The Lost Shaft in Lost Basin


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Hi Everyone,

I collect stories, maps, reports and images about gold areas. While Clay and I are researching an area to make a new FootPrint, I usually develop quite a library of stuff that is of interest to prospectors. I post much of it up to my blog Ripple. Take a look if you haven't been there before, you may find something you like. I thought I'd start sharing some of them here.

Most recently, I've been collecting historical stories about the Gold Basin and Lost Basin Arizona areas. This story was printed in the Mohave Miner in 1885. Although most reports about the Gold/Lost Basin AZ area will tell you that placer mining wasn't done much until the depression, this story tells otherwise. 

The story is about the "Lost Shaft" and its rediscovery and the discovery in 1885 of fairly extensive placer workings from earlier times all the way up to the Colorado.

The Gold Basin FootPrint that we have just released has a Historical Placer layer that maps old placer diggings along the Eastern flank of the Lost Basin Range. I'd be willing to bet that some of them are the same workings referenced in this old newspaper article.

Sometimes we can learn a lot from the folks doing just what we're doing, only 100 years past.

The article is fairly long, so I'll link to the blog. Enjoy

The Lost Basin - New Evidence of Old Workings

Here's an image of old ruins along Pearce Ferry Road to go with the story.

pfr.jpg

Photograph by Francis H Clark. Ruins of a stone house, probably at Pearce Ferry. From the Arizona State Library.

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