| Show r ST T?f yt‘t Wr r r-- t 1 v I Itf !i Try fishing and panning on t " v iV Colorado’s Dolores 'River- m you might hit with both by Bill Bryan b I B" A HERE’S PLENTY OF GOLD in the Dolores River — it’s free for the taking —and you can drive your car to within 200 feet of where it is Jim Gould of Dolores Colo says this is not “boomer talk” or just spec- He has panned “color" at ulation almost every sandbar between Dolores Rico 38 miles up the river and ' But Jim chuckled as he recounted a few of the current "gold coin” stories now in vogue in the Four Corners pountry All are typical lost treasure yarns “I’ve heard most of them" he said “One says a bank in Rico was robbed in the late 1890s The story claims that gang members were shot before they got the gold coins out of the country' Supposed to have been more than $40000 in the heist "Another story is about a holdup at one of the Rico mines The holdup men were supposed to have got away with $10000 or so in dust and nuggets “They all make good stories but they’re mostly just imagination" GOULD HAS traced down most of the local yarns in the old Rico newspapers and found they weren’t even He and his brother Edmentioned ward bought the defunct Rico newspaper in 1950 The paper ceased publication in 1941 In among the type and other equipment were back volumes dating to early 1890 He has sorted them out and had them bound into yearly editions' He can trace almost any happening in the upriver country through his files “The river has been worked for gold since I was a boy” Jim said “But there has never been a wide scale cleaning project like those on the rivers in California and other gold strike lo- cations” THE MINES at Rico were famous in the eighties for their silver lead and Continued on Page 4 RaasEtt ' - Jim Gould of Dolores consults his 1 896 edition of the Rico News-Su- n to check on one of the current "lost treasure" stories of the Rico mines as usual just a fable ts — Salt Lake City Sunday February 8 1959 8 i |
