This post is long, so I will send in two parts. Unlike most stories of the hard work and efforts of the miners here are some tibits relating to some "easy pickins". The information for this post is from the Autobiography of Charles Peters (whose real name was Carlo Pedro Deogo Laudier de Andriado), born 1825 on the Island of Fiol, Portugal. Peters first visited California in 1846 as a merchant seaman,returning three years later to seek gold at Columbia, Jackson Creek, and Mokelumne Hill. The autobiography of Charles Peters (n.d., ca. 1915) is the old man's brief memoir of his life through the 1850s, followed by a series of "Good Luck" stories, miscellaneous tales of the mining camps, a few of which seem to be credited to Peters although most are the work of another author, drawn from many sources. To read the full text of his adventures see it at California the Way I Saw It: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html ====================================== The towns of Sonora, Columbia, Mokelumne Hill, Auburn, Placerville, Nevada City, Downieville, Oroville , Shasta, Yreka and many others of lesser note, were built upon and surrounded by rich placers. They were not laid out and built according to any definite plan. Like Topsy, they "just growed." Starting from the pioneer trading store, the streets followed the trails made by the miners coming to trade. During the '50s these towns were frequently swept by fires and in washing the ashes and cinders to recover coins and jewelry left in the flames, the owners of the town lots often found they had pay dirt on their premises. Sonora was a town most prolific of such events. It is told that a man leading a mule attached to a cart up the main street one morning, after a rain in the '50s, stooped to remove a stone out of the way and found he had hold of a nugget weighing thirty-five pounds and worth $7500. In June, 1853, after a fire, a number of men were removing a pile of rocks from a lot on the main street of Sonora, when one of them picked up a nugget weighing three and a half pounds and worth $700. A man removing the debris from his lot, also on Main Street, picked up a five and a half pound nugget worth $1200, and a Mexican, washing the ashes from his lot on Washington Street, to find coins left in the fire, found a six-pound nugget worth $1300. A man named RUDOLFSON, on a lot near the center of the town, picked up a lump of quartz and gold which he sold for $450. In October, 1859, behind Gorham and Company's store on Washington Street, a pound and a half nugget was dug out near the back door. On a Sunday afternoon in January, '56, a Mexican, after a heavy shower, found a small quartz boulder in an alley off the main street in Sonora that showed a speck of gold. In a hurry for money he sold it to General George S. EVANS for $25. It yielded $378. A miner named KELLY washed out his lot at the north end of Main Street, Sonora, in 1859, and found lumps weighing seven and a quarter, three and several from one-half to two and one-half pounds in weight. On February 8, 1857, a heavy rainstorm prevailed which caused Sonora's Creek to raise six feet, which was high water mark then. A citizen standing at the rear door of Wells Fargo Company's office watching the flood, looked down at an eddy near the bottom of the door steps and saw the glitter of gold. The dirt had been washed away from around a six-pound nugget and he was over $1200 richer for loitering around that place. The town of Placerville was almost totally destroyed by fire July 7, 1856. One of those to lose his house and personal effects was a man named L. A. NORTON. He lost a sum of money consisting of gold and silver coins of various denominations; also some jewelry and to recover these from the ashes and cinders, he decided to sluice the ground. He obtained a head of water for the purpose from Hangtown Creek and began operations. He not only found, with this method, all the valuables he had lost in the fire, but that the ground was full of nuggets. He gathered from the washing of the dirt and the bed rock crevices he scraped, enough gold to not only rebuild on his property, but to erect three other houses. Probably the youngest prospector and smallest in size to make a good luck find was little Sammy TIMMONS, who in March, 1858, was four years old and living in Placerville. His mother sent him out to play in the back yard and child-like, in imitation of his grown up seniors, he let his imagination play he was a miner. When called in by his mother, he came lugging a quartz boulder almost too heavy for him to toddle with, which he had uncovered in his diminutive mining operations. It contained nearly $200 worth of gold. see part 2