Sourdough Sailor Lost Mine — Fortymile California Creek

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Sourdough Sailor Lost Mine — Fortymile California Creek

Lost Treasure AK • Southeast Fairbanks Census Area County
Description
Fortymile gold-rush legend of an Irish sailor called Casey who found fabulously rich decomposed quartz near a rusty axe in a birch tree on California Creek — he died after giving a map that fire chief Arny Hart could not decipher in 1920.
Historical Notes
Among early Fortymile River prospectors, an ex-sailor known as Casey wandered from Franklin to Davis Creek, became lost, and stumbled on a hillside pocket of concentrated gold ore near a birch with an old axe embedded in it. He returned to Fortymile with a competence, went to California, fell ill, and gave a map to Jim O'Brien, who passed it to Dawson fire chief Arny Hart. Hart's 1920 search of California Creek failed to relocate the opening. The Sourdough Sailor mine remains one of the Yukon–Fortymile district's best-known lost lode legends predating the Klondike strike.
Status / Verification legend — Legendary or approximate

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