GOLD MYSTERY OF JOHN GREGORY

'or things we might not realize'

He wasn't a tall man so stood atop a large boulder for a better view. He became transfixed, as if absorbing some unknown quantity from the mountains that had become part of him. John Gregory was tired, hungry and bone weary from the miles, months, and even years of mountain travel and climbing and of the endless search that possessed his iron soul. Gregory was an independent man from Georgia, a prospector, adventurer, the twin of his father's seed slowly studied the gulch laying below his feet. Something was different here. His strongly etched face and quick eyes darted along the strange strata across the creek and directly below him. The rock seemed the same as he once saw near Georgia. "It's the same color and type of formation, I'm sure of it!" He mumbles to himself.

It's late fall, 1858, as Gregory jumps from the great rock and starts upstream from he main creek called Clear Creek. The rocks, cleaved and sharp cut at his worn boots. Gregory's knees, clothes and powerful bulldog knuckles s how the strain of the trek; yet for three hundred yards he struggles, eyes darting, head snapping to the high ridges in this tight gulch studying and probing for `the spot'. His nostrils are full of the scent of snow coming from the west just hours away. He can't see it but he knows its coming. "Not much time left. Must hurry!" He resolves reluctantly.

A small feeder stream trickles from another narrower gulch off to his left and his feet are freezing cold from wading the icy mountain waters. He drops his rifle onto the rocks and frantically struggles with his pack to get at his pan. "This is it. I know it!" he says to himself amazed at the normal tone in which he says it. "Any clear gravel spot will do," he mumbles as he struggles and finally stumbles into the stream bank. His bloodied hands plunge into the icy water with his pan held tightly between his knees and he begins to scoop and pull and rake with his fingers the gravel, frantically into his pan. The stream muddies and mixes with his blood . . . swirling uncaring behind him. Gregory cries a deep sob as he thinks of h is wife he left so very long ago in Georgia. He gasps for breath and wipes freezing tears from his cheeks and plunges his hands deep for one more last scoop of gravel.

Gregory continues to work the pan and instinctively follows the strata formation up the second side gulch. His concentration is intense, broken only by the realGregory stops and realizes he's shaking beyond physical control from the cold water and from being wet. He just manages to build a lean-to and fire . . . a temporary home. It's a warm snow and he finally manages to get warm after several hours of drinking hot herb water and he basks in an inward security because he made it through another day. His belly is full of trout and jerky. His corn-cob pipe burns of Georgian tobacco and it glows against his full red beard. The warmth of his fire compares not to the heat of the full polk of gold he fondles and plops in his fist. It had the heft of a big woman's full, heavy breast . . . he muses. ization that he can't see because its almost dark and also because everything now is white. Its been snowing.

"What a strange thought," he mumbles and he puts it out of his mind and stuffs the buckskin bulge into his buckskin shirt.

Gregory knows he must make provisions tomorrow so he will be positive to find all this again in the spring. Morning is soon enough so Gregory settles to sleep knowing the jays will wake him soon enough. They always did.

Gregory figures he is no more than two days from he plains. He would winter at the tent-town at the base of the mountains. (Present site of Golden, Colorado) but he would need at least two good markers. Time and memory is a fleeting thing and Gregory is smart enough to know he is not his normal self of late. Gregory would not be fooled by the diseases of winter imaginations that had cost others their finds. He was familiar with the stories of great treasures found and lost. "It would not happen to me!" he resolves. Many things could prevent his return next spring. One poke of gold wasn't enough to last all that long anyhow and his wife surely needed funds back in Georgia by now. "Yes, I will make it impossible for me to lose this mother-lode," he vows, clinching his poke in his fist raised to the heavens.

Gregory defines his strike simply on a piece of buckskin he cuts from his shirt-tail which he places into an oiled bag of buckskin. This, he stuffs into an X-shaped crack face of rock. He counts his paces back to his first panning as a hundred and five paces. This, he inscribes with a flint into his knife handle. The knife he aligns directly to the rock of buckskin and then pounds it into a large pine. At Clear Creek Junction, three hundred and thirty paces, Gregory inscribes (330 paces, to knife, by this handle - J.G.) and this he buries with a mighty blow into the lowest limb of another pine at the streams junction. He walks fifty paces down stream, turns . . . and his axe handle is a beacon to him. Others wouldn't see it, not even a Ute indian . . . but he would. With that, John smiles and starts the long trek down stream which would lead directly to tent-town and it wasn't any too soon. A great blizzard engulfs him. Only John's uncanny, inborn sense of direction and faith that the stream would have to leave the mountains sooner or later saves him from certain death.

Bone weary John Gregory wanders about Golden Colorado that winter. His sickness was total, complete exhaustion. The new year became 1859 in January and the winter became more bitter. Luckily the local hardware merchant grub-stakes Gregory the following spring. Gregory's knowledgeable talk of mining and ore struck the merchant that t his man was no liar or braggart. Gregory, he was sure, was a man of experience. He was also impressed with Gregory's sense of responsibility in that Gregory had long since sent all his funds home to his wife. How could he allow any such man starve in the winter? So it was, slowly . . . Gregory regains his strength and with a small, confidential party of followers who befriended him, he returns after the spring melt-off to his bonanza. The axe handle seemed to scream of gold as John Gregory tears it from its welded hold. The party of friends name Gregory Gulch in his honor. But the news leaks out and within three weeks over 5,000 prospectors stream in. Gregory's original party h as already established claim sizes and mining laws, many of which today stem from. (Gregory's find is recognized as one of the greatest in American gold history).

