The 49ers of ’95 : Members of This Northern California Club Are Digging Up Gold, but Also Stirring Up Controversy, With Skeptics Calling It a Scam

The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle. All were off to the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter. --Walter Colton, mayor of Monterey, 1848 *

They’re not exactly following in the footsteps of the actual 49ers during the gold rush, the beginning of which was described by Colton in the summer of 1848.

But the New 49ers, as they call themselves, have flocked to this small town along the Klamath River about 20 miles south of the California-Oregon border as they do every summer, with their pans, sluices and those noisy contraptions called suction dredges.

Some hope to strike it rich. Others are here merely for recreation.

“We’re striving for $30,000 by the end of September,” said Greg Bacon, climbing aboard a large suction dredge on which his brother, Craig, waited in a swift-flowing section of the Klamath.

Having shown nearly an ounce of color on their first day in the river earlier this summer, they’re well on their way.

They won’t stop at $30,000, though, having clearly come down with the same “gold fever” that afflicted not only doctors, farmers and store keepers during the gold rush but, as one witness put it, “the briefless lawyer, the starving student, the quack, the idler, the harlot, the gambler, the henpecked husband and the disgraced.”

Dave McCracken, the outspoken leader of the New 49ers, a club that offers members access to 50 miles of claims he has staked along the Klamath and its tributaries, knows all about the effect gleaming yellow metal has on miners’ minds.

In one day in 1984, McCracken says he dredged $40,000 worth of gold from the river, including a 15 1/2-ounce nugget.

“You know what it’s like?” he said of the feeling. “It’s like having speakers hooked to an amp and you turn the amp up as high as it’ll go, way beyond what the speakers are able to put out, and you get distortion. That’s what happens emotionally to you when you uncover a lot of gold.”

But McCracken has stirred up more than the river bottom in his long and fruitful search for gold. In his fight against what he calls unreasonable regulations and alleged harassment of the New 49ers by Department of Fish and Game biologists and wardens, as well as other law enforcement officers, he has stirred up controversy.

McCracken runs what is believed to be the largest commercial mining operation in California on one of the most productive rivers in the state. His club has grown from 70 members 10 years ago to 642.

He owns a mining-supply store and showroom in town, and publishes a magazine, Gold and Treasure Hunter.

He certainly helps boost an economy that has been sagging--dying might be a better description--since the spotted owl controversy led to a logging ban in the surrounding forest five years ago.

The recent closure of the timber mill at the edge of town sent spirits plummeting. Many of the town’s 2,000-plus residents are on welfare. They’re bitter. Their faith in the government--and in authority in general--is shaken if not completely diminished.

They obviously support McCracken. Many of his members spend the entire summer, and lots of money, here.

“I’d say about 30% of our business is generated by miners,” said Bill Johnson, who with his wife Ellen, owns a local grocery store. “A few of the locals don’t like miners in general, but this town was founded by miners.”

A standard claim--anyone can file on public land--provides mineral rights on roughly 20 acres. It costs about $100 a year to file. McCracken’s members pay an initial fee of $300, $35 a month and $50 in annual dues to be in McCracken’s club and use his 50 miles of claims. Or they can get a lifetime membership for $2,625, but must still pay the annual dues. They can keep all the gold they find.

Some outsiders call the operation a scam, but New 49ers say that not having to deal with paperwork or worry about changing regulations make McCracken’s deal a good one. All they need to operate a suction dredge is a permit from the Department of Fish and Game.

“We don’t have to worry about finding a place to dredge,” said Rose Schultz, 75. She and her boyfriend, Lymann Cauvel, have been New 49ers for eight years.

“My best day?” said Schultz, repeating a question. “I’m embarrassed to say, probably a quarter-ounce. But it’s not how much you find, it’s how much you might find.”

Others say their money is well spent because McCracken, one of the world’s leading authorities on underwater mining, teaches everything from panning to high-banking to suction dredging.

McCracken has advised several countries on mining their waterways. He has also published several books on the subject.

He grew up Hartford, Conn., a self-proclaimed “Navy brat.” After joining, he eventually was placed in the U.S. Navy’s elite SEAL brigade, an underwater demolition unit. After completing his Navy stint, McCracken ran a commercial diving business in Marina del Rey.

