Recently myself and a couple other friends embarked on
creating a simple gold prospecting camp in northern Michigan. While highly unlikely it is not impossible to
find gold in Michigan. However, the
shiny, heavy metal had really little to do with it all.
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| Camp on Friday evening. Photo by J. Bevard |
Research was done to pick a “location” and “time” in
history. British Columbia was picked as
there was a gold rush not long after the American Civil War. A mining company called the Sheephead Mining
Company was picked as who hired us. The
friend really leading this did a lot of research and recreated paperwork for
the company. This included items like
our mining rights, pay receipts, and more.
Saturday after supper we were even paid for a week of our efforts. Some of our equipment was marked as made by
Kwong Lee & Co., which he found was a supplier of import goods in that area. A wonderful touch!
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| Found by Robert Cook |
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| One of the items purchased from Kwong Lee & Company. Photo by J. Bevard |
I took on the primary role of camp cook.
I wanted to stick with items that we could have had access to by
purchasing from a store before pushing forward to our claim. Friday’s supper consisted of salt pork,
desiccated vegetables, and dumplings made into a soup. The morning meal was bacon and fry biscuits
made from Patent Flour (more on that in a later post) and coffee, instead of
water, along with some canned peaches. Down to the riverbank and into the water we
went. We dug, panned, and ran dirt
through the sluice box. The sluice box
took some time to figure out a good technique that seemed to work. After time panning and sluicing for gold we
returned for a simple lunch of hominy, hardbread, and coffee. Simple but filled the void to head back to
the riverbank.
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| One of our meal on the fire. Photo by J. Bevard |
We had a system in place that seemed to be working. We found various interesting geological items
in the dirt we were panning but no gold.
A lot of fossils were found in the larger rocks. These finds made me think about what this
area must have looked like so long ago before these organisms shadows were
embedded in rock.
The later afternoon we returned to our humble camp to dry
out. We knew some rain and possible
storms were on the way. We wanted to do
what we could to dry out, eat, and clean up before it arrived. We put together a simple drying rack for our
socks and drove branches into the ground for boot drying racks. Dinner was started after relaxing in the
little sun we saw over two days. The
left over bacon grease in the skillet had a two potatoes and salt port added to
start to fry. A can of tomatoes with
pepper was added to simmer. As that
reduced down and cooked the potato slices I started on a dessert. Left over peaches was diced up with flour,
patent flour, and little sugar mixed into dough. This was rolled into balls and tossed into
boiling water for a simple pudding. The
tomato dish turned out very well even if it was a bit salty! The skillet was just about emptied out eating
“family style” out of the pan to save on needing to clean dishes. The puddings came out of the water with a can
of condensed milk cracked open and drizzled on top.
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| Setting sun on Friday evening. Photo by J. Bevard |
The evening of nice weather came to a close with us sitting
next to the river as the sun slipped behind the trees enjoying each other’s
company. We received our company pay and
not long after the rain started to fall driving us into our shared quarters, a
wall tent. After the initial downpour
we built up the fire and kept the tent doors open. We passed sometime with a small bottle of
whiskey going around through the evening.
Our pay was put into a pool for a chuck-a-luck game. Matchsticks became betting chips with the
last man standing with chips won the pot.
Being the dealer and a participant provide ample opportunity to bring
the came into my favor but resisted the temptation. That cost me most of my weeks pay!
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| View into our quarters. Photo by R. Huck |
The rain continued through much of the evening and into the
night. At first we thought the night
would never pass in that tent as it was still so early. With good company, including a frog that
found its way in, before we knew it the time was slipping past 10pm as we
slipped under the blankets.
I was up early, before dawn, to get a fire going and
coffee. Once the fire was going and the
coffee pot hanging over it the blankets called back to me. With another hour of sleep achieved the sun
was now just coming up. I heard turkeys
gobbling away not far away. Tossing the
covers aside, I caught a glimpse of the sunrise before pouring a warm cup of
coffee and starting on breakfast. This
morning was a repeat of the previous mornings meal.
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| Photo by J. Bevard |
Once the meal was done it was time for modern reality to
retake hold in our minds and actions.
Camp was broken down and packed away.
While gold was not found this time around we had a wonderful relaxing
time back in history. I look forward to
the next time the Sheephead Mining Company needs some prospecting done!
