Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [273]
Some evidence for the San Andreas discoveries came from R. D. Hubbard and John Showalter, who on January 3, 1871 provided C. D. Voy with the following statement: “This is to certify that we, the undersigned, proprietors of the Gravel claims known as Marshall & Company’s, situated near the town of San Andreas, do know of stone mortars and other stone relics, which had evidently been made by human hands, being found in these claims, about the years 1860 and 1869, under about these different formations:
Feet
Coarse gravel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Sand and gravel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3. Brown gravel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4. ‘Cement’ sand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Bluish volcanic sand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6. Pay gravel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ……………………….. 150
The above [mentioned relics] were found in bed No. 6” (Whitney 1880, p. 274).
According to George Saucedo, a geologist of the California State Division of Mines and Geology, the pay gravels at the Marshall mine are probably Miocene or older (personal communication, 1989). The artifacts found in Bed 6 would, therefore, be in excess of 5 million years old.
W. O. Swenson, the justice of the peace who notarized the statement of Hubbard and Showalter, added: “I certify that I have seen one of the above described mortars, taken from said claims, and know the above to be true.”
Another set of discoveries was made nearby. Whitney (1880, p. 274) stated: “In Smilow & Company’s claim, on Gold Hill, about one mile west of Marshall
& Company’s, stone mortars were found at a depth of about one hundred feet in pay gravel, under the volcanic, the formation being closely similar to that of the last-mentioned locality [San Andreas]. This find is vouched for by Mr. Smilow himself.”
From El Dorado County came a report, by a Mr. Ford, that “near the head of Spanish Creek a perfect mortar and pestle were once found in the gravel beneath the volcanic matter” (Whitney 1880, p. 277).
5.5.12 Discoveries at Cherokee
In 1875, Amos Bowman, a part-time assistant to the Geological Survey of California, told of finds made at Cherokee, a few miles north of Oroville, in Butte County: “One of the mortars, found by Mr. R. C. Pulham, of the Spring Valley Mining Company, was taken out of a shaft he dug himself in 1853, and was found, according to his testimony, twelve feet underneath undisturbed strata. . . . About 300 feet east of this shaft Mr. Frederic Eaholtz took out in 1853 a similar mortar at a greater depth. I visited both places with Mr. Pulham, and found several mortars still lying around on the top of the blue-gravel bench which is not yet mined away.” The blue gravels, in which Pulham and Eaholtz discovered mortars, were “immediately underlying the auriferous gravel formation and the volcanic outflows” near Cherokee (Whitney 1880, p. 278).
Eaholtz gave information of further discoveries at another site near Cherokee. Bowman stated: “he told me further that, in 1858, while engaged with Wilson and Abbott in mining in the southwesterly part of the Sugar Loaf, he found in place, forty feet under the surface, a mortar of the same sort in unbroken blue gravel. This blue gravel nowhere comes to the surface, and it extends with the before-mentioned white and yellow gravel, under the Sugar Loaf, and under the Oroville volcanic mesa. It appeared only on the bottom of this claim. He was picking the blue gravel to pieces with a pick, when he found the mortar, which was a portion of the mass of cemented boulders and sand. He picked it out with his own hands” (Whitney 1880, p. 278). There were similar cases from Trinity and Siskiyou counties (Whitney 1880, p. 278).