, the very day I got back from the outback, the reporter called to see if I could give him information on diamond exploration in the Leucite Hills north of Rock Springs and wanted to know if I had talked to any company reps who were looking for diamonds in Wyoming?

"Sorry" I said, "but there was not much information". "I talked to a geologist from a Belgium mining company - they had taken a small sample from the Leucite Hills, but their lab was still processing the sample and there were no results yet".

"Was there anyone else", he asked?

"Just one other person", I said. "While talking with one of the top Soviet diamond geologists, he mentioned he had developed a geochemical model for identifying diamond potential in lamproites. By using the available published geochemistry in the literature and plugging it into his model, he told me there could not be any diamonds in the Leucite Hills!"

"Oh" he said. And that was the end of the conversation and I thought the end of this.

Not so! People today talk mainstream press and its problems. Well, its always been bad; its just today, they are a little worse. Why do you think no one buys newspapers anymore.

Well, the next day, an article showed up in the headlines of the Casper Star Tribune and the Laramie Boomerang, "Soviets Investigating Possibility of Diamonds in Sweetwater County!".

When I got to work, the State Geologist, Gary Glass called me in his office and asked me what was going on - the phones were ringing off the wall and every red neck in the state wanted to know where exactly these Russians were located so they could run them out of the US!

So, in between the next 3 to 4 thousand phone calls, I wrote a letter to the editor. It was published in a tiny column. It didn't matter, few people saw the letter to the editor and the phones continued to ring for weeks. At the time, I was disgusted, but today, I guess it kind of entertaining.

A sample of Argyle olivine lamproite.
This rock was some of the richest ever
found. It reportedly averaged 680
carats per 100 tonnes.

Mt Gytha lamproite breccia in the Noonkanbah field in Australia

Looking towards hill in the Ellendale field from a termite mound.
The hill in the background is one of the several Ellendale lamproite
volcanoes in the outback.

MOUNTAIN OF GOLD

2009-12-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

MOUNTAIN OF GOLD

It’s common knowledge - one can literally walk into the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, trip over the Lost Dutchman mine, fill their pockets full of gold, crawl out to Apache Junction and buy the other half of the US that Obama did not already sell to China. Was Darwin really right? How is it that we tend to measure intelligence based on who can read a teleprompter.
Legend after legend tells of untold riches at the Lost Dutchman but with little evidence that the mine ever existed; yet this mine is talked about by nearly every prospector in North America and you can bet scam artists will raise $millions to search for this Lost mine. I must say, I’m intrigued by these myths and why we believe them. Human nature? Why don't we just spend time searching for real gold deposits - there are hundreds out there, all we need to do is look. In nearly every present and past gold mining district in the world, there are dozens of good deposits that were overlooked by the past prospectors and mining companies. All it takes is for one to spend time learning about the characteristics of the deposits in the area, the regional geology and then doing some prospecting.

Gold Panning on the Middle Fork of the Little Laramie
River in the Medicine Bow Mountains. We use to offer
prospecting field trips to teach how to find gold, but the
US Forest Service demanded that we must have a permit
to do such nasty things on our public land. In 2010, a
group of 20 people were looking forward to prospecting.
But the US Forest Service denied a permit because
we might step on some flowers. Not that the other
100,000 people who visit the MBM might step on flowers.
So, I no longer teach this field classes. If you would like to
see me back in the field, write to your Congressman and
tell them that the FS and BLM are misusing our public
lands.

Take the Gold Rush Alaska jokers. These clowns are looking for gold on the Discovery Channel, but they should have read 'Gold Mining For Dummies' first, as they have done everything exactly backwards (i.e., one should first prove a deposit has gold before spending several $hundred thousand driving to the deposit with equipment that they had no idea if it would work or not). It was even apparent that none of these wannabe miners had any idea on how to operate a gold pan, let alone a trommel. Guess what surprises me most about this program is that these guys just show up in Alaska and in the Yukon and start mining. Something is amiss.

