Pair of two silver presentation ingots. One is engraved Little Chief / Panamint / D. G. T. The other is engraved Hudson River / Panamint / D. G. T. Both measure 1.25″ long x .75″ wide x 5/16″ thick.
The Daniel G. Tipton Panamint, California Silver Ingots
-From the Hudson River and Little Chief Mines, 1873
The two silver ingots are of normal presentation size, about an ounce or two apiece, engraved simply “Hudson River Mine” and “Little Chief Mine.” Each ingot bears the initials under the mine name of “D. G. T., Panamint”. Both strikingly carry the appearance of a number of the late 1860’s to early 1870’s ingots, so the search was on to find out who the mystery man “DGT” was.
It didn’t take long. Only one man fit the three initials. Daniel G. Tipton staked, located and later incorporated the Hudson River silver mine with two partners, James Ewing and John Copely on September 23, 1873. The Little Chief was staked by P.W. Medlin and J. B. Catlin several months before on May 13, 1873 (probably just after the snow melted), and subsequently acquired by Tipton, according to the Inyo County Recorder’s office and the Bureau of Land Management’s Mineral Survey files. These mining claims were among some of the first located in the new mining district, and are located high on the mountainside and on top of a ridge, perhaps 1500 to 2000 feet above the narrow valley floor which gave home to the new mining camp of Panamint City. Mining claims were staked during February through May, 1873 covering the best mining ground. The rich quartz veins carried a treasured silver lode that became the new boast of western miners.
Fred N. Holabird, copyright 2010, all rights reserved
Abstract
This story revolves around two small engraved silver ingots from the isolated eastern California mining camp of Panamint, made in the early 1870’s. They were made for Daniel G. Tipton, a Panamint pioneer. His business interests and successes brought him profit at Panamint, discovered mines in Mexico, and became part of Wyatt Earp’s posse when his brother Morgan was killed at the OK Corral in Tombstone. Tipton rode posse with the Earp’s, Doc Holliday and others for a decade, before learning a new trade in El Paso. There, as part of a poker game, he witnessed famed gunslinger John Wesley Hardin rob a customer in a saloon. Tipton was arrested at his new trade and died within a year in prison.
Sherman McMaster left and Daniel Tipton right, two members of Wyatt Earps Vendetta Posse.
Introduction
One of the great things about our job is that we get to meet many of the descendents of western mining families over the years. These families have more than a century of rich stories, tradition, and, if we get lucky, some still have the family treasures. One great example of many is the Grosh Brothers archive we landed for the State of Nevada. In another example, one of my good friends is a direct descendant of one of the great Comstock families, and he still has all of his grandfather’s silver and gold ingots, which he likes to tease me with from time to time.
A couple from one of these families approached us at a California trade show recently and showed us an old box with the family jewels. Inside were two wonderful, carefully engraved small silver ingots from Panamint City. Normally, I’d think it was a set-up, because I worked the district for two years back in the late 1970’s, and have fond memories of the mines, the geology, and history. The region has some of the most complex geology I’ve ever had to work with, and every day was a challenge with huge rewards. I was given an old ore bucket from the Hudson River Mine by one of the owners and have since given it to the Fourth Ward School Museum in Virginia City as part of their mining display.
Perhaps what I remember most is the nature of the ore – brightly colored blue and green quartz with black oxidized silver minerals. Add to this the story of the endangered Panamint Daisy, a story of which I wrote in an upcoming book, and it all seems like yesterday.
Panamint. Multiple Discovery Periods.
Panamint had its start when a prospector combed the mountains in the late 1850’s and found the remains of a few scattered prospects. He left the area, looking for gold, and only noting it in his notebooks, published a century later. Within four years, prospectors anxiously combed the hills looking for a new bonanza after the discovery of rich silver ore in Cerro Gordo in about 1860, in the rugged Inyo Mountains, a day’s stage ride northeast from Los Angeles.
