Dear clan and dear friends,
We thought you might want to see where we went exploring today. The Arrow river was once the scene of a massive gold strike – the second largest ever found. In the 1860’s this area was crawling with gold miners, gangsters and good time girls from all four corners of the world. Apparently it was quite a scene – similar to the gold rush in the American west around the same time. Today we explored up the canyon where much of the gold was found. The old Mace road that we explored fords the arrow river 20 times in 7 miles! Can you imagine driving this route in all weathers ( especially winter) with only a springless wagon and a team of horses? One supplier made the trip every day until he was 86 years old! He made his last trip,then went home and died peacefully in his bed. The old road that we hiked up necessitates us crossing the river many times, just like in the old days. As you can see they also run tours with four wheel drive vehicles equipped with a special snorkel attached to the muffler. We thought exploring it on foot was much more interesting (though quite a bit wetter). We also met people who were still panning for gold today! When we asked if they were finding any, a man showed us several flakes he had panned out just this Sunday. Though it was neat to see actual shining gold in his small container, when we found out it took him all day to get those few flakes, we thought searching for gold has seldom made anyone rich. In fact, it seemed like one of the hardest ways to make money we could imagine. A colder, wetter, more back breaking task is hard to imagine. Nowadays people do it for fun, with a warm house and hearty dinner to return to and a car to take them there. Back in the gold rush they endured all the elements in all seasons, with robbers threatening to take the fruits of their labor at any moment. Still, people flocked to the lure of the big strike, though hardly any actually made any money ( except those who ran businesses supplying all those hard working dreamers).