What I mean is that we have toooooo many bureaucrats running our lives. When I ran the US exploration arm for DiamonEx Ltd, we had every card-carrying Greenie bureaucrat with the US Forest Service, US Bureau of Land Management, EPA, Colorado DEQ, local home owner associations and county officials wanting a handout. Just to drill a dry pond that was covered with 4-wheeler tracks using a small drill rig to a depth of about 150 feet, it took months of paperwork and permits from Larimer County, the State of Colorado and the US Forest Service (and it cost our company enough to fund the Gold Rush Alaska boys for an entire season, when it should have only cost a few $thousand at the most. The next time you buy something in Walmart, you should have a very good idea as to why everything is made in China - they have no permits that cause cost delays over $200 thousand, and they are in our leaders' pockets big time). Then after all of of this BS, the FS delayed our drilling operation several more weeks until their local ranger could take a vacation from her donut break in Laramie to come out to the site to tell us to move the drill rig from the center of the pond to its edge so that it would be less damaging to the environment. These delays were a significant problem. When we were exploring this region, it was prior to the 2008 economic crash and every drill rig in the country had a waiting list because of the boom in mineral's exploration. When the crash came, it destroyed hundreds of companies including DiamonEx.

One of the Lost Lakes cryptovolcanic depressions in the Colorado-Wyoming
State Line district that required months of environmental scrutiny before
permits would be issued by the county, the state and the feds.

Then we wanted to build a small mill to test one of our diamond properties. But we could not find water (it didn't matter that the site was sitting adjacent to a creek tht had diamonds in it, and that the two kimberlites we wanted to mine had shear zones containing water, we could not get water rights and the county wanted us to move the mill somewhere close to Ft. Collins. Then after we found a possible millsite at a gravel quarry, the county didn't want us running trucks full of diamonds on their road because it might kick up some dirt. You just can't win.
It was nice to have the title of Vice President of Exploration for a diamond company, but I will never, never do that again. The headaches are too much for this o' country boy. I make a very good independent consulting geologist, but never would I work in management again.

Back to myths. So why do so many politicians believe in the myth of human caused global warming? Our ice caps are melting and the ocean has risen several feet on the East and West coasts of the US. Or have they? I was in California and Florida two summers ago and neither place seemed to be under water. Maybe all of the water evaporated? Is there something amiss here? You bet there is. Money, money, money. Like all good politicians and environmentalists, Al Gore and others stand to make $billions on the global warming scam. But we all know that Al Gore is the savior of the enviroment? Then there is the recent listing of carbon dioxide as a pollutant by the EPA - plant food! My, my, what next for the EPA, will it be water and oxygen? I will have to write about the time that the EPA invaded Laramie, Wyoming in space suits - you will love this one.

Massive pyrite, also known as fool's gold.

Myths will always be embellished, and through time such stories gain more intrigue as each person adds a little of their own flavor to they myth. But I must say that at least the Lost Dutchman has more scientific credibility than man-caused global warming, climate change, or what ever government pseudo-scientists and grant-starved academicians are calling it today. But at least many gold myths have some credibility that may start as a rock filled with pyrite (fool's gold) and grow into a Mountain of Gold as the myth is fertilized through time.

I grew up in Utah. Went to graduate school at the University of Utah and then to the University of New Mexico. I heard about the Lost Rhoades (Mormon) gold mine. It’s located somewhere near Provo and has so much gold that one could pave a highway with the precious metal – if only it could be found again. With so much gold, I’m surprised such a mine could remain hidden. I’ve been told of the evidence - Angel Moroni, a statue on top of the Salt Lake temple, is coated with gold - and of course that gold had to have come from this mine (or from prospectors who lost their hair). Take for instance Mountain Meadows. Mountain Meadows?

I never heard of it. I was surprised because I grew up in Utah as a Utah Gentile (when I worked at the Hansen Planetarium in college, my boss was Jewish, and he often remarked that he too was a Gentile in Utah). I had to take Utah history in public schools and Mountain Meadows was never mentioned, but the site of the massacure happened to be located in the middle of my thesis area. So while I was mapping volcanic rocks, I did a little reading. So did the gold come from robbing prospectors on their way back east from the Californian gold fields? To be honest with you, I have no idea. I suspect much of the gold came from Mormon miners working prospects in the Oquirrh Mountains or other localities in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, or Nevada.

