Category: random

The California couple who found a stash of buried gold coins in February 2013 valued at $10 million may have found money stolen from the US Mint in 1900. According to U.S. treasure laws, the anonymous couple could have it taken away from them.

The coins, dated from 1847 to 1894, are mostly Double Eagles, or $20 gold pieces, minted in San Francisco. Of those 1,427 coins, most are uncirculated and add up to a face value of $27,000.

In 1894, a worker at the San Francisco mint made off with 290 pounds of gold and reportedly buried it near Shelter Cover, California close by Point Delgado in southern Humboldt County. He was captured and sent to prison for his crime, but refused to show authorities the exact location of the loot, which was never found.

Seven-years later, mint clerk Walter Dimmick, was imprisoned after $32,700 worth of gold coins was discovered missing. He’s believed to have begun working at the mint in 1898.

Unfortunately, I cannot account for the discrepancy in the time line of Dimmick’s employment and the 1894 theft. Nor can I find any information on the 1894 theft, so it may simply be a myth, or the date is incorrect.

Dimmick quickly became the prime suspect as he was the last person to see the 1,500 missing gold coins and had already been caught practicing how to forge the Superintendent’s name. And after a month-long trial, he was convicted of stealing the coins and sentenced to nine years in San Quentin.

Dimmick appealed to the California Supreme Court in the fall of 1903 because he’d been in jail since 1901 and argued that he had served his time. It’s not clear why he was arguing that he had only been sentenced to two years, since other newspaper accounts of the time had it at nine years.

Interestingly, Dimmick appears in the 1910 U.S. Census, which shows the 53-year-old was out of prison and living in Oakland. He died at the age of 73 in 1930.

According to U.S. Treasure Trove Laws, the collection could be taken away and given to descendants of the person who originally put it in the ground or even given to the state. Yet, the law on finding treasure that is on your property but belongs to someone else is vague.

The treasure trove rule was first given serious consideration by the Oregon Supreme Court in 1904 in a case involving boys who had discovered thousands of dollars in gold coins hidden in metal cans while cleaning out a hen-house and they were allowed to keep their stash.

Finally, a mint spokesman issued this statement: “We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Surviving agency records from the San Francisco Mint have been retired to the National Archives and Records Administration, under Record Group 104. Access to the records is under NARA’s jurisdiction.”

The previous largest reported buried gold treasure in the United States was the 1985 discovery by construction workers in Jackson, Tennessee of gold coins with an estimated face value of $4,500 and market value of about $1 million.  Although not “buried” treasure, more than 400,000 silver dollars were found in the home of Lavere Redfield of Reno, Nevada after he died in 1974, and were sold as a group for $7.3 million in 1976

Truckee resident Charles C. Garrison received patent number ‘US798778 A’ for his nut-lock design, September 5th, 1905, permitting a nut to be screwed on a bolt but not unscrewed except by using the tool itself. His patent consists of a pawl, or dog, and a spring that protrudes through the hole in the nut which screws onto the bolt.

The shaped catch fits into a groove extended the entire length of the threaded part, cut the same depth as the threads, on two sides of the bolt. The nut is screwed on the same as an ordinary one, but has to be pressed-in to release the spring.

According to the Sacramento Bee, “The improved nut is not weakened by the spring and dog which is imbedded in the nut, as it is made heavier. The pawl prevents the nut from working loose.”

Garrison’s invention revolutionized old-style nuts and bolts.  He first filed for the patent January 28th, 1904.

‘Old Ned’ Hunter, who is standing in front of Cate’s Brothers Auto Garage, in the town of Klamath,  in March of 1927. He’s the father of Martin’s Ferry operator, Jim Hunter and Tolowa native, Amelia Brown.

He was raised as an Indian, although his father, “Nigger John” was Black.  Old Ned is also a survivor of the Brother Jonathan wreck, where he was serving as a deck hand.

As for Cate’s Brothers, which included an auto park, café and boarding house, it was located at the very end of the Douglas Memorial Bridge. While the original buildings are no longer standing, there is a Cats RV Park owned by the Yurok tribe in about the same location, at the end of Alder Camp Road.

Reno Mayor Dan W. O’Conner was born in Ontario, Canada November 16th, 1837, and came to the states at the age of 12, via the Isthmus of Panama, engaging in mining in Grass Valley, California. He died Monday, November 27^th, 1905.

In 1862 he moved to Virginia City, Nevada. About 1864 he settled on a four hundred acre ranch near the present Vista Railroad Station. There, he built a set of buildings and improved the ranch.

O’Connor was one of Nevada’s oldest residents and one of the most respected citizens of Reno. He settled in the city while it was still considered a village and assisted materially in its growth and subsequently erected the O’Connor block.

“He was for years engaged in ranching and owned some of the best ranges in Washoe County. He was a man of wealth. As far as known he had no relatives,” reported the Sacramento Bee,” Mayor O’Connor was elected at the last city election by a large majority, and made one of the best Mayors Reno ever had.”

