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Confidence Mine and Dugout

I had hiked out to some mines in the Upper Confidence Wash of Death Valley, but I still hadn’t been to the Confidence Mine itself. I needed to fix that.

History

The mine is one of the oldest in Death Valley, being first worked in 1895. One story goes that a Paiute Indian named Bob Black found gold float in Confidence Wash and tracked down the hillside where it came from. He sold it to Frank Cole and Jimmy Ashdown for $4,000, who in turn sold it to George Montgomery for $36,000—a small fortune in those days.