Alaska Treasure Hunters -The Lost Rocker Mine

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The Lost Rocker mine of southeast Alaska met all the requirements described as characteristic by historian Robert DeArmond: "general overall vagueness as to both time and place; contradicting details in the many tellings of the story, both verbally and in print; and, above all, the complete unfindability of the lost gold deposit."

Where was it? Well, finding it was the problem posed to prospectors. It was bothersome except to those who insisted that the Lost Rocker was the very same deposit that Richard Harris and Joseph Juneau discovered in 1880 and which led to the development of Juneau. The earliest publication of the story, dating from 1888, gave the same general details offered in later published versions. In 1867, 1874, or some other time Fred Culver and another man or two were prospecting the mainland shore north of the Stikine River, using either a rowboat or a canoe for transport. They went ashore each time they noted a stream and panned for color. At one stream they ascended to its source and made the wonderful find of bunches of gold nuggets. Quickly they constructed a crude rocker and mined furiously for two weeks with great success. Unfortunately, Indians attacked, wounded Culver, and killed his partners. Culver grabbed the sack of gold, dashed for the coast, and escaped the pursuing Indians.

At sea the Hudson's Bay Company steamer Otter encountered Culver's drifting boat and carried the almost lifeless man to Victoria. Culver revived, showed the $1,500 in gold that he had mined, and told his adventurous story. Later Culver and others sailed north in the schooner Louisa Downes and searched the Taku Harbor vicinity for the gold stream. They failed because 1) Culver recognized no landmarks and soon died; 2) Culver held out on his party and, after revealing the location to Mike Powers, he died.

It is not clear how much of the story has a basis in fact, but details were pervasive enough to inspire a number of prospectors over the years. As late as 1903, Juneau promoters formed the Lost Rocker Prospecting and Mining Company to search for the gold stream. Occasionally it has been reported that prospectors located the elusive stream, but such accounts have been as vague in geographic detail as the original story.

Видео Alaska Treasure Hunters -The Lost Rocker Mine канала Alaska's Hidden History