STAN
BISHOP—A TRUE SOURDOUGH
Stan: Well, I brought placer out for three years…. I just scratched the
surface. But I sold my gold to Gus Pruell. It was all jewelry gold, all big
heavy gold. And then Walt Blanton bought one batch that I brought down, $3800
worth in one bottle. The price of gold at the time was $27. Gus gave me a little
bit of an edge because it was jewelry gold and he didn’t have to do anything,
except burnish it up a little bit. The strange thing about this gold was that
most of it was black because it had been deposited in pyrite millions of years
ago, and it had gotten black from the iron. And my first pan that I took and
I found coarse gold in; I didn’t know what I had. I could see these chunks of
black stuff that hung back in the pan, and I picked a piece up and scratched
it on the bottom of the rusty pan, and it was gold. But it was as black as coal.
Stan: Well, where the gold was, which was down in bedrock, either on
bedrock or in artificial bedrock, which would be any part of the pyrite formation
where gold comes out, it usually lays on top of the pyrite because pyrite is
heavy, too. It’s almost pure iron, and the gold, a lot of times, is spread out
on top of this pyrite bedrock, a false bedrock. So that’s a whole story in itself.
Stan: Well, he took my location. Yeah, he jumped my claim...
Stan: I was sitting in my house over at Temsco, I used to own a house
there where Temsco is now, and I heard the telephone ringing and I answered
it and he says, “This is Duke.” I said, “Duke who?” He said, “Duke Killbury.
I’m sitting on your claim up on the Sulphide. And here it was in the dead of
winter. I couldn’t even believe him! I said, “Well, how can you do that?” He
says, “Well, I’ve got a radio up here.” He had a radio; he could reach Vancouver
and have it rebroadcast up this way. So he called me to gloat over the fact
that he had jumped my claim up there! That was unusual; I tell you, I could
hardly believe it when he said where he was. He said, “I’m up on the Sulphide.”
Stan? Stan: No, I didn't.