USA > California > Lassen County > Fairfield's pioneer history of Lassen County, California; containing everything that can be learned about it from the beginning of the world to the year of Our Lord 1870 Also much of the pioneer history of the state of Nevada the biographies of Governor Isaac N. Roop and Peter Lassen and many stories of Indian warfare never before published > Part 41
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THE BEGINNING OF THE END
"The Eastern Slope" of November 23d, 1867, reports the failure by Mr. Isenbeck to work the Black Rock ores at the Bass & Evans mill. They think it is because the country is a water formation and that the water takes up the metal in solution when worked with it. That such is the case is evidenced by the fact of the numerous assays and the returns from Dall's mill made over and over again. They think that no one could satisfy Mr. Hiskey that he was deceived in the thirty or forty tons of ore from Black Rock that he has worked, or make Mr. Dall believe that he has furnished hundreds of dollars of bullion coming from rock that was utterly barren. The "Virginia City Trespass" of November 20th says that yesterday they published intelligence from the Black Rock mines on the authority of Charles Isenbeck, who has just returned from that country, where he has been superintending the working of various ores from the mines thereabouts at the Evans & Company's mill. This morning they received a call from L. Bass, who is a partner
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of Evans in the Black Rock mill, who makes a statement utterly in contravention of what Isenbeck informs them, thus making it a question of veracity between the two gentlemen. Bass said "I am part proprietor of the Black Rock mill. I engaged Charles Isenbeck to go there and superintend the working of the Black Rock ore at a salary of $1000 a month provided he could procure paying returns from the ore. I paid him $500 in advance and he went to the mill. I furnished him with everything he de- manded that would insure success in reducing the ore. He worked between ten and twelve tons. Instead of the quicksilver gaining 122 pounds of amalgam, as stated by Isenbeck yesterday, it lost the usual amount in working; and all the amalgam found was about half a pound, which upon examination and assaying proved to be nothing but copper, with no trace of gold or silver therein. After this test by Isenbeck I called upon him to return the $500 advanced upon contract which he promptly refunded to me, he not having been able to procure any precious metals from the ore by his process. Isenbeck is the third person who has asserted that he could get rich returns from the ore, and each has failed. I have yet to see a quarter of a dollar in silver or gold actually produced from working the Black Rock ores, and never any signs of either except in fire assays, one of a dozen of which have perhaps shown gold and silver in paying quantities. I believe yet in the richness of our vast deposits of ore, and hope for some method whereby the same can be profitably worked; but as yet none has been discovered. At this time Hiskey of Dall's mill at Franktown is engaged in working four and one half tons of ore from the Snow Storm ledge and the returns thereof I will make public. I desire that only the truth be told relative to the district, as untruth will only militate against the best interests of the country in which I am as deeply interested as any one." The "Trespass" says it takes no hand in the fight, hoping that the wealth of the country may be as great as Isenbeck says it is and Bass hopes it is. The following is from "The Sacramento Union" under the heading of "The Black Rock Failure."
"In regard to the recent failure of a test of this rock in which fifteen tons of Snow Storm ore was worked without any silver, as mentioned in the Union lately, 'The Sage Brush' says 'Frank Johnson informs the 'Brush' that no importance need
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be attached to the failure as no effort was made to acquire any extensive result. Here is more mystery. Talk about mystery in Heaven; we think Black Rock will eclipse any mystery yet developed or undeveloped. On the heels of this comes a letter from the Freyberg Institute, Germany, pronouncing the ore one one-hundredth part pure silver, equal to $320 per ton.' " Ross Lewers says that a man named John Maurer, who had once worked for him, went to Germany in 1866 or 1867. Lewers sent thirty-two samples of Black Rock ore with him, and he had them assayed at Freyberg. The report of the assay was in German, and Rough Elliott, to whom it was given, neglected to have it translated before it was accidentally burned. Maurer said that only one sample assayed anything of value, and that was only good for paint.