In 1861, one of the first mining companies for Panamint ores was formed, the Panamint Silver Mining Co. Several others were formed, but Indian attacks in the Owens Valley forced out the miners, and the Panamint mines were vacated and soon forgotten. By 1869, a small, new group of prospectors had found ore in a steep-walled canyon two ranges east of Cerro Gordo, near one of the area’s tallest peaks, Telescope Peak (11,049 feet), in the Panamint Range, overlooking Death Valley. In this secluded desert canyon, the prospectors found more than the exciting silver and copper discoveries that were to follow, they found the precious cargo of water in springs high up the canyon, the essential element necessary for survival in a remote mining camp deep into the California-Nevada desert near Death Valley.
Mines and prospects in the Panamints were a tough venture. The Panamint Range is surrounded by Death Valley on the east side, and Panamint Valley on the west in a basin and range setting of the Great Basin. Both are dry, desolate, and generally without vegetation except the occasional sage brush in Panamint Valley.
The prospectors stuck with their discovery, living locally in the canyon in crude dugouts and huts, daring not to leave their claims for fear of overstaking by an unscrupulous prospector, and waited for a chance at investors with the necessary and much needed cash to open up the mines and bleed the mountain’s precious treasure, silver. These early prospectors were Richard C. Jacobs (a Calaveras miner), William L. Kennedy and Bob Stewart. Some of them had prospected nearby as early as 1860, and at least one must have known of the original prospects at Panamint in 1861, though none had ever been there. In the late fall of 1872, the group ventured up Surprise Canyon, following a trail of broken silver ore cobbles in the wide, braiding, dry creek bottom. The group claimed to have been followed by a gang of six “with enough guns to stock a hardware store” as related in a story decades later by Senator William Stewart in his Reminisces and Milo Page in the Inyo Register in 1906, all later retold by Lingenfelter in 1986 (Death Valley and the Amargosa). That group consisted of Dan G. Tipton, Henry Gibbons (Givens), James Dempsey, William Cannin and Louis Hudon, led, according to Page and Lingenfelter, by Gibbons. This later group reportedly settled up in the hills, away from the Jacobs camp.
Tipton’s Background
Daniel Gordon Tipton was born in 1844 in New York. He was in the Civil War, serving on the USS Malvern, an ironclad, having enlisted in July, 1864, and brevetted out April 16, 1865 the day after President Lincoln was shot. According to some, he headed west, and took up with outlaws in Pioche, Nevada. His later history tends to suggest the outlaw angle presented by early historical writers is far-fetched, and probably in error. His Ohioo prison filer stated that he was 5’ 10” tall with blue eyes and chestnut hair, a man who never married. He did not participate in the 1870 Federal Census, indicating he may have been in a remote location, possibly prospecting or working at a mine.
The outlaws he supposedly took up with included “leader” Henry Gibbons, who was working for a mill in Virginia City, Nevada in 1867. Curiously, neither Gibbons nor Tipton were written up in any of the formal reference works on California outlaws, nor are mentioned in Hume’s book on his exploits chasing Wells Fargo robbers or mentioned in the Hume/Thacker (Wells Fargo) Robber’s Record. (Thanks to Dr. Robert Chandler, Wells Fargo Historian, retired.)
Panamint Mining District Formed, February, 1873
In February of 1873, the Jacobs prospecting group formally held the first meeting of the Panamint Mining District and invited other prospectors to attend. Only one other group attended the meeting, led by Daniel G. Tipton, “who had been a successful political or businessman somewhere,” according to Neill Wilson in Silver Stampede. Lingenfelter and otehrs, however, maintained that Tipton and his cohorts were notorious Wells Fargo stage coach robbers, escaped from Pioche, and hiding in the mountains.
Confusion in the Historical Record
Here is where the various accounts of the beginnings of Panamint take serious twists and turns into inconsistent accounts, many with untraceable origins. They all surround the concept that the Tipton group was the “notorious” band of outlaws who came to Panamint in the winter of 1872-1873, fresh from a stage robbery in Pioche, on the heels of the Jacobs group. There is much confusion with a second group of outlaws from 1874, who were not the same men, but historians have cris-crossed, tangled, and overlapped the stories, creating significant confusion. Add to this the many embellished accounts, by old and new writers alike, and the confusion takes on the form of a crumpled up piece of paper. Page, Lingenfelter, Wilson, Senator William Morris Stewart’s Reminisces, reports in the Mining and Scientific Press reports in regional newspapers all depart into seemingly endless variations of story-telling, all, except for Lingenfelter who was trying to unscramble the mess made by past writers, based on supposed first-hand information. One of them might even contain the truth. Regardless, not one of the past historians cited the Inyo County Recorder’s Office records of the district, the only remaining true account of claim staking in the newly created Panamint Mining District. While we are researching this now, the work will not be completed in time for this publication, and it will be the subject of a future article.
