August
 2003 Issue
By James C. Johnston Jr.
Photos by Steven Vater

The Bechtlers produced the first gold dollar in the United States and were among the pioneers in minting private gold coins. This coin had a face value of $2.50.

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California private territorial gold was minted in tiny denominations, like this twenty-five cent octagonal coin.

California gold was often minted into huge coins like the $50 slug.

This $20 gold piece was minted of western gold.

This 1878 dollar was minted of western silver in Carson City, Nevada from Comstock Load silver

This seated Liberty twenty-cent piece was minted of Comstock Load silver at Carson City, Nevada in 1875.

Much of Jerome’s copper ore was turned into copper cents like this one.

               There is something about gold that captures the imagination unlike any other mineral.  It conjures up romance. In the United States, the Gold Rush of 1849 is a great watershed in our national history.  Huge wealth poured out of the West not only in gold, but in silver and copper as well.            

               Gold was the basis of our economic system until 1933, when we minted the very last gold non-bullion coins for circulation. In that year, gold was demonetized and the official price of gold was fixed at $35 an ounce. Over time, we had coined hundreds of millions of dollars in gold, but just where did it all come from?

              California contributed substantially to our gold supply, our national coinage, and territorial gold mintages as well. Eventually, I came to own some examples of these scarce coins. On a trip to the  West, I tracked down the sources of a lot of that gold as I ventured back into the misty days of the history of the Old West.

            The hardships of the miner’s life were brought home to me in an amusing way in Old Arizona at a famed restaurant at Tortilla Flat. When I entered this place, just off the Apache Trail, I was struck by the unique nature of the wall covering. The walls were papered throughout all the rooms of this establishment with thousands of one dollar bills.

            I asked the waiter just what this was all about. He told me, “In the old days when miners – prospectors – went off to look for gold, they left a dollar with the bartender with their name written on it. The reason for this was that if they didn’t find any gold and went broke, they could always have a dollar’s worth of drinks on the way back at Tortilla Flat.”

            Now the question comes, did I leave a dollar behind me at the restaurant with my name written on it? Sure I did. One never knows, does one? Of course you will not get much these days for a buck, and that is just as well. If you find an early greenback from those heroic old mining days with a signature scrawled across it, maybe – just maybe – it was one of those old bills.

            The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine still fires the Arizona imagination. I nosed around the area of Superstition Mountain with my photographer friends, Terry Reich and Steve Vater, and found Mammoth Mine. It is a great re-creation of the original mine and mining community where millions and millions of dollars in gold were ripped from the earth to be minted into the nation’s coinage.

            If you are very lucky in this lifetime you might get a chance to visit this outstanding place and take a trip into the past through the mine with John Daly Three Turtle. This remarkable man transforms himself into a 19th-century miner and guides you through the depths of the earth and into the most intimate details of the mine culture, including an introduction to one of the last mobile iron potty contraptions on earth.

            One of the greatest treasures of the Old West is a gold mine that was operated by Boyce Luther Gully. It was the prospect of death from consumption that motivated him to go to Arizona. He substantially recovered and registered a claim for a gold mine outside the growing city of Phoenix. His documents deeding him the property were signed by our great coin and stamp collecting President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

            I am not sure just how much gold Boyce Gully got out of his mine, but what he built over his mine was pure gold – a castle. This castle was in many ways for his amazing daughter, Mary Lou, who reigns today as princess in residence of the wonderful castle and vast acres. This amazing structure, internationally known as The Mystery Castle, was the subject of a 1999 Emmy-award winning documentary and has been featured in dozens of national publications. This stone mass is a maze of 18 rooms, dozens of spaces, jutting parapets and has a fantastic window in the courtyard that frames the city of Phoenix, which is miles away yet still in plain view.

            Mary Lou Gully’s castle is set against the mountains and holds treasures ranging from western gear given to Mary Lou by John Wayne and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to paintings by Arizona artists. Frank Lloyd Wright loved the place and visited it often when in residence at his own near-by Taliesin West, his famed school of architecture, which still operates today.

            Gold can come in the form of clay bricks such as the rejects from the local brickyards. Boyce Gully used them artistically. Wright saw them, and it was love at first sight. Mary Lou says of the bricks, “They used to call them rejects. Now they call them expensive.”

            The Mystery Castle is open from October through June and is located in the foothills of South Mountain Park at 800 East Mineral Road, Phoenix, Arizona. It is a must see for gold seekers who really understand treasures of the past. Mary Lou says, “When you have a castle over a gold mine, why would you live anywhere else?”

            The nation’s coinage did not only depend on gold. It also needed vast amounts of copper. Again, Arizona provided this vital mineral in what is now its largest and most famed ghost town, Jerome. Jerome sits on the side of a mountain and once had 30,000 citizens. It still has a population of 1,800 people, museums, art galleries, and a bar. It also has a deserted jail. I guess everybody behaves themselves these days. In fact in 1956, several deserted blocks had to be razed because they were in danger of falling off the mountain. The mines of Jerome in their heyday yielded more than a billion dollars worth of copper ore. Copper today has become so scarce that the last copper cents were minted in 1982.

            Silver was also mined in the West. The Comstock Load of the 1850s and 1860s produced so much silver that a special U.S. mint was set up at Carson City. So much silver was mined that its value fell and silver dollars became a token coin. Today this is hard to imagine. For those of us who remember the Hunt Brothers crazy silver speculations of 23 years ago, the zooming of silver values to $50 an ounce was an awesome reality. The whole nation went mad as silver and gold rose to great heights and then fell. People who speculated in gold and silver when gold was valued about a $1,000 an ounce and silver at $50 an ounce were crushed as gold dropped to a $180  (then less) and silver to a few dollars per ounce.

             Silver, gold, and even copper can hold our imaginations, but the romance of the mines, the big strikes, and the Old West looms large in our history. At least I signed my dollar and entrusted it to the barman back in Tortilla Flat in case I go broke looking for my fortune in the West. I can still belly up to the bar and get my glass of Moxie.

My Calendar

If you want to catch up with me in August, as so many of you have, I will be at Richard Murphy’s N.E.S.S. Show at the Holiday Inn on Sunday, August 3, from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. The Holiday Inn is located at the junction of Routes 1 and 128 off Exit 15A. I will be at Tom Lacey’s Greater Worcester Show on Sunday August 14, at the Ramada Inn in Auburn, Massachusetts, which is located on Rt. 12 just off the Massachusetts Turnpike’s Exit 10. Hope to see you there. You may also wish to check my website for further updates.    www.johnstonantiques.com