No known photographs of Mayor O’Connor exist.

The iron tug, Meteor, built-in 1876 at Wilmington, Delaware, by Harlan, Hollingsworth & Co.,  was then taken apart, shipped by rail to Carson City and hauled by horse teams to Lake Tahoe. The Meteor was owned by D.L Bliss, who launched it in September 1876.

It was propeller driven, eighty feet long and had a ten feet beam, at a cost of $18,000. At full speed she could do 19.5 knots, which is roughly 22 miles-per-hour.

Her initial purpose was to pull logs across Lake Tahoe. However, she ended up entertaining Presidents’ Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes as well as a host of other dignitaries.

With the highway encircling the lake completed, D.L.’s son, Will Bliss decided to sell the Meteor. Unfortunately, the vessel sat in a dry dock up at Tahoe City falling into disrepair and being vandalized, so Will purchased her back.

He ended up scuttling the boat off-shore from Glenbrook, in August 1940. The Meteor has yet to be found.

While the exact location is not specified, this is a view of the county road was completed by W. T. Bailey in May, 1894. The picture was taken looking south, jus’ north of Wilson Creek as evidenced by the dual sea-stacks of False Klamath Cove.

As a kid and living in Klamath between 1964 and 1979, DeMartin Hill was known as ‘Crescent City Hill.’ If somebody lived in Crescent City, they would have known it as ‘Klamath Hill.’

The U.S. Navy says a pilot died when a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18C crashed at a training complex east of Naval Air Station Fallon.  The crash happened in the late afternoon of March 1st.

After hours of searching in the mountainous terrain, they found the plane. Authorities says the plane was on loan to the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center for use as a training aircraft, and was performing a training flight when it went down.

The cause of the crash has not been determined. The plane was not carrying any weapons on the training flight.

The name of the pilot is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

UPDATE: Navy releases name of pilot — Captain Reid Nannen, 32, Hopedale, Illinois, Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242, Marine Aircraft Group 12, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III MEF, Okinawa

The wreck of the Katata, near the north side of the mouth of the Klamath River.  When it happened, is not known.

The dugout lashed to deck of the boat is a ‘lagoon dugout’ in contrast to the round-bottomed river canoes. Both the ‘lagoon’ and ‘ocean’ dugout had a lower prow and higher sides and more keel than a ‘river’ dugout.

The photographer is thought to be a Mr. Field, manager of the Klamath River Packing and Trading Company. The man in the picture has never been identified.

Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., warned Congress during a hearing Wednesday that America has reached a “constitutional tipping point” under the watch of President Barack Obama.

Here’s the conclusion to his statement before the Judicial Committee:

“The subject of this hearing is fraught with passions and politics. I do not wish to add to the hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding the current controversies. To be clear, I do not view President Obama as a dictator, but I do view him as a danger in his aggregation of executive power. It is not his motives but his means that I question. It is the danger described by Louis Brandeis in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States, where he warned that the “greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

It is my sincere hope that both parties will join in fulfilling their sworn duty to this branch and to the Constitution in putting aside petty or political differences to restore balance to our system. While this may be an exercise of hope over experience of a constitutional scholar, I know from personal experience that there are many constitutionalists on both sides of the aisle. Through the years, I have had many exchanges with Republican and Democratic members who reflected their deep understanding and love for our system. That common article of faith between members once transcended politics and I believe it can do so again. While strong institutional voices like that of Senator Harry Byrd (sic) [Reid] and others are now silent, I am hoping that new voices will be heard in these chambers. What is required is for members to recognize that there is a horizon for this country that extends beyond the term of the current president.

The only thing that joins us is our common faith in a system that has weathered wars, depression, and civil unrest. The current passivity of Congress represents a crisis of faith for members willing to see a president assume legislative powers in exchange for insular policy gains. The short-term, insular victories achieved by this President will come at a prohibitive cost if the current imbalance is not corrected. Constitutional authority is easy to lose in the transient shifts of politics. It is far more difficult to regain. If a passion for the Constitution does not motivate members, perhaps a sense of self-preservation will be enough to unify members. President Obama will not be our last president. However, these acquired powers will be passed to his successors. When that occurs, members may loathe the day that they remained silent as the power of government shifted so radically to the Chief Executive. The powerful personality that engendered this loyalty will be gone, but the powers will remain.

We are now at the constitutional tipping point for our system. If balance is to be reestablished, it must begin before this President leaves office and that will likely require every possible means to reassert legislative authority. No one in our system can “go it alone” — not Congress, not the courts, and not the President. We are stuck with each other in a system of shared powers — for better or worse. We may deadlock or even despise each other. The Framers clearly foresaw such periods. They lived in such a period. Whatever problems we are facing today in politics, they are problems of our own making. They should not be used to take from future generations a system that has safeguarded our freedoms for over 250 years.”

It appears both the House and Senate are okay with becoming obsolete along with the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law and our civil liberties and I fear the day streets across the U.S. begin looking like Kiev’s Independence Square.