“The New Gold Rush”
By Skip McDonald
It was in the year of 1977. I was 19 years old without a care in the world. I read that in the late 1800’s the Auburn Dam exploded and washed gold down into the North Fork of the American river located in the Tahoe National Forest, California.
Eddie, guy named Guy (no pun intended) and myself set on a journey to find the
motherload in a 1951 yellow Chevy Stepside Panel truck loaded up with a minimal amount of camping gear and a trusty dog. After about 5 plus hours of driving we ended up on a loggers road in Forest Hill, California.
We arrived in the wee hours of the morning and slept under the moon and stars that made it seem like we were floating in space. Waking to the rapid flow of the river powerfully drowning out the birds singing in the background. We trudged up the rocks to shower in a small waterfall coming down from the snow way above. The shower was so cold that I screamed and yelped the whole time. However, it was the cleanest clear water making me feel as fresh as a daisy in the spring.
To make a very long year and half story short. We made a slushbox, made up of a
bottom foot wide plank that was 8 feet long. Lined with carpet and steel mesh above it. Being that gold is heavier than sand and rock as the rushing water moved our shovels full of black sand and rock. At the end of the day, we would shake the carpet into a 15 inch round pan to separate the sand from the gold flanks, that’s how we lived for that time. 300 bucks an ounce averaged weekly would keep us fed along with our trusty dog.
We were about 2 and a half miles in trucking closer to what we believed to be the motherload of the North Fork of the American river. We worked for 3 days and moved a boulder the size of a VW bug. And shazam!! We handpicked up nuggets the size of a quarter, averaging an ounce each. In one day the three of us cleared over 14,000 dollars each. We went to Reno Nevada to celebrate by hitting the Casinos. We planned to meet at the Diamondback Casino at 6am. I was there, but neither Eddie or the other Guy showed up. I went back to the campsite for 2 days and still no word, so I headed back to San Jose California alone with my pockets full. I could have made a claim to the land, as the Tahoe National Forest is Federal land and we could homestead. It would have been 7 by 7 acres. I went back to where we found the motherload and all the equipment was as we left it. Out of respect, I left it the way it stood and probably still stands to this day.
