DIARY OF A L M O N HARRIS T H O M P S O N
139
C O L O R A D O RIVER GOLD By
CassHite*
Rincon, thirty-five miles above the mouth of the San Juan River in southeastern Utah, is as far as a road can ever be taken down the river (from Green River, U t a h ) , and is about ninety or a hundred miles to where it empties into the Colorado River. From that point the San Juan enters and plunges through three canyons that are dark and appalling as the mighty canyons of the great Colorado. I see by the papers that they are claiming coarse gold in those places. I look upon that as an impossibility. The Elk Mesa on the north, and the Mesa Calabasa on the south are entirely sedimentary formations, and all gold that has ever yet been found in the sedimentary rocks is fine gold. Coarse gold does not travel far from the leads. The whole country has lost several thousand feet of its surface. The great process of erosion has worn the gravels, bedrock and all, down, down to the sea! Gold being soft and heavy has naturally been ground very fine in its travels. The only show, according to my belief, for coarse gold in that region would be in the short gulches on the north or west of Navajo Mountain, which is at the junction of the San Juan and Colorado. They head in the trachytic formation of that island-mountain, and unless they have found coarse gold in shale, marl and sandstone, then there is no show for nuggets outside of those few little short gulches heading up into the Navajo Mountain. You ask me my opinion, and, although I may be wrong, I do not think there is any coarse gold in the country. But for fine gold, and large areas evenly distributed as fine gold most generally is, that (industry) has a great future. That entire country is sedimentary rocks. Erosion has caused that great box canyon country, and left between them high mesa formations, which show in the most distinct manner the great markings of Time. The stupendous belts of the sedimentary often cut 2,000 to 3,000 feet in depth. A stratum of quartz pebbles many feet in thickness constitutes one of those great blankets that cover that entire country, and with that stratum I contended for two years. I never found anything that a poor man could work, although I am convinced I know of much good gold property in that section that could be worked at a good profit with capital enough to put it in good working order. The gravel in that quartz stratum, the water levels of the strata for miles, would suggest that it is formed by glaciers. The great canyons of the lower San Juan and the Colorado have performed the functions of mighty sluice boxes. The fine *(In Beaver U ton Ian, January 13, 1893. for Associated Press.)