THE EVANS QUARTZ MILL-Continued
The miners turned out and dug greasewood roots to run the reverberatory furnace and for fuel for the engine, and they worked the ore by the "Bartola" process, the same that had been used at Dall's mill. They made a run of thirty days and when they cleaned up they never got a color. The Evans Brothers then took in Lawrence Bass and Chancellor Derby as partners, and some time after the middle of February, 1867, they made another run of about the same length as the first one and with the same result. When it was said that the ore could not be worked at Black Rock on account of the water there, Mr. Evans took five gallons of it to Virginia City and had it analyzed. They told him there was nothing in the water that would prevent the successful working of the ore at that place. Isenbeck said he could work the ore and make it pay, so they hired him as Mr. Bass told; and he made a failure of it after having had the mill fixed up to work the ore by his own process. Alvaro Evans says they had about half a barrel of whiskey at the camp, and the whole crowd got drunk and abandoned the place for all time to come.
About the first of December the Atchinson & Company mill was ready to run, and undiscouraged by the failure of Evans and Bass they commenced working the ore from their mine.
December 14, 1867, "The Eastern Slope" published an article written by J. B. Hiskey. In this article he states that
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an editorial in the "Mining and Scientific Press" says that while nearly all assayers of established reputation have pronounced the so-called ores from the Black Rock district to be utterly worthless and no ores at all, ever since the discovery of the mines a class of men with little or no experience have been persistent in their declarations that the ores were of extraordi- nary richness. These men have even exhibited to hopeful share- holders bars and buttons which they claim have been taken from the ores by assaying and working processes. Hiskey says the last sentence must be intended for him, for outside of Isenbeck he is the only person who has ever exhibited bars of precious metals and claimed to have taken them from the Black Rock ores. The "Press" further says that after two years of effort they have finally obtained possession of a sack of Black Rock ores which a brief examination justifies them in saying are utterly worthless. The card of Mr. Ross advertising Isenbeck's failure closes the article in the "Press." Mr. Hiskey says he would like to ask the editors of the "Press" if they have any proof that Black Rock is not a rich mineral region. He thinks that condemnation without investigation should stop. The "Press" is not alone in its error. Almost every tenpenny assayer condemns Black Rock because an ordinary fire assay fails to produce results. He makes no claim to extraordinary ability, but he asserts and stands ready to prove that he has worked many tons of Black Rock ore, and generally with good results. If either of the editors of the "Press" will visit him, he will undertake to show him to his complete satisfaction how bars and buttons of precious metals can be taken from the Black Rock ores. It is true that a little mill has been built at Black Rock and that it has made two or three runs which were failures. It is equally true that old men, little boys, and Chinamen in that region never fail to get their button out of ores in small quantities. He thinks the cause of failure is that the milling has been conducted on too scientific principles, and intimates that every mill in the state run by a purely scientific expert has failed. In conclusion he says he has no ax to grind and no Black Rock "feet" to sell, but that he can not help thinking that bars and buttons will be taken from Black Rock in paying quantities after the "Scientific Press" is forgotten.
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January 25, 1868, "The Eastern Slope" quotes the following from The New York "American Journal of Mining." "During the excitement numerous samples of ore were sent to Messrs. Adelberg & Raymond with the whimsical request that they should assay the rock according to the method practiced in Freyberg. As they practice all methods at Freyberg, this request was mysterious at the time; but the cause of it now appears to have been the pretension of Isenbeck to be a Freyberg metallurgist. The assaying of the wax gave no silver and the material was pronounced to be mere bituminous clay. We presume that the matter will soon die out and be forgotten, but there seems to be still rumors of great results obtained in Washoe from Black Rock ores. Some of the ore was sent to Prof. A. E. Verrill of Yale College. He said it contained a little silver, but not nearly so much as it was said to carry. He also said it was a sort of clay containing some chloride of silver, salt, bitumen, etc."
