Dutch Oven Mine of San Bernardino County

In 1894, Tom Scofield, a railroad worker, was surveying near the Clipper Mountains northwest of Essex, California when he decided to do a little exploring. When he was about three miles up the side of the mountain, he ran across an old abandoned stone house that appeared to have been built years previously.  Continuing along, he hiked approximately nine more miles when he came upon a spring. There, he followed a trail that led over the hill where he came upon a rock atop the peak that he described as being as big as a house. The large boulder was split in two and the trail continued straight through it. Beyond the passageway he stumbled into what appeared to be an old Spanish camp.

The Clipper Mountains are northwest of Essex, California

Tom found himself standing on a high shelf, surrounded by high walls. Through other openings in the rock walls, he could see that the "shelf” was sitting high above the ground at about 500 feet. The only way in or out of the little flat was through the split rock. Scattered about the long deserted camp, Scofield found rusty mining tools, pots, pans, fragments of a bedroll, and an old iron Dutch oven. Also on the shelf was a mine shaft, in which he found the skeletons of seven burrows. Next to the shaft was a mine dump that contained numerous stones still containing rich gold quartz. By the time he had finished exploring the campsite, he realized that it was too late to return to his base camp. Cold and hungry, he bedded down on the shelf planning to leave at daybreak. In the morning, as he was leaving, he tripped over the Dutch oven and out tumbled a mound of pure gold nuggets. Shocked, Tom gathered as many nuggets as he could carry and returned to his base camp. From there he caught a train to Los Angeles, where he spent the next two months in a drunken frenzy, gambling and living the high life. After squandering all the money he had received from the sale of the gold nuggets, Scofield found himself sober and completely broke. It would be two years before he was able to make his way back to the Clipper Mountains to search for the "Dutch Oven Mine.”  Try as he might, it seemed to him that everything had changed and he was completely unable to retrace his steps. Disillusioned, he finally gave up the search. When Scofield was 84, he was interviewed by Walter H. Miller and George Haight in 1936. Living in an abandoned store in the Mojave Desert outside Danby, California, Scofield was at first hesitant to tell his story. After having been hounded for four decades by treasure hunters wanting more information about the mine, he had long tired of the story even though he continued to insist that it was true. Today, the Dutch Oven Mine continues to be lost, or at least no one has ever claimed to have found it.The Clipper Mountains are located in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California. The range is found just south of Interstate 40 and the Clipper Valley, between the freeway and National Old Trails Highway, northwest of the small community of Essex. The range is home to at least three springs, as well as the Tom Reed Mine. © Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated November, 2009.

The New Geocache Craze

I see there is a new adventure sport emerging. It is called Geocaching. Geocaching is a real world game that consists of people hiding caches, then others go to find it. Hide and seek for adults basically. There are some sites that offer prizes for finding caches. One asks that you trade a found cache for another one. It is becoming quite a trend.

Now forgive me for being naive - but if you are going to burn gas and energy looking for treasure - why wouldn't it be REAL treasures that you search out? There is so much actual bonified treasure out there to be found - old coins, pioneer artifacts, Indian artifacts, actual lost mines and long buried treasures from yesteryear, and this is not to even mention gem minerals. The attraction of hunting for planted "caches" just escapes me somehow.


Rockhound State Park about nine miles southeast of
Deming, New Mexico.  Photo courtesy Texas Campgrounds
There are ghost towns all over, and in those ghost towns are many lost items just waiting for the fortunate hunter to dig up and bring back to the world. Of course, this is just whole towns. Anyone hiking in areas previously trod by early gold rush era prospectors or pioneers is bound to stumble across lost homesteads at some time or other. Where ever parties of pioneers, wagon trains, or stagecoaches came through, there rests the possibility of real treasures. Pioneers were known to often bury treasures when they were being pursued by those who might steal it, or when the load became too cumbersome to be able to travel with it. I'm sure these people meant to recover these treasures at a later date, but for reasons ranging from untimely death to just lost directions, many of these caches remain buried and waiting for recovery to this day.

What about lost mines? No one yet has found the Lost Dutchman mine, now you want a real thrill, be the first to dig that one up. That is only one mine lost in the archives of history waiting to be retrieved. The Lost Cement Gold Mine still remains lost near the head of the middle fork of the San Joaquin river and the Lost Soldier Mine somewhere in Arizona near the Gila River bend has thus far managed to elude hunters. This is only a couple of mentions out of scores, possibly hundreds, of lost mines just waiting for rediscovery. Pirates and Bandits were well known to bury treasures as well. No report has been made of the Lake George or South Mountain treasures in Colorado having been found yet. Florida itself is not much more than a grand treasure cache, with hundreds of caches having been dug up that were left by pirates, explorers, and people fleeing battles, and who knows how many left to discover - and that is on land. For the adventuresome scuba diver, the gulf is an explorers paradise, hiding wrecks of ships toren on reefs, lost in storms, or sunk in battles.

The South Western portion of the US abounds with treasure stories of lost Indian treasures, caches stolen by invading Spaniards and buried to be lost later, and stagecoach and train robberies that resulted in burial of treasures. While some of these stories can be chocked up to legend, historical evidence exists to support many.

So maybe the fact with the Geocache game is the competition and involvement with others. Real treasure hunting does not necessarily negate these factors. Many a treasure hunt that I have seen revolves around shared research and information, as well as teams of hunters who report back to each other about progresses and failures. Some are undertaken with the spirit of sharing a cache, while others involve shared information but the actual discovery is pretty much a finders-keepers, winner-take-all proposition.

 So simply speaking - while Geocaching sounds like an entertaining way to spend a weekend - for me "ain't nothing like the real thing, baby."

©2005 Sally Taylor
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