Calaveras County
The hey-day of the Gold Rush, and the dependence on easily recovered placer gold, began in 1848 and tapered off into the sixties and after, but it never did end completely. Gold still weathers out of rock and is washed down from the higher mountains. Streams still carry and concentrate it. It's still there in nearly every Northern California watercourse, waiting to be found.
So is that other, more elusive, form of gold, the chunks and specimens somehow broken off, covered over or buried helter-skelter almost anywhere, without a hint of how they got there. Where are they? God knows; no one else does. The payoff can be large, but it's nearly always pure luck when a piece is uncovered.
Take the instance of Mike Malone (not his real name), who some years ago bought twenty acres outside Murphy., in California's Northern foothills He wanted it for a vacation home, a hideaway from city life and strain. A bargain, in more ways than one.
First thing, once the title was his, was to repair the fence that enclosed the property. It was old, barbed wire strung between split cedar posts, some of which leaned precariously, some held in place only by the wire that connected them to others. First, Mike decided, he'd replace the corner posts, then fill in by replacing whatever others were rotted or leaning.
Fine. Got some corner posts, heavier, hard native oak. Shovel, pick, a hammer and staples. Began at the corner furthest from the road, figuring on a day or two's work.
But he didn't finish that day. Or the next.
The corner post he started on was rotted off, so he had to dig out the lower end and enlarge the hole. Early spring, the ground soaked by rain, so the digging was easy. Got down two feet, near the bottom of the old post, soft with rot, when the shovel ran into something hard.
Not room enough to swing the pick, so Mike had to dig the hole out wider. He did, and discovered a rock that had apparently been wedged beneath the post. He had a time getting it out, it being heavier than he expected. When he tossed it aside, mud-covered, it hit the post laid ready, making an odd sound.
Curious, Mike tried to wipe some mud off, to be rewarded by a glint as of metal., sort of brassy. Still unsuspecting, using water from his canteen, Mike scrubbed off most of the clinging muck.
Human skull-sized, about. Gold, mostly, with snowy quartz here and there, even the quartz with chunks and stringers of gold showing all through it. Mike wasn't sure what to do. He took off his shirt and wrapped the piece, stowed it in his pickup and headed for town.
The 'rock' weighed out at 56 pounds, with an estimate of 42 pounds, Troy, for the gold it contained. Five hundred four ounces, with the price of gold running past four hundred dollars an ounce at the time. Worth even more as specimen gold.
Luck.
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