Listen here:
Bumping down a rough road in the Eagle Mountains, I’m tagging along with six members of First Class Miners (FCM), a group of small-scale miners on the search for gold. Miners who scoured the area in the 1880s likely came through on wagons and burros, not 4WD trucks and jeeps.
We’re visiting two claims that FCM holds on land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and within the borders of Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP). Though the claims are ‘unpatented’ – meaning, the group does not own the land, just the mineral rights – they still pay county property taxes on ‘leased’ land. (Though the rates are different than a standard property.) In 1994, Congress put a moratorium on patenting, but only on a year-to-year basis, meaning it must renew the ban annually. Patented mines are considered private land, such as the Cactus Mine nearby.
(According to JTNP, the Lost Horse Mine produced more than 10,000 ounces of gold and 16,000 ounces of silver (worth approximately $5M today) between 1894 and 1931. Within park boundaries, there are about 300 abandoned mining sites with more than 720 mine openings leftover from this era.)
To find gold in them thar hills, look for abrupt changes in soil colors, a ‘seam’ where a darker hill may conjoin with a lighter hill. The presence of quartz is also key, but in this area, they are also looking for dark ferrous materials, such as iron and magnetite. Gold is heavy and all the heavies hang together.
Also, they search where the 1880 miners have already been, the remnants left behind by poor souls who did all their work without the handy use of modern technology, such as metal detectors, batteries, and leaf blower engines. But the concept is still the same: sleuthing, and a process of elimination.
“Miners of today go where the miners of yesterday went because we have technology they did not,” says FCM member Greg Herring, “and they did not get it all.”
Time to fire up the metal detector and listen for that sharp squeak announcing a metal of some kind. “You’ll dig up 100 pieces of trash before you ever find a gold nugget,” said Herring, who has become an expert in dating old mining camps based on the tin cans left behind. Since most gold found in the region are small ‘pickers’ and not big nuggets, the process requires a vigilant eye.
As Herring and fellow FCM member Ron Matthias discuss a likely spot, Matthias shovels dirt into a ‘dry wash,’ a shaky machine that uses air to sift dirt, cleverly powered by a 50cc leaf blower engine. (According to BLM rules, small-scale miners cannot use any machine equipment larger than 10 horsepower.)
After removing larger rocks atop the dry wash, Matthias brushes away the fine dirt collected below which leaves behind a pile of smaller grains of rock and sand most likely to contain gold. Matthias then delivers that pile to his wife, Carol, who ‘pans out’ the pile in water, gently removing ultra-fine sand and examining the heavier remains.
“There’s no gold in these large pieces but we don’t take anything for granted,” says FCM member Carol Matthias.
“What you’re looking for, is you have the lighter material that you’ll see on the top. When you start getting rid of the lighter material, panning it off, you get down to the black sand, which is ferrous filings naturally occurring in the dirt, that is four times heavier than the sand,” says Herring. “Gold is nine times heavier than the light-colored sand so where’s the gold gonna be? Under the black sand.”
More than once, gold flakes were found, and Carol’s standard cry of celebration is heard all down the wash, “Thank you, Baby Jesus!”
On another spot nearby, Greg’s wife, Susan, also has a metal detector that is noisily advising her to dig. She uses a pick fashioned with a magnet on its’ head to pick up old tin can bits that can mislead. Using two small sifters, Sue scoops up dirt and uses the metal detector to divide, divide, and divide again, to eliminate all
the dirt that doesn’t get a rise out of her detector. From there, she can also pan out or keep eliminating until gold appears.
Miners at this level do various things with their hard-won treasures. One fellow keeps his gold in a leather pouch which has smoothed the nuggets. The gold may get sold to a jeweler, a mining supplies store, or at a gold show, for whatever the ‘spot’ price is, meaning, the current value of gold. (Currently, raw gold goes for about $1,994 per ounce, or about $64 per gram.) If the piece has an unusual shape, a unique ‘character’, or has quartz embedded, it will fetch a higher price.
Inevitably, some gold becomes jewelry. Today, Susan is wearing gold earrings made from their findings but left her raw-gold wedding band at home as it messes with the metal-detecting process.
But other than the sheer beauty and historically high value, one wonders, why gold? “Gold never tarnishes or oxidizes, it’s the only metal that does not,” says Herring. Gold is also one of the densest of all metals and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. It is also soft and the most malleable of the elements making it ideal for jewelry and decor.
