[meteorite-list] Largest single Pallasite?

From: Robert Warren <cometman_75_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Oct 28 11:01:09 2004
Message-ID: <BAY16-F330TzlYbvhBI0005407f_at_hotmail.com>

Hello Al and others interested,

Yes there was a gold rush going on around the time Evans reportedly found
his meteorite. Though most people think it occurred only along the coast
line south of Port Orford, that is not true. The naming of Johnson
Mountain, the one that Plotkin says he search on, is after a man who was at
first called 'Bovine Johnson.' He worked for a lumbering operation
east-northeast of Port Orford. He had a friend who was involved with an
Indian woman. She told him how to go to one creek and he could find gold
there. He did and did find gold. Then he told Bovine, how to get there,
which Bovine did. Bovine found so much gold there, they changed his name to
Coarse Gold Johnson, and the creek was named after him, hence Johnson's
Creek, which is at the base of Johnsons mountain. The mountain was named
after him because he continued living along Johnson's creek digging gold.
But even then as today, and as LaPaz foundout back in the 1930's and 1940's,
it is not easy moving around on any of the mountains out there, unless they
had been burned off. There is simply to much underbrush. In the case of
LaPaz, one of his assistants went into the brush and moved around within 50
yards for a day, and nobody saw him. They could hear him, but since the
brush was so thick, they couldn't see any sign of him. And that search was
on a mountain that is within sight of Port Orford, to the southeast, today
called bald knob.

According to the the Port Orford Quadrangle book byu the U. S. Geological
Survey, during the 1880's, the 1890's, and several times during the early
20th century, there were mudslides and landslides along many of those very
same creeks. Throughout the first 50 years of the 20th century, there were
a number of reports published in the newspapers, where someone found a piece
of pallasitic meteorite in several of the creeks. They turned them over to
a man named Foshag, who worked for the Smithsonian. They have never been
seen since, and the Smithsonian claims they never had them.

Overall, the questions to ask are as follows.

1) DID EVANS FIND A METEORITE?
2) DID HE BUY A PIECE OF IMILAC FROM A SO CALLED ROCK AND MINERAL DEALER IN
PANAMA?
       (There is no evidence of such a dealer being in existence, in any of
the books, journals, scientific publications I have found, in any other
source other than in Plotkin.)
3) OR DID C. T. JACKSON TAKE A PIECE OF IMILAC FROM HIS COLLECTION AND PASS
IT OFF AS A PIECE FROM PORT ORFORD, AND HE KEPT THE ORIGINAL MATERIAL?
4) PLOTKIN HAS NOT MENTIONED IN PRINT, NOR HAS THE SMITHSONIAN, ANY
INFORMATION ABOUT THE TRUE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AT ANY POINT ON THE WEST
COAST DURING THE 1850'S. WHY? THAT SEEMS TO BE A CRUCIAL ASPECT OF
PLOTKINS AND HIS "EVANS HOAX" THEORY.
5) WHY DOESN'T PLOTKINS MENTION HOW WHILE EVANS WAS IN THE PORTLAND AREA, HE
MADE HIS OWN MEASUREMENTS OF THE WILLAMETTE MERIDIAN? That measurement
would be needed for anyone conducting surveys such as Evans was doing.
6) WHY DOESN'T PLOTKINS MENTION THE OTHER SURVEYORS WHO WERE WORKING IN THE
SAME AREA AT THE SAME TIME? One of them became well known in California
after he made a survey in Southwestern Oregon in the 1850's.

By the way, if anyone is interested, I have gotten much of this information
from actual newspapers from that time period, and from books, both published
by the Smithsonian, including their annual reports, the U.S. Geological
survey reports, and booklets, and from books written and printed privately,
but the sources of their material is checkable.

I just think there are too many, way too many questions about Plotkin and
his theory. Too many things in his booklet, do not add up, in light of the
actual records from the 1850's, till today.

Have a good day,

Bob Warren

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Received on Thu 28 Oct 2004 11:00:46 AM PDT