Panamint Established
By late spring of 1873, there were the beginnings of a small mining camp. “The pioneers of the place and a few newcomers were camped in caves or stockades thatched with boughs” made of creosote and sage brush. “Everything in sight had been monumented and the residents were waiting comfortably for the next turn of the wheel”, said Wilson in Silver Stampede. What Wilson meant was that most of the locatable mining ground had been staked, and little was left, except the relatively inaccessible terrain up high on the canyon walls and over into neighboring canyons. That’s exactly where Tipton went to stake the Hudson River claim.
Tipton was much more active than many of the historians indicate. He obviously prospected heavily, and formed relationships with some of the other miners, prospectors and businessmen, separating himself from the Gibbons gang. Along the way, he met P. W. Medlin and J. B. Catlin, who had staked the Little River mining claim about two thirds the way up the mountainside on the west side of the canyon. After months of prospecting, Tipton had finally learned the secret – to look for the brightly colored quartz. Everyone else had been looking for the dull gray to black silver oxide minerals in quartz, but the high grade silver minerals were not always visible at the surface. It took a pick and shovel to break away a few feet of the vein rock, sometimes tens of feet, of mineralized quartz to find the rich seams of silver ore.
The Hudson River mining claim staked by Tipton, Copely and Ewing was important enough that it was surveyed March 1875 by Alfred Craven, deputy mineral surveyor. It was recorded April 21st, 1875. The original claim contained 20.53 acres. The Hudson River is just on the Happy Canyon side of the top of the ridge. I worked on this mine about 1979. It is above the Hemlock mine. The Hudson River was developed by two adits (tunnels) and open cuts. The tunnels are about 200 feet apart, one located near the center of the claim, and the other northeast. It was developed by posts in stone monuments. Reports of the Hudson River ores circulated over the next few years. Raymond (1875) noted parallel vein systems to Stewart’s Wonder mine. He reported a northeast strike, with the quartz veins dipping steeply northwest. The ores of Panamint could be very high grade, as evidenced by the following analyses for silver: the average pay streak for the Hudson River was $80.19 per ton, while the Little Chief had an average pay streak of $84.82 per ton; ore with blende and galena, $59.69/t; all based on the observations of Mr. C. A. Stedfeldt as reported to Raymond.
The Little Chief mine was also surveyed, containing 25.30 acres. Along the way, the original locators located a millsite, ¼ mile down Little Chief Canyon. It was surveyed Nov., 1874 by Alfred Craven, deputy mineral surveyor. The mine is located in the northeast ¼ of section 15, Township 21 South, Range 45 East. The survey was filed February 16, 1875, patented April 12, 1876. The main shaft and tunnel are located approximately in the center of the claim just on the east side of the drainage of the Little Chief Canyon, which drains north into Surprise Canyon. The claim was staked using a series of posts set in stone monuments, with a blazed juniper tree in the north east corner. The tunnel and shaft are about 50 feet apart, with the shaft west of the tunnel (adit) entrance near the bottom of the canyon. The claim was measured in chains (a “chain” is 66 feet.) The millsite is about 1500 feet due NE from the center of the mining claim. A trail accessing other mines switches back up the ridge to the west of the workings. The Mining and Scientific Press reported that the Little Chief “shows a body of ore some 4’ in width. The assays made go $196 to $800. It is owned at present by Tipton & Co.” (11/22/1873 Mining and Scientific Press, hereafter noted as MSP.) The canyon leading west out of Panamint City was called Little Chief Canyon, named after the mine. It was most noted for the red light district that occupied it, run by Martha’s camp in 1874, according to Lingenfelter.
