EPISODE 257 YUKON DIARY “SALTING “ A MINE SITE (A ROCK FELL ON THE MOON)

alan skeoch

Feb. 3021

My job in Chibougamau’s wilderness in Northern Quebec was to carry and

protect this magnetometer. I was 17. While doing so, I got to know a lot

about mining…and lying.

Mark Twain knew miners when he said “A mine is a hole in the ground, owned by a liar.”

I have only been closely involved in one ‘salted’ mine site and that was on

my first bush job in the wilderness south west of Chibougamau, Quebec. I may have

mentioned this in an earlier episode but the salting of the Moon claims in Keno Hill

put me in mind of that salted site in Northern Quebec.

We had just finished a magnetometer job and were resting in an old lumber

camp on the Opemiska road. Gravel track where huge Euclid mine trucks had

the right of way. Smashed windshields from stirred up gravel were part

of daily life in that derelict camp. Glad to be away from the flies for a spell.

“Alan, I want you to go with Dr. Smith to look at a mine site north of here.”

“Flying job?”

“No, only way in is by boat…lakes are too small or too shallow…there will

be a lot of portages.”

“Canoe?”

“No canoes available. Boom times in Chibougamau…all canoes gone.”

“So, we walk?”

“No. I managed to get you a rowboat. Tough on the portages

but easier on open water with small outboard motor.”

This happened in 1958. Was just an 17 year old high school kid. A beast of burden, really.

A helper. A flunky.

Dr. Smith was a nice older man. Bald. White hair. Anglo. Relaxed kind of person of which there were

not many. It was a bitch of a job. Just imagine trying to portage a rowboat on rocky, slippery, brush

covered trails. We tried carrying the goddamn thing but sometimes had to just push it through

the portage. Then go back and get our gear.

Very slow going. Just to get to the site took us two or three days. We had an aerial photo

and map as a guide. No problem finding the spot.

“Salted,” said Dr. Smith who was a man of few words.

“Salted?” I had never heard of the term before.

“Just look around. What do you see?”

“Look like some blasting has been done.”

“Salted.”

“Seems veins of some kind of shiny stuff…metallic”

“Pyrite…worthless.”

“Some chunks of Chalcopyrite though,” I was sort of proud of my discovery of that

copper looking mineral embedded in Quartz.”

“That’s the salt. Somebody spread a few chunks around…brought it in. Then hired us.”

“Why?”

Stock market. Penny stocks. Whoever did this hired us to come in here to

check out the site. Took us a couple of days. The information was leaked

somehow such as “sending a geologist to look over a new discover” promoted

on the stock exchange somewhere. Stock goes up. Promotors buy stock cheap…

value goes up suddenly on the news we were going into the site…buy cheap,

sell high.

stock crashes when final report is made by a professional like

Dr. Smith. Marorie’s grandfather, a pharmacist in Lindsay papered the

bottom of his sock drawer with penny stocks…worthless…looked pretty.

I have wondered about this short job for years. Why could we only get

a rowboat? Think about it. A goddamn rowboat! When we came back to the Opemiska camp I carried a big

lump of pyrite with me. Still have it somewhere out on the stone pile at the farm.

SALTING OF THE MOON

Did a huge 70 ton rock of near solid galena (silver and lead mineral) roll down from the top

of Keno Hill to the Moon mining claims that Priest and Bobicek now owned?

Mining geologit Dr. Aho gave his opinion. If that really happened then the

end result would be a stone the size of a pea. Opinion. Salted. Dr. Aho

had loaned Priest and his partner $50,000 for a share in the Moon claims.

Money that may have been spent buying a bobcat to rip up the site.

More factual evidence was presented by Mining engineers Bob Cathro and

Bob Shank who visited the Moon in late June 1963. They believed the place

had been ‘salted’ as they found chunks of galena here and there, some sitting

on moss, others piled around the cabin on the site. It seemed the galena was

left in conspicuous places so it could be found and thereby infer that there

may have been a boulder of silver on the Moon. In other words the two

engineers believed the site had been ‘salted’ “Usually salting involves the

scattering of enough valuable ore in the right places to lure would-be investors

into paying for miners claims that may have little worth.” (i.e. the Chibougamau

claims I saw in 1958). “On the Moon, the intended message appeared to

be the opposite: something valuable had been there. But, except for a few

spilled leftovers, it was gone.” (P.136)

Later…To make things a little more difficult, someone had driven a bobcat all over

the site tearing up the ground so badly that not much else could be found.

…except a Doublemint gum wrapper. The same Wrapper was found at the

site where the sacks of ore were picked up by the White Pass trucks.

Does that have any meaning? Gum wrapper?

In July 1963, geologist Al Archer visited the moon with his own inspectors.

They fanned out across the site to make agrid survey. Men at 10 foot intervals

walking the claims as cops do on a murder site. Found nothing but

a few more samples . “Looks like whoever did it had one thing in mind — to

obliterate any previous workings on the property, “ testified Archer later when

Priest was arrested.

No matter how many professionals testified the Moon claims were phony,

Gerald Priest stuck with his story until his death. One judge described him

as a queer duck.

So much for the science of SALTING MINING CLAIMS. The opinion of

experts was that the Moon had been salted.

alan skeoch

Feb. 2021

post script HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF BICHLORIDE OF GOLD? Read this postscript and

you will discover a novel way of SALTING a gold mine site.

Salting A Gold Mine

January 10, 2017 Marshall Trimble

Daguerreotype-California-Gold-Rush-mining-scene-photographed-by-Robert-Vance-circa-1850 — Gold rush mining scene, photographed by Robert Vance circa 1850.

A favorite method used in unloading a useless claim or mine was called, “salting.” The seller would take ore from a productive mine and carefully scatter it about his non-productive property in hopes of closing a sale on the claim. Others might take a shotgun, load the charge with gold dust and blast the walls of the shaft, impregnating them with particles of gold. Gold was malleable and would imbed itself into the rock, giving the worthless claim a highly mineralized façade.

The game of buying and selling a worthless mine could conceivably become a matter of who could outwit whom. The seller might impregnate the walls with gold but the wise buyer might ask to have the walls blasted to see what was inside the rock. Trying to stay one step ahead, the seller could install gold into the headsticks of his dynamite and when the charge went off, the interior would be salted. To counter this, the buyer could insist they use the dynamite sticks he’d brought along for just such an occasion.

The smart buyer also brought along his own geologist. Not surprisingly, many times an entire community would plot against the buyer since the economic stability of a region might hinge on the successful sale.

Bichloride of Gold, or a chemical liquid, was used for medicinal purposes such as alcoholism and kidney ailments. When taken internally it will pass through the body, exiting the body with high assay value. A seller bent on cleverly salting his mine could load himself on the substance and salt any crack, crevice as nature moved him.

EPISODE 257 YUKON DIARY: “SALTING” A MINE SITE: (A ROCK FELL ON THE MOON)

Salting A Gold Mine

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