"The Eastern Slope" of February 1, 1868, says "Mr. Atch- inson of the firm of Atchinson & Company in Black Rock has thus far failed to secure any favorable result. We learn that he proposes to make one more attempt after which in case of failure, he will remove his mill to the Winnemucca district, Humboldt county. Cheatam, who gained his experience in Black Rock ores at Dall's mill, is now at the Atchinson mill waiting for chemicals with which to make his final attempt on the untractable ores of Black Rock. We have not, and never had, any faith in working Black Rock ores at Black Rock; and secondly, our faith in Black Rock is no more affected by past failures than by past abuse engendered by spite and jealousy." The paper then says that Black Rock may prove a failure, but they well remember the time when all the knowing ones scoffed at as wildcat all claims on the Comstock. These claims now occupy a respectable place in the opinions of practical miners, and they anticipate that it will be so with Black Rock.
Without any doubt the Atchinson mill was moved, for there is nothing on record to show that they obtained any good results from that run. At least three quartz mills were erected and run in the Black Rock district, and not one of them ever got anything out of the ore. Alvaro Evans says their company lost
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$17000 there. In 1870, or perhaps a year or two later, the machinery of the Evans mill was hauled to Hayden Hill in this county.
The glory of Hardin City had departed and so had the hopes of those who saw "millions in it." This "city," named in honor of J. A. Hardin, stood at the western edge of the Black Rock range thirteen or fourteen miles from its southern extremity. "In Miners' Mirage-Land," published in 1904, has this to say of it: "Its buildings are quite dismantled and destroyed. The winds of the Desert-the rains of the years have nibbled and gnawed at the adobes until only the faintest traces that they once were, remain. Of the mill itself, part of the whitish-gray stone of its walls, and most of the tall chimney, stand out in sharp relief, discernible miles away against the darker back- ground of Hardin Mountain."
Probably the Black Rock mines were abandoned by every- body before the middle of the year 1868. Three men of the old crowd, however, went back. A. B. Jenison prospected in that section until 1884. Leroy Arnold prospected in the Black Rock country and northeast of it from 1876 until 1900, a short time before his death. Neither of these two men discovered anything of value. Ladue Vary went back there in the early 70's and in 1884, Walter J. Dakin says, or about that time, discovered a ledge containing gold and silver about thirty-one miles north of west of the Queen's River crossing. For this mine he was offered $30,000. One would naturally suppose that after all these years of toil and privation in the desert he would gladly have sold for that sum and spent the rest of his life in comfort. But no. After all this hard work he was going to have some- thing for what he had found, and would take nothing less than $100,000 for his mine. No one would give that for it, and he lived there in the same old way for more than twenty years longer. His place was called Varyville, and there he raised a little hay and a garden. He leased his mine on such favorable terms that although considerable bullion was taken from it, he got nothing to speak of himself. In 1906 he became so feeble that he was taken to the county hospital at Winnemucca, Nevada.
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After he had been there about a year he died of the smallpox. He was ninety-six years old, and had lived and prospected in that section the most of the time for almost fifty years.
Daniel B. Boyd, who was the County Treasurer of Washoe county, Nevada, for a great many years, said that n 1872 he was working in a store at Franktown, Nevada. He had come there from Downieville, in the neighborhood of which he had mined for something like twenty years. One day an overland teamster (one who hauled freight from the Sacramento valley over into Nevada) brought a ten-mule load of Black Rock ore to Dall's mill to be worked. He thinks that James H. Kinkead was interested in having the ore brought there. In a conversa- tion with Mr. Boyd the teamster said the ore looked as though it might have something in it, and Boyd took some of the fine ore that was left in the wagon bed, panned it out, and got a color or two. He then asked the teamster if he had hauled any other rock or mineral before he loaded with the Black Rock ore and the reply was that he had not. Mr. Boyd swept all the fine rock he could get out of the wagon box and panned it out very carefully. He got some gold and a lot of fine bits of metal. He pulverized these in a mortar and then panned it out and got about $2.50 in fine gold.
The following was told by William H. Jenison, son of A. B. Jenison. "Billy" Jenison was almost raised in the Black Rock country and knew it well. He also knew what kind of ore Hardin found there. Along the last of April, 1909, when the mining excitement was running high in Nevada and a great deal of prospecting was being done in that state, he concluded to take a look at the Black Rock country once more. When he arrived at the place where Hardin City once stood he found that some other prospectors had already been there that spring. He did not know who they were and never found out, but appearances indicated that they had gone away about a month before his arrival. When they got ready to leave they threw their specimens down on the ground in a pile. There was quite a lot of the rock they had picked up, and in the pile he found a piece of ore that was exactly the same kind as that carried away by Hardin in 1849. It was the first piece of it, excepting the one Hardin had, that any one had seen since that time. Of course he could not tell whether it was a piece of float, or
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whether they had found the ledge and didn't know what it was. It may have been a piece of the ore that was left where Hardin's train camped.