The Wyoming mill site is a scant 185 feet ESE of the Little Chief mill site. The Wyoming claim is at the head of Little Chief gulch, which had very rich “croppings.”
With two mining claims under his belt, Tipton was ready for a promotional move to try to raise capital to develop his prospects, or more likely, simply to sell them.
The Rush to Panamint is On!
By mid 1873, the word about Panamint was out in force. Most of the publicity centered around several promoters, as well as some of the original locators. At the top of the list was R.C. Jacobs, who was out raising money for a stamp mill. The reports varied on whether he was putting in a 5 or 15 stamp mill, and nearly every month from spring through October, 1873, there were reports that the mill would be completed shortly. Jacobs, who described himself as a miner and metallurgist, told the media “the mines of Panamint will surprise the world” (8/30/73 MSP.) “The new district will ultimately become one of the richest silver producing localities on the Pacific Coast.”…”The ledges crop out conspicuously.”… “The lead is truly a monster, measuring in some places 30’ in thickness and will probably average 5’ for a distance of 3000’. Some assays are as high as $3000 per ton.” (8/2/1873 MSP.) Both Raines and Kennedy were also active promoters, along with others, some of whom spent their time on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. Kennedy spent his time in Los Angeles, and was able to find a grub stake there.
The Early Promotion of Panamint
E. P. Raines, a fast-talking “shabby operator” and hopeful stock investor in San Francisco, had dreamed of striking it rich. He watched the stock exchange reports, read the daily news reports of mines and anxiously waited for any tip of an impending mining strike. Without a bankroll, Raines had to be content to wait, while he tried to find a partner. After hearing the whispers of “Panamint”, he set out in search of a grubstake. Finally he convinced a mining promoter, Mr. Vanderlief, to grubstake him for a trip to Panamint, based only on a rumor he heard at the exchange, in the hopes of finding a new strike (Wilson.) While in Panamint, he obtained options on key mining properties. After seeing the town and prospects, he “rushed into a hotel” in Los Angeles and told them of the Panamint riches, next to Cerro Gordo. In doing so, he helped start a well calculated “rush” to Panamint. (See Chalfant, Wilson, Nadeau)
Raines secured another grubstake from Vanderlief. This time they took 300 pounds of ore from one of his properties by wagon to Los Angeles, with the aim of getting to the newspapers for promotion, which worked to perfection. Then, in another well calculated move designed to entice excitement, he traveled north to San Francisco. Raines was thus well armed with “many column inches of newspaper encomium (glowing praise)”, perfect food for the news-hungry mining reporters (Wilson.) In San Francisco, the financial center of the West, Raines succeeded in getting the Mining and Scientific Press to make a small entry into the popular mining paper: “A friend who returned this week from a trip to (the) Panamint mines, furnishes us with some information concerning the new district, which is of interest… some of the leads are described as cropping out from a quarter of a mile to two miles in length and run from a “knife blade” up to thirty feet in width. .. ” “About 100 claims have been recorded and a town site has been located. .. ” (9/13/1873 MSP)
And so it came that the Panamint area by September, 1873, had been written up in the Mining and Scientific Press, beginning a new silver “rush.” It was reported upon regularly through about 1881, and sporadically thereafter.
A “chance” meeting with Senator John P. Jones from Nevada who had made a fortune on the Gold Hill Crown Point bonanza, was arranged at a poker table in a local club. Raines got their attention on the opening ante, not with his cash, but with a chunk of high grade Panamint ore, rolled across the table in Jones’ direction. He got a $1000 advance on the spot, and another $15,000 later. (Wilson, Chalfant, Nadeau.)
Though it took Raines a few tries, he finally got Senator Jones to visit Panamint. Jones was so impressed that he reportedly purchased options on five claims for $113,000 (including the Wyoming and Hemlock), and the newspaper write-ups followed with glowing (and possibly embellished) reports, exactly as Raines had planned. ” … “The indications are that Panamint is the richest mineral strike ever made in quartz on the Pacific Coast” quoted the Mining and Scientific Press in the spring of 1874. Jones, meanwhile, got his friend Senator William Stewart involved. Friends since the 1850’s, the two often invested together. The opportunity came at a time when Stewart had left the Senate, and was busy with his law practice and mine investments.
