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October
2001 Oooohhh, it
can be cold on the desert!!! It
can be very cold; and for years my buddy Larry But the winter has it’s own charms. One of which is that very few citified Desert Rats are about and it is an ideal time to explore as the wind blowing by our dual-purpose motorcycles’s nice hot cylinder fins keep us warm, and the air many times, is crystal clear. This journey takes place in the year 1962, the month, December. I and my buddy, were still living and working in San Diego, California. The trip I will be describing was one of our very early trips, when I had for “truck and home” a 1961 Ford Falcon station wagon. We both had power scooters called “Tote-Gotes”, made by the Bonham company in Utah for hunters to get to their “blinds” and haul them and their game (deer) out again. To set the scene further, this was a time before dual-purpose, or any, off-road motorcycle had been invented. Some early
explorers had chopped up full-sized cars, stripped off the bodies, welded
an extra tire rim and wheel to the existing ones on the rear wheels
and were called “water pu Larry and I drove from San Diego, in the early morning after loading his Tote-Gote, next to mine in the tailgate area, and loaded a Coleman cooler filled with yummy things, sleeping bags, air mattresses, collapsible camp stools, Coleman lantern, Coleman two burner white-gas stove, a stand to support it, assorted plastic gasoline jugs, plastic water jugs, a portable kitchen made out of a wooden fishing tackle box (which I still have to this day), and other goodies. After some 2 hours of driving North to Riverside and San Bernardino, we turned East on I-10 and followed it to Blythe California, stopping for gas and a burger. Talk about COLD, I have never been so frozen! Now we had two Tote Gotes and all, with a wide open tailgate, and my poor 6-cylinder Ford Falcon simply couldn’t generate enough hot water flowing through the heater in the driver/passenger area to keep us warm!! The engine temperature gauge sat out the trip on the COLD mark! Once acro We kept going South until we were at mile post 102, a gas transmission line. Late afternoon and tired, we turned West off US 95, and onto the desert pavement at mile post 102. Larry picked out our camp site. We were here, at last. Tomorrow and perhaps other days we would explore South and then Westward to see what was here. The area we were interested in was the Copper Bottom Mine, in the La Cholla mining district. Our camp was North and East of it. This would be the very first time we would visit it. After a breakfast of hot chocolate and donuts eaten around the warming flames of a rekindled fire in the stone ring Larry had built last night, we reloaded the wagon. Looking at picture number 1, I am amazed at how spartan our gear was then. In this day and age it takes us two trucks and campers! We had figured
out a general lunch that was practical for all times of the year. We each bought the small cans of Vienna sausage,
stewed tomatoes, and canned fruit cocktail; one can of each rolled up
in a sheet of newspaper and stuffed into the packs on the power scooter The power scooter engines were Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engines which really drink gas! Our original machines used 3 ˝ horsepower engines, which gave us 11 MPH top speed. Later we upgraded to their 6 horsepower engines. We had made front racks to hold the extra gas jugs to get us there and back at 20 MPH top speed. I put the rolled up topographic maps we would need in the cardboard map tube, hung my cameras around my neck, and with Larry leading, off we went. The day was
beautiful!! Just like a crisp
bite into a cold apple! Larry
was feeling adventurous, and led me down into a sandy intermittent desert
wash going our way. That was a mistake.
I wallowed all over the place and could hardly keep my balance. The gravel-like sand had been all chur Larry found a way out of the steep-sided wash and not more than a couple hundred feet away was the dirt road we should have come in on. In that trip and in repeat trips to this area, I never got in another sandy wash in that area. The dirt road carried us along the Eastern side of La Cholla mountain and in few miles the road curved around the Southern tip to head Northwest to the Copper Bottom Mine. Shortly, we pulled up our power scooters at the bottom loading bin, shut off the engines, and stretched our legs. Canteen drinking time. Thirst quenched, I unpacked the camera and from the bottom of the ore bin, aimed way up the mountain to capture the nearly complete mine. Note the track leading from the upper storage bin down to the lower bin. Larry hiked
to the top and took pictures of the draw works, and a nearby tunnel.
While there were tunnels, and a vertical shaft at the top, the listing
of this mine was a “placer” mine, instead of a “lode” mine.
Along this Southwest side of La Cholla mountain are a series
of gravel stream beds with sediments covering
them. The miners tunneled into
the mountain until
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