It is probable that long before this the reader has begun to wonder how so much bullion came out of rock that had nothing in it; and how some assayers got big buttons, and "old men, little boys, and Chinamen, never failed to get their button out of the ores in small quantities." It is easy to answer the first question. At that time Dall's mill and the other mills in that neighborhood were crushing rich ore from the Comstock mines. Their batteries and pans were not very thoroughly cleaned and the Black Rock ore picked up the gold and silver left in them. (Alvaro Evans said that the alkali dust on the Black Rock ore cut the gold and silver loose from the old irons in the "Bartola" process.) That accounts for the fact that sometimes half a ton of Black Rock ore would yield a goodly amount of silver and after that three or four tons of the same load would yield little or nothing. The first batch of ore worked cleaned the batteries and pans of what silver there was from the Comstock ore, or the greater part of it, and not much was left to make the next lot pay. Men who were at Black Rock during the time of the greatest excitement there think that Isenbeck made all the ore that he assayed pay well because he had a good job and wanted to "hold it down." Perhaps the "old men, little boys, and Chinamen" obtained their buttons the way Mr. Boyd got that gold. There is something mysterious in the part Mr. Hiskey took. He seems to have been perfectly honest in what he said and did, and it looks as though he greatly deceived himself in this matter.
The writer has talked with many men who prospected at Black Rock and has read everything he could find on the subject. He is of the opinion that Mr. Hardin found the large quantity of that silver ore just as he said he did. He was not hunting for gold or silver and didn't expect to find any, and was not excited about it. He simply thought he had found something that would make bullets. Cloud-bursts are of frequent occur- rence in the Black Rock region during hot weather. Men who knew that section well in the 60's and who went back there twenty-five years afterwards, say it then looked like a strange country because cloud-bursts had cut out new canyons and
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filled up the old ones. Probably a year or two before Hardin found that ore a cloud-burst had torn open the side of the hill and exposed it to view. Before he came back in 1858 another cloud-burst covered it up. This view was taken by M. S. Thomp- son, Leroy Arnold, and other men who prospected in that dis- trict. The next cloud-burst that comes along may uncover it again, and, on the other hand, it may lie buried there forever.
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CHAPTER XIV
1868. SETTLEMENT
S Y USANVILLE. F. and S. have the following: "Silver Star Lodge No. 135, I. O. O. F .- This lodge was instituted June 19, 1868, by Charles N. Fox, G. M., with Z. N. Spalding, William Brockman, I. J. Harvey, J. Jensen, Jacob W. Smith, Samuel Peyser, and David Knoch as charter members."
Long Valley. James Chamberlain and John L. Martin bought the Willow Ranch from George Robinson in November.
Horse Lake Valley. Benjamin E. Shumway was in the valley this year, but made no improvements. James R. Withing- ton and his foreman, Charles Moore, were in there with cattle, but they put up no buildings. Perhaps a man named Coon was in there with horses.
John B. McKissick says that some time during this year Daniel McDonald located what is now the Van Loan ranch on Madeline Plains, two and one half miles northwest of McDon- ald's Peak, and Theodore Winters located the Williams ranch four miles west of where Madeline Station now is. It is not known whether they put up any buildings or not. J. O. Hemler says that Jacob McKissick and J. D. Byers took their cattle onto Madeline Plains and made their headquarters at what was after- wards the McKissick ranch at the southeast corner of the Plains, but did no building. This summer William J. Seagraves went through Dixie valley with a prospecting party. There were no settlers in the valley at that time and probably it was not named. The sight of a band of wild-looking Indians caused them to move out of that neighborhood instead of staying there to prospect as they intended to do. James Coen says that two men, father and son, named Graves were in the valley of the same name this year.