Prospectors abounded in the new camp. A town site was recorded and a district recorder was appointed, though those records may not survive. By July, 1873, 80-90 mining claims had been located, and the population had grown from about 70 in April to more than 100 miners and prospectors. Eighteen months later, in November, 1874, the population swelled to 1200-1500 men, every bit as active as the early period. “The roads are lined with teams going in. Everybody is flush, gambling is in its zenith, and the camp looks like a California or Nevada camp in the early days.” (11/21/74 MSP)
As ore began to be mined, it needed processing. The nearest mill was at Cerro Gordo. Miners also shipped overseas to Liverpool, because of metallurgical difficulties. It was a “rebellious” ore. It cost about $30 per ton to ship to Los Angeles, and an additional $24 per ton by ship to Liverpool. “It is mined and sacked for about $15 per ton, as the ledges are wide and large. The ores contain from 10 to 30% copper, so by shipping to Liverpool, the miners get from $15 to $45 per ton for the copper alone.” (11/21/74 MSP)
Tipton’s Silver Ingots Help Sell the Mines
Tipton began the search for a partner or sale of his mines by making these two silver ingots to show off the final product. Wilson reported that Tipton sold the Hudson River for $25,000 to the Surprise Valley Mining Company in the summer of 1874. Whether this was for the whole property or part is unknown. On November 24, 1874, he sold part interest to James Scobie and sold another interest to Senator Stewart on November 25 for $7,000, according to the deed on file in Inyo County, as reported by Robert Palazzo in “Daniel G. Tipton, an Update”, published in Hoya Volante, a publication of the Zamorano Club (2010). In fact, it may have been these little silver ingots and the ore itself that got Stewart’s attention.
Tipton was exceptionally active in Panamint business dealings, buying and selling lots, mines, claims and buildings. Palazzo reported at least a dozen real estate transactions in 1874 alone, with further research showing Tipton remained active in Panamint as a businessman until at least 1879, though he listed himself as a “miner” in the Inyo County Great Registers of 1875, 1877 and 1879.
Senator Stewart and Jones Jump Into Panamint With Both Feet
Stewart did not try to get reelected to the Senate in 1875, and invested, along “with other capitalists,” in Panamint mines with his long-time friend John Percival Jones. The two had owned mines together in California during the gold rush, and both had come to California in 1850. With the influx of capital in Panamint from Jones and Stewart, other investors and speculators jumped on the bandwagon. These includes many of the Comstock men, such as John D. Fry, who also struck it rich on the Crown Point Bonanza, who bought into and incorporated the Wyoming mine.
After Stewart and Jones began buying the key properties at Panamint, their aim was clear. They thought they had another Comstock, and their intent was to mine the properties for a profit in the style of Mackay and Fair at Virginia City. The purchase of these properties was part of a consolidation of properties and gave them the control they needed for a larger scale mining operation. Tipton’s properties, and those of Jacobs and others now became part of the new mining enterprise.
Production at some of the prospects began, and a few crude mills were erected. The first public notice in a technical journal of district activity was published in 1874 by Ross Raymond in Mineral Resources West of the Rocky Mountains: “(there has been) a vigorous prospect of the district, the result of which has been the discovery and location of over 160 claims, and building by the miners of suitable winter quarters … ” Stewart soon traveled to Panamint with hopes of getting a profitable mining operation started. “Our headquarters at Panamint were in a mountain ravine where there was grass and plenty of spring water …it was an admirable place for outlaws”… “A company of gentlemen engaged in the business of stopping stages, and relieving the express box and passengers of gold and other valuable(s) …, resided in this secluded nook. They were a picturesque crew… and wearing as ornaments enough guns to stock a hardware store.” The outlaws had discovered some rich veins which terminated at the spring, and it was there that they built their crude home, “the resort of the road agents”, which soon became Stewart’s new home. Never one to pass up a good opportunity, Stewart soon bought out the outlaws’ mines. “We purchased from them most of their mines-which were no good to them, for they were too lazy to work them…”
Stewart had to arrange, as part of the sale, a sort of compromise with Wells, Fargo & Co. The outlaws had robbed so many stages, that they felt that if they left the hideout, they’d be shot or captured. So Stewart arranged a sort of buyout, where a portion of the money from the sale went to the Wells, Fargo & Co., a longtime client of Senator Stewart’s. This story was recounted by several writers, but has yet to be verified by Wells Fargo itself.
