The Goldfield news. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1904-1911, 1905-10-20
SIDE LIGHTS ON THE CAMP
Written for The News by w. p. De Wolf.)

When the ~prospector blazed the trai,
And paved the way for less venture
some feet,
To Nevada, Land of Gold.
Ever since that day, centuries ago,
when the accidental discovery of the
gold laden gravel in the bed of the
Pactolus river made Croesus, king Of
Media, the richest man of his time,
hck, that mighty lever which has
raised thousands of men from positions
of obscurity to the pinnacle of fame,
has entered largely into the life of the
prospector and miner. Sometimes fate
Is unkind and camps on his trail with
all the malignity of an avenging Ne
mesis, and though fortune be often in
his pathway it yet eludes his grasp. In
other instances chance is ever favor
able and rewards his perseverance, ut
each milestone along the highway of
success. The history of mining
il an endless serial of pro-
pitious and unpropitious cir
cumstance, and it's pages are ever
filed with a chronicle of intensely in
teresting events which possess all the
glamour of fiction. Incidentally it is
conducive to belief in the maxim Of
the ~prospector that, "gold is where
you find it." no better evidence Of
which fact could possibly be deduced
than is afforded by a pilgrimage to the
hungry looking hills of the Southern
Nevada country. As a perspective,
these forbidding appearing buttes offer
much in the way of pensive thought
ssto him who in the love of nature
seeks communion with her visible
forms,' but as a prospect rich N
promise, they present about as tough
an exterior as the gold seeker has
ever bumped up against. Yet secreted
in their depths is treasure trove of 4
value beyond computation.
In a recent speech President Roose-
velt said that "the great prizes of life
come by accident, and no human being
knows this better than one who has
arawn one of them The alpha and
omega of mining are summed up in the
epigram, for more than one grlzzled
old prospector or youthful tenderfoot
has been amazed to discover himself a
millionaire as the result of a lucky
find. Hundreds of prospectors have
trekked across these desert wastes dur
ING the past two decades or more, yet
but a few years have passed since the
WGditu " tnC IOnoPoh anu
districts was first unearthed. More
than one rich ore body has been over
looked by one luckless operator to pc
located by some more fortunate miner,
and yet in most instances the knowl
edge of the game was on a par in each
Instance. Ed Scheifflin, the hardy old
veteran who disclosed the treasures Vt
the Tombstone country, made the dis
covery by accident; Nat Creole, the
man who started the stampede to the
Colorado camp that bears his name,
located the Holy Moses and Last
Chance claims as a forlorn hope; the
location Of the Lite Pittsburg mine
at Leadville, which turned a silver
stream into the pockets of the late Fl.
"A. w. Tabor of Denver, and transform
ed him from an All but INDECENT store
keeper into a United States senator
and a man of affairs, was due to the
inspiration concealed in a jug of whis-
key which formed a portion of the
grubstake with which he had QUILTED
a couple of prospectors; a lucky bunch
vouchsafed to w. 8. Stratton after he
hau returned to Colorado Springs from
a prospecting trip to the Cripple Creek
district, sent him scurrying back to
tnat camp in the middle of the night
and resulted in his locating the INDIE
p~endence, one of the most remarkable
gold producers the world has ever
known; United States Senator William
A. Clark of Montana, who recently re-
fused an offer of $4,000, 900 cash for
the United Verde mine because he did
not know what to do with the money,
purchased the property in 1888 for
$26,800 under the impression that it
was a gold proposition, and when he
discovered that its deposits were
largely copper thought he had been
buncoed; yet today the block of
ground on which the machinery stands
is estimated to contain copper valued
at $12, 000, 900; the Woods brothers of
Victor developed che Gold Coin mine
into one of the best paying PROPOSE
tions in the Cripple Creek district after
Joe Chellew, a miner of experience, had
passed it's immense ore deposit without
discovering it, and had thrown up his
lease in disgust; the golden treasure Of
Beacon hill was revealed at a time
when the general average of mining
men in that great camp were inclined
to ridicule it's mineral possibilities;
Poverty gulch became a misnomer
when w. s. Stratton developed the Abe
Lincoln property; the Last Dollar
claim yielded it's first returns at the
latter end of it's owners resources; the
indicator failed to make good it's
cognomen until lessee after lessee had
explored it without profit; the Isabella
has at turns been a bonanza and a
shatterer of hopes; the Little Johnnie
mine at Leadville was developed into a
producer of gold at a time when the
characterization of silver had brought
that hitherto prosperous camp to the
very brink of financial disaster.
The record of the past is but a mir
ror that reflects the conditions Of the
present, for mining history is con-
t~inually repeating itself and luck IS
ever a prime factor in the making on t.
Goldfeld is no exception to the rule
and in a number of instances more
than the usual element of chance has
entered into the opening up of it's