The Lost Cement Mine

About this book

This book contains the original story of the Lost Cement Gold Mine "somewhere on the headwaters of the Owens River " exactly as published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Post in the fall of 1879. Included in this volume are historic maps and accounts of Monoville and Mammoth City mining camps along with Mark Twains story of his midnight expedition to locate the legendary mine (accompanied by drawings from the 1872 first edition of Roughing It). Among hundred-year-old files of the San Francisco Daily Evening Post Richard Lingefelter discovered this story of the Lost Cement Mine by James W. A. Wright. Wright wrote his account in the fall of 1879 after a summer visit to Mono Countys mining camps in eastern California. Wrights report is partly hearsay partly a day-by-day account of the country he traveled between Monoville and Mammoth City. So detailed are his descriptions that you can locate today many of the places he wrote about more than a hundred years ago. For example you can easily follow his route up Red Mountain south of Mammoth City to the top of his "highest gray granite peak." There you can enjoy the same magnificent views that enthralled him on the eighth of July 1879 and that he wrote about at length in the Introductory. Exclusive to this edition are three historic maps additional notes Mark Twains full account of the Cement Mine and Nina Kelleys dramatic illustrations. Perhaps one day somewhere on the headwaters of the Owens River you too may hear the tap! tap! tap! of a prospectors hammer just as Wright did over a hundred years ago.