The first meetings are held and immediately establish the easy speaking Gregory as a quiet leader to be held in esteem. His gavel is a strange device that taps gently when final decisions are made. Its his colt revolver. He was never, never seen without it and has been recorded as a matter of course. Gregory was not a man to be trifled with and the assumption was unanimous in the area. Quiet men were held in respect.

Gregory was much like his father. He was a loner and leader in the same breath. Not that he seeked it. Men came to him like gravity. But his bond to his father and his decision to seek a fortune in the west was too much for his aging sire to bear. `The Colt' was his father's way of saying, "With this, goes I. May I always protect you".

With that, Gregory knew he would never see his father again and he didn't. Within two months, twenty thousand miners besieged the area. Gregory became rich. He arranged for h is wife to receive funds in Georgia and things were going well for him indeed. However; greed and strife weighted in upon Gregory's singular thinking mind. Civilization crushed in upon him and finally, without word or hint, and with many owing him substantial funds, Gregory disappeared.

Mr. Evans (of which Mt Evans is named) had a conclusion. "I know he's gone prospecting toward California because I found his knife stuck in the door of my cabin this morning and ten feet away, tied to a tree limb a pouch of h is Georgian tobacco for me. His moccasin tracks went westerly. Two things he knew I liked best. His knife and tobacco. He has a strange way of showing a liking. A loner, that Gregory is. A silk-tongued politician he claims I . . . because he dislikes orderly people. Its hard to figure a man who has given birth to a whole state!"

"But a lot of us owe him money," intervenes a claim owner. "Doesn't that matter?"

"All debts owing him are on the territory books," continued Mr Evans. "They will be forwarded to Mrs Gregory in Georgia and will be paid!"

"What if he dies, what than?"

"Doesn't matter. He has heirs, a wife and child. Everything reverts to them. Besides, only two things can kill a lobo like Gregory."

"What are those two things?" Inquires a fellow friend named Horace Greeley."

Mr. Evans pauses and eyes the miners now gathered about him. "No adventure, for one or anything that can get past that rifle or Navy Colt of his for another!" Everyone begins to nod slowly in agreement at the remark and turn away to go the separate ways they had come.

In 1861, a San Francisco merchant trades some imported Georgian Tobacco for a hand axe. In its handle is inscribed "330 paces, direct to knife by this handle - J.B." The merchant is surprised when the man then buys a new axe in its place, offering . . . "Because I may need more writing room," was his answer.

The merchant's son mentions he is headed for Denver soon for a writing position with a `Horace Greely'. The prospector indicates that if the merchant's son needs an introduction, he should simply take the traded axe to Mr Greely and his position would be secured. The remark seemed so strange as to cause the merchant's son to do so and he did indeed become a reporter with Horace Greeley because of it.

Greeley ascertained John Gregory had indicated a northerly direction to the merchants who traded for the axe. Alaska had rumors of great gold finds . . . something that would surely wet a spirit like John Gregory's. The mystery of John Gregory, man of secret adventures and places prayed on Greeley's mind. He knew John Gregory was possessed with the love of a Navy Colt he was always known to sleep with it! It was t he only thing that held him to his wife and his beloved Georgia.

Tough, John Gregory was a loner to the last. The great bear had come upon him at dusk. It was nearly night. Gregory had back-tracked well. He imbedded his knife again as well as his axe. He had forgotten to replace the flint in his rifle he used to inscribe the directions into his tools. His rifle is useless. Its a costly mistake. The bear roars and Gregory has just enough time to fire three rounds from his Colt before the horrible beast is upon him. Gregory is mortally wounded, but he fires again into the heart . . . and finally, seconds later into the skull of the huge bear. The beast falls upon him and its weight drives a rib into Gregory's lung but he manages to pull himself free. His clothes are soaked to the skin with blood! "Damned, dumb bear," spits Gregory! She must have the gold," he staggers . . . "the rainbow."

Gregory, now on his knees coughing blood. He takes a rawhide thong and aligns his Navy Colt up the valley toward the direction of his axe and sighting down moonlit lighted sights, ties it there pointing toward the huge fortune. "Evans, only you will understand. Find this for my wife," is Gregory's last words as he tries to shout them from Alaska all the way to Colorado. As his rage echo's down the mountain valley walls, Evans becomes the first governor of Colorado and the only man who could have identified the Navy Colt or solved the mystery of John Gregory in those early days, not so very long ago.

There are certain things that are universally mathematically impossible and probable. Remember these words. John Gregory was a real man. He did indeed discover gold in Black Hawk, Colorado now known as the richest square mile on earth which was coined by Horace Greeley. If men have technique or habits in the past, they have a nature to repeat them in the future. Like the way they use knives, axes, pistols, rifles and such. That his axe came to Horace Greeley from a westerly, not a easterly direction excited Greeley. He knew Gregory would most likely follow gold rumors and Alaska by way of California was not unreasonable.

The bones the prospector found in Alaska noted that they were not of a tall man. Gregory loved the fame his discoveries brought him but he became bored not being able to continue new prospecting when in Black Hawk. Horace knew Gregory loved seeing his name in the Rocky Mountain News.

The prospector showed up in a Denver Saloon enjoying his gold. He was well dressed when Horace Greeley over-heard his story. "There were two skeletons. One beast, one man. It was a griz," the man said, shaking his head. "He kilt the bear, sure enough." I found an old, rusty Navy Colt stuck in the tree above the bones," he continued. Greeley couldn't help but stop and query the man further. But it was no use. The man had made his fortune and the valley and country he wouldn't ever return to for any amount of gold! The bugs nearly ate him alive.

My wife is in Georgia,
I 'm in Nome
I pray each night My Colt takes me home.
If no truth exists at all, Then my soul will rot in hell.
Gold is lost to be found.
A Colt shoots best standing on ground.
Put that in your cob and smoke it! J.G./g