When I left the land of Zion for New Mexico and later left the Big Taco State for the Cowboy State, I heard about the Lost Cabin Gold Mine in the Northern Big Horn Mountains (you should be getting the impression that every state has a lost gold mine). So much gold was found that the prospectors filled their pockets and saddle bags with gold and then out-ran a band of Indians (while weighed down with tons of gold). They were unable to later rediscover the location of the mine. It still remains lost in the myths of time. Every state has a lost mine or vortex filled with treasures that would keep president Obama and congressional bandits happy for a few minutes.

It is unfortunate so many people waste time and money on myths and scams when there are actual gold deposits to be found. But even if you find a gold deposit, real mines have to be made and worked. But for some environmental groups they would rather run scams than work for a living. People who build mines end up paying taxes to have the privilege of paying much of their hard-earned cash to government bandits - we know them as Congressmen.

Abandoned gold dredge, Flat Alaska, 1988.

Years ago, I attended a Northwestern Mining Conference in Spokane. I don’t remember the name of the person who made the statement but he said, “Mines are not found, they are made”. This person understood what was required – a lot of hard work and a whole lot of luck. Mark Twain stated “A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing over it”. Few people like to put the work into making a mine, particularly when they can sell worthless dirt for $millions. And I'll tell you about the people who sold dirt for $millions!

It is a fact that gigantic riches are hidden at vortexes that only make their appearance on the 3rd full moon of each millennium when Mars passes through Aquarius, Saturn through Leo, Kolob through who knows where, or where a compass is mysteriously deflected by a hidden UFO landing site, where dowsing rods bend, or where coffee boils at a faster rate. Why should one particular atom, i.e, gold, defy all of physical laws of the universe and create so many unexplained esoteric anomalies? When you begin searching for your Mountain of Gold, use the laws of science – forget baloney and you will be a lot better off. If nothing else, you may lose a few pounds and gain self-esteem.

There is literally thousands of gold, gemstone and other mineral deposits scattered all over North America. All one has to do is to put together honest work, learn a little geology, study a little history, have an open mind, use science, learn to differentiate fact from fiction, avoid Canadian promoters, people of prominent religious standing, lawyers and state geologists from Wyoming. There’s nothing to it. I'm not suggesting I'm not religious - because I am. Its just that one needs to beware of con-men in all professions.

In my book - MOUNTAIN OF GOLD, I will provide a guide on how to find mineral deposits. I will tell you stories that will make you cry, stories that will make you laugh. I will tell you about stupidity so rampant in government and in some exploration companies, that you will wonder if Darwin was right. I will tell you about how I identified gemstones that everyone else walked over!

I found visible gold in outcrops (typically, if you see a single pinpoint of visible gold in a rock specimen with a 10x hand lens, the sample will assay at least one ounce/ton in gold – that is $1200 per ounce of this stuff) and started gold rushes in the Seminoe Mountains, South Pass, Sierra Madre, Rattlesnake Hills and other places. I was on the discovery team of a major gold find in the Kuskokwim Mountains in Alaska that was classified as the largest undeveloped gold deposit in North America and more recently as one of the largest untapped gold deposits in the world.

The largest colored gemstone deposit on earth may have been found in 2005. As a reward, my field vehicle was confiscated and reassigned to the secretary. I was threatened to be fired by the director of the Geological Survey. Apparently, I was finding too much, making the government nervous. I discovered one thing about socialism - if you work hard, you put your job on the line. Bureaucrats and their understudies are threatened by those who disturb donut breaks. I must apologize for digressing into politics again.

I found several gemstone deposits including > hundred gold anomalies, a platinum-palladium-gold-nickel anomaly that still remains unexplored, I found mountains of iolite (wouldn't make a very good book title). I found rubies, sapphires, aquamarines, heliodors, gem apatites, jasper, agate, hills of opal (might be a good book title), diamonds, Cape Rubies, Cape Emeralds, peridots & evidence for several hundred diamond deposits. I found some of the largest kyanite gem deposits on earth. Hey, one iolite gem deposit I examined has an estimated (now get this) >2 trillion carats (now you know why my former boss was so upset). In this book I will tell you how to find and where to find real treasures.

How could one person find so much? I used scientific methods (unlike the pseudo-scientists at the University of Anglia who falsified data and models to promote their global warming scam). I didn’t have to go far. Some of these deposits were sitting right along the interstate. Some adjacent to US Highways. Several were within a stone’s throw of the pavement.

