Lou’s View 6/3

By Lou Bernard

We’ve all heard about the gold rushes of the late 1800s. A bunch of men, mostly resembling Yosemite Sam, going out west to find gold on the basis of little more than speculation. And it’s easy to imagine. Who wouldn’t want to go find lost treasure? I mean, really. Who wouldn’t be interested in hunting for gold out in the wilderness?

Well, actually, a lot of people, judging by how many haven’t. But over a century ago, there was at least one guy who did.

Apparently one man made several trips to search for gold, many of which were covered by the newspapers. The Clinton Republican reported on one of his trips on October 3, 1900, when he came home from a trip. The headline was “A Famous Gold Hunter Returns.”

Samuel H. Myers lived on the east end of Lock Haven, at least when he wasn’t out looking for gold. Which seems to have been a lot of the time. At one point, he made a trip out to Dawson City, Canada, to hunt for gold there, and complained that the cost of living was so high, there was almost no point.

He returned to Lock Haven for a time, and then on May 1, 1900, left again for Cape Nome, which is in Alaska. These days, that’s the United States, but it was part of Canada back in 1900. However, in those days, it wasn’t as if anyone was checking IDs too strenuously at the borders, either.

Myers got a job digging for gold for a man who had a claim on some land, and was paid five dollars a day for the experience. That adds up to about seventeen million dollars by today’s standards. He said that he was never sick a single day during that time, though he did take a few days off after stepping on a rusty nail while roofing a house. They wound up actually finding some gold, which the Republican mentioned.

“In this claim, pay dirt was found at a depth of four feet,” the newspaper reported, going on to note that gold is often found between four and fifteen feet in depth.

He covered considerable ground, traveling over a broad radius to search for gold. The Clinton Republican wrote,”During the time he spent in the gold fields he prospected for the precious metal over all the territory within 125 miles of Nome.”

It being Alaska, they had a heavy snowstorm in August, according to the article. And Myers went through a flood, as well, which he talked about to the Clinton Republican.

“During the heavy season, the rains, he says, are extremely heavy. In fact the heavy rain that caused the big flood in the Susquehanna in 1889 was a moderate shower in comparison,” said the newspaper.

On September 9, Myers caught a ship to come home. It was filled with four hundred other men, he said, all of whom had been in Alaska looking for gold. He arrived back home around the end of the month, and gave his entertaining account to one of the local newspapers.

Presumably, Myers went out looking for gold more times than this. I only found the one article, but it seems to have been something of a career for him. I’m assuming at some point he got too old and retired; this escapade seems to have happened when he was forty-three years old.

Samuel Myers passed away in 1936, and is buried in the Swissdale Cemetery in Woodward Township. I think it’s a safe bet he’s buried between four and fifteen feet down.