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The story of the lost Breyfogle gold mine has enticed many a prospector and treasure hunter for over a hundred years. Although there have been several different stories of the lost gold mine, the one that seems to be the most often quoted starts out with Charles C. Breyfogle living in or near Austin, Nevada and working either as a blacksmith in Austin or as a mill worker at a quartz mill located at Big Creek 16 miles south of Austin. This was in 1863. His passion was prospecting and he would spend all of his free time searching for undiscovered mineral deposits. It was on one such excursion that he discovered the ledge that would both fire his imagination and cause him to search again and again but never find his lost gold mine.
As the story is told, Breyfogle left Austin on one of his many prospecting trips and headed west with two horses. One day while away from camp prospecting he climbed a low hill and found a rich outcropping of red quartz peppered with free gold. He spent all afternoon taking samples but when he returned to his camp, his horses were gone. He searched all that day and after spending the night in the open desert, he resumed the search throughout the next day but the horses could not be found. He was now without water and after wandering in a daze in the desert heat he passed out. When he awoke, he was in a friendly Shoshone Indian village. When he had recovered he made his way back to Austin. Breyfogle immediately set about convincing his employer, Dave Buel, to return with him to file claim on his gold mine. Although the prospecting party was able to locate the Shoshone Indian village, they were never able to find the rich quartz outcropping. Breyfogle searched two more times but was never able to relocate his find.
Now lets jump ahead to modern times. Many people have made the claim that the mine was actually one of the later mines such as the Johnnie, Chispa mine, the Round Mountain mines, or others in between Austin and Death Valley. In the 1930's, a prospector named Roscoe Wright found what could be a marker left by Breyfogle in Forty Mile Canyon east of Beatty. The marker was inscribed with the following message "BY.FOGLE 1863". Was this a marker left by Breyfogle as he wandered? Wright prospected the area of the marker and did not find any evidence of mineral deposits. This area is now part of the infamous Area 51 and is not open to the public but if Wright made a thorough search of the area and did not find any probable deposits then this would remove Forty Mile Canyon from the search area.
One more very interesting tale related to the search for the lost mine. In 1911, W.C. Rice while riding to Chloride Cliff near the Amargosa Valley bumped into a couple of prospectors living in a tent on his property. They didn't tell him but they were looking for the Breyfogle. They described a couple of landmarks and Rice said he might know of the place they were looking for. The next day, Rice took the two men to a location known as California Hill. The men picked up some samples and made their way to Rhyolite. The next day, Rice returned to the area and found evidence of two of the landmarks that Breyfogle had mentioned, a meadow and 3 Indian trails. Although Rice did not actually find the meadow, he did find a limb from a willow tree sticking out of some rock and sand that had washed down from the hills above. He concluded that the meadow had be inundated from a flash flood. Another of the landmarks was evidence of three Indian trails in the vicinity which were also found. Rice became excited and walked up the hill until he came upon a quartz outcropping. He dug a trench and found a deep red quartz studded with gold. As the excitement grew, he dug and opened up the quartz pocket. Unfortunately, that was all it was, a pocket. In a short time, he had dug up all of the quartz to be found. The rich mine was but a pocket. If Rice did find the Breyfogle, was he able to actually find all of the ore? There just could be a rich outcropping just waiting to be found again somewhere below.
REFERENCE: Nevada Lost Mines and Buried Treasures by Douglas McDonald and Treasure Trails of the old west FALL, 1974 Story by Harold O'Neal
You may want to start here: A Guide to Treasure in Nevada