This is a book about me, prospectors, about how to prospect. It is about the best people in the world (prospectors) and some scum (directors, bureaucrats, forest rangers). It is about my experience in life and the life I came to know. It is about some crazy prospectors. It is about the Mountain of Gold and how I found it. I hope you enjoy my stories! Most are true.

Burro-crats

Gold does something to people. It is like an additive drug, booze, or gambling. Most people are semi-normal until you put gold in front of their noses, and then they do things that just don’t make sense. Often you don’t even have to put gold in front of their noses, just implant the image of caves filled with gold, and they are gone – off to the holodeck – with gray mass scattered across the universe during beam up.

My personal search for gold began in 1977. I was hired as the ‘Minerals Geologist’ for the Wyoming Geological Survey. In 1977, this research agency at the University of Wyoming was aptly known at the Geological Survey of Wyoming, it had previously been known as the Wyoming Territorial Survey. Over the years, one paranoid director renamed the agency the Wyoming Geological Survey. This was fine, but in a short time, it was renamed again. He wanted the public to be sure they knew we were separate from the US Geological Survey (not that anyone cared).

And before I could hand out all of my business cards, I kid you not, he changed the name again. And he was being paid big bucks to do this. This time he was concerned about the legislature. But maybe he had something here – after all, we are talking about a bunch of dimwitted politicians who should have already been eliminated by natural selection. We now became the Wyoming State Geological Survey as if this would protect the agency from budget cuts. I remember throwing away hundreds of business cards as we changed the agency’s name 3 times in 2 years. What a legacy to be remembered for. But this was nothing compared to later directors.

Compared to surrounding states, Wyoming produced only a minor amount of gold: actually, a comparatively insignificant amount. Such a discrepancy is notable when comparing the Cowboy State to Montana, South Dakota, Colorado and Idaho (we could even throw in Arizona, Nevada, California and Utah). One has to wonder how all of the surrounding states could have produced 50 to 200 times as much gold and be so endowed in silver and copper while Wyoming has practically nothing: just trivial gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, nickel, platinum and palladium. How could metal deposits know where the state boundaries were, and how could they just stop at the boundary?The answer is, they don’t. The geology of Wyoming is favorable for discovery of significant deposits of precious metals associated with porphyry deposits, stocks, volcanics, volcanic and sedimentary breccias, replacement deposits, vein deposits, shear zone deposits, exhalites, massive sulfides, layered complexes, placers and paleoplacers to name a few. Thus one has to look at the environment in Wyoming as well as at the government to find a partial cause for this discrepancy. Why would the geology be favorable and yet the amount of mined precious and base metals be so trivial compared to neighboring states? For instance, Idaho produced 25 times more gold, Montana 50 times more gold, Colorado and South Dakota 200 times more gold than Wyoming. With Wyoming lying in the middle of these states and having similar geology, something just does not jive: it is very likely that significant gold deposits remain hidden and/or lie within the massive withdrawn areas in the state.

Wyoming was a difficult place for prospectors to work because of high winds and desolate plateaus surrounded by mountain ranges that became a battleground for immigrants and Indians. Historical records from the 1800s report constant conflicts between the Emigrants and Indians. But the government and green movements provided an even more noisome environment to mining. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries piecemeal withdrawals of potentially productive terrains continued to occur in the state that continues to be unchecked. The size of the total area withdrawn from mining is now larger than whole states.

Over the years, I witnessed potentially productive regions being withdrawn for the most trivial reasons and it became apparent that the government sought to withdraw regions with mineral potential by using National Park, wilderness and roadless designations, the rare and endangered species act, and any other act they could dream up. Potentially, the greatest mineralized region on the planet is now incorporated in Yellowstone National Park. And the more recent Roadless designations have also been misguided. All of the lands incorporated into Roadless withdrawals that I visited are crisscrossed by dozens of roads. With the Federal government being out of control, the State Government didn’t want to be left behind and periodically flexed its bureaucratic muscles. Most notable was the purchase of private land by the State so the bureaucrats could enclose the State’s largest known gold deposit into a historic site without considering any geological studies (which were available at the time of withdrawal). In fact, the legislature purposely avoided geological studies of the Carissa mine as the author of this legislation knew that the property had considerable potential and wanted to eliminate controversy. Thus the legislation was snuck through the bureaucratic halls in Cheyenne and Wyoming’s largest known gold deposit was scheduled to be demolished to produce a picnic site for a few dozen tourists, rather than create high-paying jobs and recover significant severance taxes on gold production. Does the government have our best interests in mind? I doubt that.