“That was demeaning,” he said of cleaning rich people’s yachts. “Gold prices started going up and an ex-Navy SEAL buddy of mine and I decided to go look for gold.”

He lived in a tent for several years, scraping what gold he could, nearly giving up several times.

“By spring my partners had quit,” he recalled. “They took the dredge because they owned two-thirds of it. But I had a tent. I don’t know if you can call that homeless or not, but it was as close as you could get.

“I met a guy who had an extra dredge. I borrowed the dredge and started working for myself, making five bucks a day, eating rice and beans. I did this for six months, living on a mining claim that I filed out there, all by myself with the lions and bears.

“I eventually got hired to run a dredge for $86 a day and 10% of what I found. I felt like a millionaire.”

That was in 1980. Today McCracken, 41, runs a million-dollar mining business.

But he does not act like a man with a bright future. He is convinced that government agencies--specifically the DFG and California Highway Patrol--are out to get him.

Suction dredges, by far the most efficient tools for extracting gold from a river, have always been controversial. They are machine-driven contraptions that enable a scuba diver to work the river bottom with a vacuum-like hose, which sends material to a gold-recovery system aboard the craft, and deposits smaller material, or “tailings,” back into the river.

Fishery biologists have concerns about the tailings’ effects on salmon and steelhead, notably on their spawning beds on the river bottoms. But they have not been able to prove that dredges are “deleterious” to fish. Some even believe the dredges help habitat by ridding the bottom of sediment detrimental to spawning habitat.

Still, the DFG strictly regulates their use. There are about 5,000 dredge permit holders throughout Northern California.

Many are rural residents and home-rule types, leery of regulations. McCracken insists that is not the case with his group.

“Regulations are good,” he said. “We’re just against unreasonable regulations. We’re not radicals. If you say no we can’t, we just want to know why. The problem is, they say that isn’t for you to know.”

The DFG is working on an environmental impact report, which will probably result in new and stricter regulations for next year.

“The problem we face is bringing all the factions together and making them understand that we are the ones vested with the protection of the resource and habitat,” said Jim Barton, the DFG’s chief of enforcement for the region.

McCracken has also claimed that authorities are trying to put him out of business. He cited a recent raid on his properties by the Environmental Protection Agency and law enforcement officers based on a complaint of “toxic pollution” by a Happy Camp resident. The raid turned up a piece of lead the size of a pinhead, McCracken said. He hasn’t been charged but he’s plenty charged up.

He has written to everyone from the Siskiyou County district attorney to Gov. Pete Wilson, claiming he and his members are being harassed by wardens and policemen.

One warden, Jake Bushey, said he has been questioned by Barton about the complaints and insists that he treats the New 49ers as he would anyone who might be breaking the law.

“McCracken says it’s a personal vendetta,” Bushey said. “You see someone mining, you don’t know if they’re a 49er or Joe Citizen from Happy Camp. You just go down there and check their permit. And nobody is allowed to put mud in the river [a violation usually attributed to high-bankers, who shovel ground from the river bank into a machine that processes it, discharging the loose dirt back onto the bank, or in some cases into the river].

“I think they are really paranoid myself. We never told those guys they can’t mine. We just tell them if they’re going to mine, they can’t put mud in the river, they can’t divert the creek or mess with the salmon [runs].

“A lot of these miners are squatters: They have no potable water, no porta-potties. After 30 days, by law, they need to get porta-potties. I said to this one guy, ‘Either get porta-potties or I’m calling the health department,’ and [McCracken] went nuts. He went absolutely nuts, hollering and screaming, spit coming out of his mouth.

“And I said, ‘Dave, this affects everybody who uses this river, the rafters, swimmers . . . You guys don’t have the right to do all this stuff.’

“McCracken has this thing going that Fish and Game is harassing the miners and everything. He just wants free rein for these people to come in and mine and do this with no restrictions. It’s not going to happen. Fish and Game’s not going to say ‘Well, geez, we don’t want to do it because it’ll make Dave mad.’ ”

Dave is mad, but his members seem happy enough. A woman recently pulled from the river bottom a quarter-ounce nugget in an area below town, and most of the 49ers have flocked to the area.

“They’re consistently pulling nice-sized nuggets out,” said Maria McCracken, Dave’s wife. “There’s sort of a gold rush going on down there.”