THE SETTLEMENT OF BIG VALLEY
Lassen went through this valley with his emigrant train in 1848, but it is probable that it had been visited by hunters and trappers before that time. In 1849, and perhaps for several years after that, it was called Round valley. The settlement of this valley was somewhat later than that of Surprise valley,
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which was much further from the other settlements, and Fall River valley not far away was settled eight or ten years before Big valley was. This may be accounted for by the fact that Fort Bidwell in Surprise and Fort Crook in Fall River valley afforded protection to the settlers in the valleys where they were located.
The location of Big valley and the size and shape of the part that lies in this county can be seen on the map. In Modoc county it extends from one to four or five miles north of the county line, the mountains on the north side of the valley running to the northwest. At its northwestern corner there is an arm of the valley called "Gouger Neck" that runs up the river for eight or nine miles. Several miles before Ash creek reaches the river it begins to spread out and finally makes a large swamp. This swampy country extends down along the river until it leaves the valley. The mountains on the southern and western sides of the valley are higher and more heavily timbered than those to the north and east. Although the valley is drained by a tributary of the Sacramento river it is a sage brush country and in other ways is like the valleys of the Great Basin. Some of the soil is adobe and some of it is sandy. Its agricultural products are the same as those of Honey Lake, but its slightly higher altitude makes its winters a little colder.
INDIAN TROUBLES IN BIG VALLEY
The writer has been unable to learn of any Indian fights that took place after the settlement of the valley had begun. J. A. Carmichael, who lives in the northwestern part of the valley on the county line, says that his Father located there with his family in 1870. At that time there were a good many things to show that the people of an emigrant train had been massacred close by, but it occurred long before they came and the few families then in the valley could tell nothing about it. There was then, and still is, a rock corral on the Bull Run slough about half a mile south of the county line, and in 1870 there were broken wagons, pieces of harness, and broken crockery scattered around the ground. Mr. Carmichael also says that there were some peo- ple killed by the Indians on Pit river about twelve miles south of the Modoc county line. A man and his Wife and their two boys, accompanied by a German, who were going to Marysville, were attacked by the Indians and only the boys escaped. Everything
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they had was destroyed and their stock run off. He does not know the exact date, but it took place before he came there. Mrs. Mary E. Harris says that in 1867 some men who were going through there had a fight with the Indians on Juniper creek not far from the present site of Bieber, and that a man named Cox was wounded in the fight.
Joseph Wilson, who settled in Big valley in 1871, tells the fol- lowing : In 1864 Milton Riggs and twelve or fourteen other men went from Fall River valley into Big valley. They reached the valley early in the afternoon and camped on the west side of the river just where it runs into the mountain. Before night quite a large party of Indians appeared upon the scene. They were a savage-looking crowd, some of them being entirely naked. Indian- like they first asked for something to eat and when food had been given them the spokesman of the party, a big, fierce-looking fel- low, wanted to know what the white men were there for. They told him they had just come to look at the country, and in a short time the Indians went away.
The next morning Riggs and seven or eight of the crowd took a few pack horses with them and started up the river to find a ford. After going about four miles they found a place where they could cross, but evidently the Indians knew what they were looking for and thirty or forty were there to meet them. They told Riggs and his crowd that they didn't want any white men in the country and ordered them to leave as quickly as they could. The white men didn't stay to argue the case with them, but went back to their camp and started for Fall River valley as soon as they could pack up. Mr. Wilson was in Fall River valley at the time. In 1868 Alexander Parker went from Scott's valley into Big valley, but was afraid to stay there. Mrs. Harris and Mr. Wilson both say that in the fall of 1868 Patrick Gordon and A. B. Turnbull and their families settled about three miles south- west of where Lookout now stands, a little north of the line between Lassen and Modoc counties. Turnbull's father, Thomas Turnbull, Sr., and Gordon's son John were with them. They were the first real settlers in Big valley.
Those whose names are given in the following lists settled in the county in 1868. The length of residence does not apply to
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the children. The following lived here all the rest of their lives : *William Davis, *John Parks and Family, Henry Kirby and Family, John Smith.
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