Where the American Indians failed, the government succeeded. In 2003, after some press releases about discovery of a major opal deposit had been released by my office (Cedar Ridge deposit), it became apparent that the US Bureau of Land Management looked to withdraw this discovery to protect a desolate area filled with sagebrush and pump-jacks. But this became even more obvious when one realizes that the BLM had no idea where in the state this opal deposit was located – but they still wanted to withdraw the land and protect anything they could dream up. After I had sampled the 16 mi2 region, I purposely kept the opal discovery site secret so that all citizens of the US could have equal opportunity to stake claims on a major gem and decorative stone deposit. Before the report was released, I was called by the BLM who demanded to know the location prior to the report’s release. I refused. Even so, as soon as the report was released, the BLM went to work to try to stop the public from staking claims and exploring for commercial opal deposits. They championed a non-indigenous flower as a reason to protect this desolate area from prospectors. But this was not the first time the government showed their intentions to keep the public mineral wealth from the public.

Several years earlier, I had been asked by the US Forest Service to accept a grant to study and map all of the known mines in the Medicine Bow National Forest because I knew these better than any other person. The purpose of the project was to reclaim dangerous mines, which there were very few that were actually dangerous. In the grant proposal, I had stated I would use $20,000 per year to test mineralized and altered rock for metal content while mapping – I felt it was important for the USFS to know what they were reclaiming and planning to bury. I had already seen abuse of the abandoned mine program in several places in the state where the government paid a $million+ for a copper exchange unit to extract copper from a trickle of water from a historic copper mine that used a plastic Walmart kiddy pool with a cow manure bucket. Another property was a potentially economic strategic and precious metal deposit that was reclaimed at a very high price, so the land could be subdivided and sold as cabin sites by the contractor who had received the funds. And there were many more.

When the grant report was presented to the USFS, they used 6 months to review it and signed off on the grant. It had been active for one month when I got a call from the project chief in Denver who indicated that he had just read the grant proposal (after having it in his possession for 7 months!). He said he had just read the proposal and needed to modify the project. They would not allow me to take any samples or test any rocks and would not allow me to even collect samples! They apparently realized that even though I knew where all of the old mines were located, had visited most of them over the years, my reputation as a mine finder had got to them. They did not want me to find any more mineral deposits. I politely told the USFS to shove the grant up their adit.

Mining Scams and Prospectors

Barbara - you Shouldn't Have
When spring arrives; prospectors comb the hills in search of the yellow metal - GOLD! Many look and find nothing; others find traces of gold, a few find nuggets, others accidentally find hidden treasure: ruby, sapphire, benitoite, garnet, diamond. Then it hits, the illness - an awful incurable disease: 'gold fever'. It affects many – the inflicted surrender everything including common sense. In local pubs, con-men search out the inflicted to provide opportunities to invest in mines that are too good to be true. It is like Congress and taxes or Obama and stimulus – the more you give, the more they take, and the more they lie - its like a gangster movie that never ends.

Mark Twain wrote, ‘a gold mine is a hole in the grown with a liar standing over it,’ in reference to this infliction. I'm reminded of my favorite con-grandma. An elderly lady from Atlantic City. I always enjoyed seeing Barbara (RIP), but then again, I never caught gold fever so I was immune to her scams. Soaking wet, she weighed 98 pounds – a tiny, bent over elderly lady who seemed totally harmless, yet could drink anyone under the table – an important attribute for someone in her line of work. As told by my good friend Steve Gyorvary, she kept contracts in the trunk of her car along with bottles of fool’s gold to sell to the gullible and inflicted. In any gold district, gullible wannabe prospectors are found by the dozens and con-men are there to help them part with their money.

Steve and his family had purchased the Mary Ellen gold mine years ago – this is how I met him. I was mapping the South Pass greenstone belt and all of the historical mines I could get access to. Steve’s Mary Ellen was developed by an incline shaft with levels that followed a vein in a tonalite stock (tonalite is similar to quartz diorite and granite). Steve and I mapped the Mary Ellen mine with my assistant Jay Roberts.