There is confusion on whether the outlaws mentioned by Stewart were Gibbons, Tipton et al or John Small and John MacDonald. Glasscock, in Here’s Death Valley (1940), identified the outlaws as John Small and John McDonald, who had recently stolen $4,462.64 from a Wells Fargo treasure box during a stage robbery in Eureka County, Nevada during which they killed the shotgun messenger Tim Miller. They hid in Panamint where they posed as miners, even supposedly staking what ended up as key claims on silver veins in the hills. Wells Fargo had reportedly offered $4000 for their capture. Famous Wells Fargo detective James Hume was hot on their trail. Stewart arranged to pay Burne the $4462.64 as part of his $12,000 purchase of Small and McDonald’s claims. The formal record of this stage treasure box robbery in the Robber’s Record is December, 1874, not December, 1872, when Gibbons, Tipton et al were accused of robbing a Wells Fargo stage in Pioche, though the Gibbons, Tipton et al Wells Fargo stage robbery is unconfirmed in the Robber’s Record. The possibility does exist that Gibbons et al robbed a stage from a different company also coming out of Pioche, whose records may no longer exist, and the story has been embellished to include the famous stage line of Wells, Fargo & Co.
Small and McDonald had a third partner, John Curran, with aliases “John Wilson” and “Patsey Marley.” “Hume ran him down in January 1875 and Curran served time in jail until June 1883,” according to Wells Fargo historian Dr. Robert Chandler. The official Wells Fargo report, however, differs substantially from Glasscock’s version. The trio attempted to rob a stage from Eureka to Palisade on Dec 3, 1874. The express box was left behind, but Small & McDonald got away, and were never heard from again by Wells Fargo. Chandler further stated that Wells Fargo would never settle for money instead of a conviction and jail time (“taking them off the road), because they wanted the jail time to act as a deterrent. This group of outlaws reportedly owned or controlled the Wyoming and Hemlock mines, near Tipton’s mines.
Stewart’s account, and that of Glasscock and others, thus appears to have been mixed up with other “bad-guys.” A group of the earliest locators were the Hank Gibbons gang, which included Daniel G. Tipton, Jack Dempsey, John Curran (John Wilson), Jim Scobie, Parker, Copely, Chunn. It was this group, along with Richard C. Jacobs, W. L. Kennedy and Robert Stewart who formed the first meeting of the Panamint Mining District in February, 1873. [As a side note, Jacobs has been reported by some historians as from Austin, NV, but this appears in error. George W. Jacobs was one of the founders of the Reese River District, and namesake of Jacobsville, but he is apparently no relation to R. C. who was born in New York in 1829, while George and his two brothers who lived with him were all born in Prussia 1835-1841.]
Stewart & Co. Start Work on Their Mines
Once the consolidation of the mining claims was complete, Stewart’s crews “sank two shafts” according to his memoirs, “from two to three hundred feet, in ore from five to eight feet wide… averaging $200-$300 per ton. We erected a very expensive quartz mill…but found, to our astonishment, that in each case the ore was a pipe, and extended but a few feet from the shaft in each direction.” By the time they were in full production, the town of Panamint had 1500-2000 people living in everything from blanket rolls to canvas tents and crude frame buildings up and down the canyon.
[10/2010] https://www.icollector.com/Panamint-City-CA-Inyo-County-c1873-Panamint-Silver-Ingot-Pair-Ghost-Town_i9799130 ($36,000)
For a longer story and background, see the following video made by Charles Joneth at Vegas Coin Dealer: https://vegascoindealer.com/blogs/news/the-story-of-daniel-g-tipton-and-his-silver-ingots