I have several excerpts from "Wagon Wheels" ocr'd, have a lot of names maybe interesting? Henry Carter 1956, reprinted 1966 issue, (excerpt) In the fall of 1900 a man from Los Angeles named H. Z. Osborne came into Coffee Creek looking for a mine or a promising prospect to develop. He contacted Laurence and made a deal with him for $5,000 cash on the barrel head for the Dorleska and a half section of railroad land which Laurence had contracted to buy. Osborne organized a company, one of them being M. H. Macliwaine, who was a bookkeeper and an employee of the Trinity Gold Placer, known as the Nash Mine. They employed Gordon Abrams as superintendent for the Dorleska and hired me for his foreman. We went into the Dorleska October 25, 1900, with a crew of six or eight men to get ready to work the property, which is at an elevation of 6,600 feet and snow usually starts falling in October and continues through the winter and reaches a depth of anywhere from ten to twenty-five Everything had to be packed in by mule train. We got lumber from the Nash Mine and packed it in to put up buildings, as there was only a twelve by twelve foot building which Laurence had built on the property. We got in mining timber and lagging out of the woods and put up buildings sufficient to take care of the small crew, working in two to three feet of snow, when on January 1, 1901, snow began coming down right. In one week the snow was ten feet deep but we had our supplies in and we were ready to go to work underground. It was rumored that the miner whom Laurence had entrusted to carry on the mining for him had drifted away from from the ore and as the tunnel was timbered he had lagged and covered up the ore, figuring that he himself would come back later and get the property. A man who had been prospecting in the vicinity during the summer had been in the tunnel and in the night unknown to anyone had seen this ore. He had told the story to someone and of course it got noised around. When we started to mine, about the first thing the superintendent did was to send me to look for the hidden ore. It took me only a couple of hours to find it. I pulled Out the lagging on the side of the drift and there was a vein of high grade ore about one foot in width, which we started drifting on right away. We also started a winze to cut this ore at about forty feet deeper. By the time we got the winze down to cut this ore the snow had gone off so we could start the little stamp mill that Laurence had put on the property. We sank the winze to fifty feet and started to cross-cut for the ore and had gone about six feet when we came into the ore. We sacked nineteen sacks the afternoon we found it and when it was milled the clean-up was $1,200 in gold. From the face of this drift without any drifting or stoping we took out $14,000, the ore running about $2,000 per ton. The company then started to put in a larger plant but continued to keep the little mill pounding out about one ton of ore in twenty-four hours, and from this small mill they took $65,000 during the summer of 1901. In the meantime large steam boilers were hauled in twenty miles over rough mountain country. A three and a half foot Huntington mill was packed in, also a ten-stamp mill with 850-pound stamps was installed. A sawmill was also brought in and a real mining camp was set up. A 1400-foot tunnel was driven to cut the ore at 180 feet in depth and a vertical shaft was sunk from the surface using all steam power. In 1902 they started their new plant. The one five-stamp mill was being used only for the high grade ore which averaged $600 per ton for the season. Just below the adit level the vein faulted. They sank a vertical shaft to a depth of 300 feet and drifted trying to find the ore, they also put up a raise under the high grade shoot and found it had faulted a short distance below the 180-foot level. However, in drifting on the 300-foot level, they discovered some gold in a gouge matter, and below the 300-foot level they sank a winze 50 feet, then drifted on this gouge of ore and found a shoot of high grade ore, which they drifted on for a distance of 50 feet. By this time the company had become tired of spending so much money and decided to shut the Dorleska down and gave Matt MacIwaine, who was one of the stockholders, and three others a lease on the property. They worked above the water level and carried on leasing until 1910 when they could not continue on account of finances, as they had just about made expenses during their lease. So they decided to give me the lease at ten per cent royalty and pay the taxes on the property, also the franchise tax as they were incorporated as the Union Consolidated Gold Mines Company for $1,000,000, and there was a big tax which I had to pay. went there in September, 1910, got in supplies and wood, as I had to pump out the shaft below the water level which they had allowed to fill up. I started in to mining during the early part of December and left the lease the next September. just a year from the time I started and I took out $25,000. Macllwaine was very anxious for me to tackle the winze below the 300-foot level but I hardly believed there