The Mary Ellen shaft is 240 feet deep with 5 levels. The mine was dug on a quartz vein 3 feet wide that narrows to 6 inches in places. In some stopes and drifts, miners only removed as much rock as necessary, characteristic of 19th century hardrock gold mines. Thus Steve, my assistant, and I crawled through these narrow tunnels. And some were very narrow.

Anyway, Steve’s dad decided to visit his son along with the family mine. Unlike the slovenly of the 60s and 70s, his father dressed to travel – wearing a suit to fly from St. Louis to Wyoming to visit Steve and the mine. Upon arriving in Atlantic City, he stopped in the Mercantile, a local pub where everyone sooner or later ended up in this tiny town of 47 people with 30 dogs. Sitting at the bar, Barbara's eyes lit up – anyone who knew her could read her mind – ‘a rich sucker just walked through the door – a man wearing a suit in a gold district with no paved roads had to be rich’.

She latched onto him, bought him a drink and found he did indeed have an interest in gold! “I have a mine to sell. It's rich. I don't want to get rid of it, but have no choice, a family death - you know; thus I can sell it to you at very low price”, she announced. Slamming down the contract for the mine, she continued “all you have to do is sign here, and you'll be the proud owner of the Mary Ellen mine”. Steve’s Dad looked at her in amazement and responded to Barbara, “Why I believe I already own that mine”.

I heard that Barbara periodically sold the same mine or claim 2 or 3 times a year. She met one wannabe prospector who couldn’t believe his luck. A bottle full of gold. “No, I don’t want to sell it, I plan to keep this gold”, she told him. But after many drinks, he was light-headed and Barbara looked as if she would slide under the table. He continued to press her and she finally capitulated and sold the gold for 85% of spot price. Later, proudly displaying his gold in the Mercantile for everyone to see until one knowledgeable prospector pointed out the bottle seemed awful light for gold, and the gold rolled around suspended in the water when agitated.

“It looks like mica to me!" indicated the prospector.

The Atlantic City volunteer fire department later responded to an alarm. Barbara's Cadillac was on fire – someone had poured gas on the car and set it on fire.

Another of the hundreds of stories I enjoyed about Barbara. She lived in a dump of a cabin a very short distance southwest of the Mercantile. But she spent more time in the Mercantile two houses down the street where she ran a bar tab each day and night. By evening, she would get really stewed and walk home a few yards down the dirt road to her cabin. But she had to pass Jim Rutter's cabin along the way where she would pause; lean against his trommel to catch her breath, then make the next couple of yards to her door. This went on all spring and summer.

As Steve tells the story, near the end of July, Jim moved his trommel to his claim. The next evening, Barbara closed down the Mercantile pub again. Started her walk home. Made it to her rest stop and put her arm out to rest against the trommel. Thud! There was no trommel. It took some time, but Barbara finally got up, puzzled and made it the rest of the way to her cabin.

Diamonds, Diamonds, Diamonds, Everywhere Diamonds
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One man's quartz is another man's diamonds.

Then there was a prospector who called me from the field and wanted to know what he should do with all of the diamonds he had found. I was impressed: How many did you find? I asked. There are thousands all over the hill side! He responded. Now I knew something was not quite right. I asked him, how are you verifying these diamonds? I just scratch the windshield of my truck, and most of them leave a nice scratch. I responded, can you see out of your window well enough to drive home? By the way, diamonds will scratch windshields, but since glass has a hardness of only 5.5 to 6 on the Moh's scale, many things will scratch your windshield including pyrite, feldspar, corundum and of course quartz. How do you think people get all of those pits you your windshield during sandstorms?

Then there was the prospector who called and said that he had been diamond hunting for years and never found any diamonds. After talking awhile, he mentioned his method for diamond testing: "I simply put them on an anvil and hit them with a hammer!" He also mentioned he had picked up many octahedral crystals in the Colorado-Wyoming State Line district (where there are several known diamond deposits) but none were diamonds because they failed his test. I then told him about the difference between hardness and mechanical brittleness and that all diamonds will break when struck with a hammer.

You could hear that sound of ... well, it sounded like muffled swearing in the background as he hung up.