FCM’S beginnings can be traced to a 1992 class at Copper Mountain College (CMC) called “Desert Prospecting” taught by the late Dr. Robert “Doc” Smeton, a beloved dentist in Twentynine Palms. (Smeton passed in 2018 at age 84.) The class started with 35 students but soon shrank to 20. In March 1993, those 20 students formed the First Class Miners group -because they were among Smeton’s ‘first class’ and – much to his pride and delight – soon filed their first claim. The group now boasts 200+ members, most living in the Morongo Basin. The FCM tagline is “Gold guaranteed. Elbow grease required.”
The smallest claim an individual can file is for 20 acres, which costs $165, plus county and filing fees. The largest claim available to small scale miners is 160 acres, though it requires at least eight individuals, likely a club like FCM. (The club currently has seven claims across Southern California.) A claim requires the installation of a Discovery Post somewhere near where gold was initially discovered that also includes a container of official lease papers. (Today, claims are also marked by GPS.) Claim-jumping, digging for gold on another’s claim, is illegal and in the 1880s, would earn you a bullet.
(Small-scale miners are ‘placer’ miners, meaning they seek gold that has already eroded from the lode, or vein, within the earth. ‘Lode’ mining refers to large-scale operations that involve heavy machines, teams of men, underground tunnels, and open pits, all in hopes of hitting the ‘mother-lode.’)
Beyond prospecting, hobby mining clubs like FCM also function as cultural educators. FCM sets up artifact museums, panning booths, and interactive demos at Sky’s the Limit, Pioneer Days, and other functions. When California students learn about state history in the fourth grade, FCM and other groups are usually asked to visit schools and discuss mining history. Recently, a group of young boys (ages 5-13) from a local church joined FCM on an overnight camping trip where they learned the process and the cultural relevance of prospecting in the Golden State. Plus, they took home some gold.
The club’s by-laws include guidelines about leaving no trace and, “… to fill in all prospect holes and to mine in an environmentally sound manner.” There are also rules about leaving ancestral or historical artifacts untouched. A prospective member must be sponsored by a current member and attend an FCM meeting so they can be voted in and briefed on the by-laws before any digging occurs.
But FCM and other small-scale miners are nervous about the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument plan which would include not just the 660,000 acres northeast of the Coachella Valley, but the 20+-square-mile section in the Eagle Mountains that is currently BLM-owned. If that area is converted to national park land, six small-scale mining claims (including two owned by FCM) would be lost as mining is essentially prohibited in all national parks.
“Getting the folks out here, teaching them how it’s done today, very similar to how it was done 140 years ago right here in this area when it was established in the early 1880s when gold was originally found here. We’re trying to teach that cultural-rich history of the gold mining in the area that brought people to this particular area,” says Herring. “If they take the Eagle Mountains away from us, they’re just taking another place that we can’t do the education that we do, come out and show people how it was done, how it’s done today. We lose that.”
While some reference the General Mining Law of 1872 saying that mining would still be allowed within the park, the process is cost-prohibitive for the small-scale
miner.
“We would all lose those if the park took this in because of the regulations and requirements would require us to spend in excess of six figures just to produce an application that may or may not be approved by the Park Service,” says Herring.
Meantime, small-scale miners continue to dig, sift, and search for that magical orange-yellow gleam, marveling at those who came before.
“1880s is when gold was discovered out here in the Eagle Mountains as well as the Virginia Dale Mining District about just about 10 miles north of here. The miners were crawling all over these hills and it’s amazing to think of where they came from, to come out here in the middle of nowhere where there’s hardly any water. How did they do that?” says Herring. “It amazes us today.”
But certainly, there are easier ways to make money, so what is else is going on here?
“It’s really strange and it’s hard to explain to the layman, non-miners, but ‘gold fever’ – everybody’s heard the term – it is absolutely real,” says Herring. “When we find people and show them how to do it and they find their first gold nugget, or gold little flakes and stuff like that, 99 percent of ‘em are hooked, and it’s like, ‘I gotta have more of this.’ I’m actually finding gold that is on my ring and I’m finding it out here in nature! In the raw! In the ground!”
The sport of the search also quickly captivated the Matthias couple.
“I found my first piece of gold and the next thing you know, I have equipment. It was great,” says Ron. “Carol’s also a prior Marine and when she found her first piece, it was like, we were hooked. We were hooked!”
Carol agreed. “We took to it. I pretty much took to the panning and Ron took to the dry washing and it’s like the old saying, ‘Once you find a piece of gold, that’s it. You have gold fever.’ Our is different though, we just like to get out. We like to get out. We get a little exercise. We get this beauty around us, and it just feels good.”
The year may be 2023 but prospectors still live amongst us, and Gold Fever is real,
as Carol’s triumphant cry is heard all down the wash, signaling the ultimate score:
“Thank you, Baby J!”
