Southwest Sierra Then & Now - #23

The Mott Cabin 1976. The Lawry Headframe can be seen in the background. Joe and Allison Aquino Center, photo by Frida Aquino.

For this week’s story I am going to go back to our 1975 arrival at the Mott Cabin. As previously mentioned, it was mid-summer by the time Dad and Tom Hall finished hand shoveling through the snow drifts to open the road.

My first impressions of the cabin are of a very dirty, unpainted wooden interior. Cleaning it was a big job and Mom did most of the work. It was easier for her without our “help”. The steps up to the kid’s loft were nearly vertical and made of rough-cut 2-inch lumber. Two of the steps near the bottom were missing. Dad was in no hurry to replace them. He thought that the physical challenge was good for us. We kids had to stick our toes in the grooves that once held the missing steps to climb past the gap. We had a milk crate with a string attached that was used to bring items up. For the downward journey objects were dropped down, unless they were breakable, then the crate was employed. We found this fun, but eventually Mom insisted that he replace the steps. At 5-feet and ½ inch it wasn’t easy for her to get past the gap either!

Most interesting to us was the nearby Lawry Shaft. We were forbidden from going near it without an adult and for good reason, the hole is 210 feet deep. Dad let us drop a rock down to hear how long it took to hit bottom. The mine was shut down in 1942 by Executive order L-208 ending the big operation under Best Mines. The order shut down all the gold mines in the country on the grounds that gold was “non-essential” to the war effort. Due to the large outcry of the mining community, the order was quickly modified to allow “maintenance work”, and the mine owners promptly found creative ways to define “maintenance”. The bigger mines like the Ruby and Sixteen to One never shut down completely.

After the war, order L-208 was lifted, but the price of gold was still fixed at the government’s 1933 value of $35 per ounce. Even under these unfavorable conditions, the Ruby Mine always had a few people poking around for gold, but the days of big operations appeared to be over.

“In 1970 the [U.S.] price of gold was allowed to float for the first time (with the exception of a hiatus during the civil war).”* Then on January 1st, 1975, Americans were allowed to own gold for the first time since 1933.

The Lawry Shaft was the only access into the Ruby at that time, because the main portal (where the giant bunkhouse was located) had caved-in. On weekday mornings, the old man would lower Dad and Tom into the shaft with a bucket and hoist that utilized an old wooden headframe. Any ladders that remained were rotted out and this was the only way to get in or out! Dad and Tom had zero underground mining experience. In Tom’s words: “Our first job was to clean out the shaft of all the old ladders and countless rocks and all kinds of random stuff that people had thrown in. We put everything in an underground room not too far from the bottom of the shaft. Then we built ladders with a platform every 16 feet.” This was the beginning of their underground mining careers.

* Quote from The Power of Gold by Peter L. Bernstein

About the author: As a kid in 1975, Rae Bell (aka Pauline) moved with her family to the Ruby Mine area located between Alleghany and Downieville. She and her husband have lived in Alleghany proper since 1992. If you have news or suggestions to share, please send an email to: raebell44@gmail.com