The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-08-08
.SCOTTY'S MINE.
IS BUT A MYTH
Death Valleys mystery" Is
Given Roasting That Ought
to Hold Him a While.

sidney Norman, mining editor of the
Los Angeles Times; A d. Meyers. locator
OF the famous Mohawk, and Rol King, the
well known proprietor of the Hollenbeck
par. have just returned from a trip to
Death valley. where Death Valley Scotty
iured them with promises of revealing the
secret location of his wonderfully rich
mine. Editor Norman tells the thrilling
story or the partys experience in last
sundays Times, says the Tonopah Miner
IL seems after arriving in the vicinity
OF Scottys tabled mine, the desert faker
drove off the mules, leaving the trio for
seven days and nights encamped in the
nell on earth, 275 feet below sea level
lighting horseflies as big as bats by day
and suffering intensely from the heat
Scotty left camp ostensibly to find the
mules and was met returning after seven
days by Norman and Meyer, who walked
10 Furnace Creek for a team to send after
King, who was, very sick and unable to
make the trip on foot. Both Norman and
Meyer We're willing to accompany Scotty
back, but the Death Valley mystery
hedged by saying they had better return
TO Barstow and make a new start in ten
days. Norman sizes up the great desert
faker as follows:
Death Valley Scotty, perpetrator of the
greatest and longest-sustained mining
hoax of the day, has utterly failed to
show title to mining property of value,
and must now be classed among the big
gest takers in the mining world. There
is no question on that score-he has ut
terly failed to make good one point and.
pushed to the limit, has again had re-
course to his threadbare tricks of deceit.
An attempt was made to resurrect the
gr1siy fake a few weeks ago, but even
in its cheap dime novel Shroud it was too
feeble to stand the searchlight of truth
and has again retired to its charnel house
in the Valley of Death. There let it rest
"a warning to the gullible and the foolish.
| assisted in the attempted resurrection.
May the Lord forgive me-
II have recently returned from a three
weeks trip to the scene of the alleged
mine. impelled thitherward by thirst for a
story induced by ScottY's promise that
he had tired of the desert life and was
ready to show his great wealth-producer
to a quivering world To say I was dis
gusted would be putting ii mildly I was
disguised, sure, and footsore to boot Nv
disgust was not brought on by the fact
that / did not see the mine that goes
without saying). but because the whole
business was so coarse, so cheap and so
palpably rotten. | had expected to meet
clever man with a clever scheme but
alas. met but a penny Dare-Devil-Dick
OF the desert. woefully lacking in ingenu-
ity of the high-class kind clutching a
whisky bottle by. the neck and posing
like five-cent hero in five-cent drama
on the Barbary Coast.
SO far as l am concerned Death Val
ley is but an unpleasant memory: vii,
horses could not drag me there again
And I think that any man who will fol-
low the Scotty will-o'- the-wisp is a fool
and should earn automatic entry to Mat
teawan or any other resting place for
the criminally insane. He Is just faker
and one who would be called by another
and harsher name if his victims of the
past had not been afraid of bringing the
laugh down on themselves by exposing
him through the channels of the law"