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The History of Holcomb Valley & The Lost Nugget Mine Story
Most people think of ghost towns and California in the same thought. Perhaps because the
Great Gold Rush of 1849 was in California. In fact there are many forgotten towns, where gold was the only
reason for their being. They are found up and down the entire west coast of the United States.
In Washington State there are no less than 28 that are still visible or almost so. In Oregon I know of 34 and in
California there are at least 42 that I know about or have visited, and those are just gold towns.
Inland, in the
State of Nevada there are still more. Many of those, in fact most, I have not yet visited.
Just a few miles north of Las Vegas and not far from Hwy 95 is the ghost
town of Gold Point that was originally called Hornsilver but it seemed that investors liked the name Gold Point better.
Well over $10,000,000 in gold and silver was mined and population peaked at 2000 in 1928. Today there is not much left but some
wooden remains of the 40 or 50 buildings that once stood on the main street.
Another interesting ghost is the town of Weepah
located futher north near Tonopah. Someone discovered gold there in 1927 and a town sprung up almost overnight. In fact
a mini gold rush began as 1500 people complete with high heeled dancehall girls from Tonopah, rushed to file claims. Two years
later the town was deserted. One wonders is the gold still there, or was it ever there?
Placer mining is what has my interest. I'll leave the hard rock stuff to the big boys and their heavy equipment.
So when I visit an old ghost town, in a known gold location, I always study the area looking for possible placer deposits that can
be either run through a sluice or drywashed. The best way to test a site is using the age old method of panning.
As an example, near the old ghost town of Copper City, located just north of the City of Barstow California, I sampled a dry wash with my pan
and to my surprise found color on the first try. We set up the drywasher and spent the rest of
the day working that wash. No one got rich that day but we sure had a lot of fun and a good workout to boot.
HOLCOMB VALLEY
The History of Holcomb Valley is interesting. Bill Holcomb left Indiana to find gold in the mining camps of Northern
California. It did not work out for him up there and after over a year of not finding much gold he became discouraged and drifted
south. When he arrived in Los Angeles he met a man from San Bernadino who told Bill about a small gold find in the San Bernardino Mountians.
It was late fall in 1859 and Bill Holcomb left L.A. for Starvation Flats.
There he met other miners who were preparing for winter. Bill
was a good marksman and was hired by the other prospectors to get bear. He set off through Polique Canyon looking for bear.
When he reached the top of the ridge he looked north and saw a beautiful valley about two miles away. It was getting late so
he headed back to camp. The next day he and an Indian friend set off again in search of bears for food. They tracked a
grizzly into that same valley he saw the day before and as they caught up to the bear they noticed a large outcrop of quartz. Bill
being a prospector, forgot about the bear, climbed up to the outcrop and saw
that it was shot full of gold. The gold was in veins running all through the shattered quartz in that outcrop. Holcomb Valley had been discovered.
The news of the find spread like wildfire and by late spring in 1860 the valley was swarming with prospectors.
Just east of that original discovery, a small town sprang up almost over night. On July 4th 1860 the many miners now in the area celebrated and
the blacksmith's wife, Mrs. Van Dusen, made a giant flag out of available materials. Everyone liked Mrs Van Dusen so much they decided to call the new town Belleville
after Mrs. Van Dusen's pretty little daughter Belle. Belleville had one general store, two butcher shops, two laundries,
one bakery, three carpenter shops, two blacksmiths, one stamp mill, one saw mill and of course three or four saloons. The Presidential
election that year saw 307 votes from Belleville for Abraham Lincoln and the following year Belleville missed becoming
the county seat of San Bernardino by only two votes!
By early 1875 most of the gold had been found and people were beginning to leave. That summer, Bill Holcomb returned to the small valley he
had discovered 15 years ago. There he saw the last futile searches for gold taking place, most of
the area now deserted and Belleville was quickly turning into a ghost town. The story that most people don't know is that
in those few years more gold was taken out of
Holcomb Valley, per square mile, than anywhere else in Southern California.
The Saga of the Lost Nugget Mine
On this occasion, a long time friend and I were trying out my new sluice box on a rare desert stream in
the Black Hawk mining district, just northeast of Big Bear Lake California. This area is well known for producing silver but
gold has also been found there as well.
My friend and I were in a narrow canyon in an area where there was actually running
water in the rocky stream bed but it only ran for a hundred feet or so before it sank back underground. We ran some shovelfuls
of gravel from the hillside and a few hours later actually found a small nugget the size of a small dried pea.
We were so excited you would have thought we found the
Mother lode, not just a tiny little nugget, but in the excitement and passing it back and forth between us, it was dropped and
disappeared once again into that gravel bed.
Of course we tried hard to find it, but the day was getting late
and the sun was setting so we never did. To this day we refer to that area as "The Lost Nugget Mine"! It turns out that we were not that far
from the old ghost town of Holcomb Valley, about which many stories of lost gold are told.
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