was any such ore as they said there was or they would not have quit. Anyway before I went out I installed another pump and pumped out the winze and drift where the ore was and I was surprised to find the high grade ore there as they had said. I then went to the company and tried to get a bond and lease but they wanted $300,000 on an option and only one year with a ten per cent royalty and pay all taxes. I then pulled out the pump and pulled out. No one did any more work on the property as the mine was held by location and they failed to do the annual assessment work, it was open for location and Macllwaine located it and in 1930 he sold the property to a group of men from San Francisco. They did not do a great deal with it and in 1934 I had a little money and with a man by the name of Harry Thompson we took a lease and bond on the Dorleska. Everything at the mine had deteriorated until there was hardly anything here of any value and I knew the 1400-foot tunnel would be badly caved. I was reluctant to tackle it but Thompson assured me he could raise any finances we might need to open the mine, so I went ahead. I opened up the tunnel and drove 300 feet of new tunnel and I fixed up to pump the mine out to get down to where I had seen the fine ore in 1911, when my finances were exhausted, and Thompson decided he did not want to go any further and pulled out leaving me holding the sack and flat broke. This ore is still there and will be until mining comes back again, when gold will be worth the same as other commodities and on a par with labor. Quartz mining started in Shasta County at French Gulch in the fifties. The first mine was the Franklin and it was the second quartz mill in the state. It was a five-stamp mill and the stems were made of oak wood. The shoes were square cast iron and bolted to the stems. They had no silver plates at that time to amalgamate the gold as it came from the mill. Instead they used sluice boxes with riffles, and as there was very heavy sulphide in the ore, it would clog the riffles with sulphide and allow the gold to pass on over. So the Franklin mine was abandoned and the shaft allowed to cave in. However, the old timers frequently told of the ore in the bottom of the old shaft which was less than fifty feet in depth. (note:from family history this is John Syme's +associates work,1860/1870/1880) The Milkmaid mine was discovered later by William McGuire and William Espy, who later lost the mine in a lawsuit. The Milkmaid owners included the Franklin in their patents. I believe it was in 1908 a man named Ed Lewis heard of this ore being in the Franklin shaft, which of course was caved full. Lewis decided he would sink down along one side of the caved ground and take a look. When he got to the bottom he found the ore just as described by the old timers. John Syme told me about this ore many times. Lewis went to Nevada where he had friends who were active in mining and they together got an option and acquired the Milkmaid, including the Franklin claim. This shoot of ore turned out to be the famous Swede shoot, which produced several hundred thousand dollars in just a few months, by a company of Swedes who had made a fortune in Alaska and came down and took a lease and bond on the Milkmaid. The Washington was probably the next quartz mine found in the French Gulch district. It was worked for many years and produced around two million dollars, when it seemed to be worked out and lay idle for many years. About 1930 George Grotefend, a dentist, who was born and raised in Shasta, decided he wanted to mine. He bought for a song all the stock of the company that owned the Washington and put a couple of men to work driving what is known as the H level, sometimes called the 350 level. He drove this ahead about 150 feet, where he encountered a nice showing of ore. He took out about 100 tons of ore and piled it on the dump, as the old Washington mill had deteriorated to a point where it would have to be rebuilt before one could mill ore. About that time J. H. Scott came to the French Gulch district and engaged in mining but had been unsuccessful. He asked Grotefend for a deal on the Washington. Grotefend wanted $10,000 down and twenty-five per cent royalty to apply on the purchase price of $70,000 for the mine. Scott sampled the ore on the dump himself and paid Grotefend the $10,000. He shipped the ore to the smelter and recovered over $13,000 from the 100 tons and from the shoot of ore and took out around $800,000 when World War II came and he was forced to shut down. However, a couple of leasers only last year shipped some ore from the lowest level, and One Level, receiving over $2,000 from 340 pounds of ore and a couple of tons ran about $200 per ton. There is a lot of ore left in this mine. My opinion is that it has not been developed to where it can be made to produce its best. As you might say it has not yet been scratched. Thus spoke Henry Carter in 1956. Anyone have a more recent history on Washington mine???? --JD (Mac McIlwaine, John Syme, others are my family. Carter talks about personal knowledge of Siskiyou, Trinity, Shasta mines. In my experience, no one stayed put mining.