In the mid-1920s the new and short-lived Skookum Mining District was organized in the northwestern corner of Death Valley. Ore production from the district was so short, scant information is available about its mining history.
According to the Goldfield Daily Tribune, the area could be reached by an auto road leading west from Death Valley Scotty’s Grapevine Canyon ranch five miles to a wash, then seven miles further to the Desert Gold (a mine?), and then finally, after another seven miles, ending at the mine camp. The article stated that this new strike zone located in the Last Chance Range would be called the Skookum Mining District.
A Skookum mining camp of four houses was already up, and new machinery, such as an air compressor and drills, and necessary foodstuffs and other supplies were being shipped in from Bonnie Claire.
By March 1927, a carload of ore from the Skookum District was ready for shipment to the smelter in Mason Valley, likely at Yerington, Nevada.
Lucky Boy Divide Mining Company
Certificate No. 4434, One Thousand Shares to Harry McNamara, October 29, 1926. Harry W. McNamara, President; W. [William] F. Logan, Secretary. [Illegible], Asst. Cashier, Tonopah Banking Corporation.
In January 1927 the Lucky Boy Divide Mining Company, an organization based in Tonopah, Nevada, was managed by Harry McNamara. Lucky Boy Divide operated or leased mines in the Hornsilver and Silver Peak Districts in Esmeralda County, and the Athens District in Nye County. McNamara was reportedly working property owned by the Death Valley Gold Mining Company, “about 100 miles south of Tonopah, and not far from Death Valley Scotty’s ranch in the Grapevine canyon.” Lucky Boy Divide was likely operating under a lease from Death Valley Gold Mining.
In the summer of 1927, promoter Chester R. Bunker’s World Exploration Company of Fort Worth, Texas, purchased the assets of the Death Valley Gold Mines (Mining?) Company in the Skookum district. For follow-on information, see the history of the World Exploration Company.
World Exploration Company
Certificate No. 7050. 100 Shares to E. S. Jones, January 28, 1928. L. E. [Illegible), Secretary; Chester R. Bunker, President.
On the heels of C. C. Julian’s Leadfield promotion, other shady stock jobbers adopted a “me too” approach to fleece a few dollars from the gullible rubes. Texas oil well promoter Chester R. Bunker foisted his World Exploration Company mine in the Skookum Mining District.
The short-lived district was in the north end of Death Valley, about ten miles south of Sand Spring. Sol Camp, a one-time Goldfield stockbroker, had discovered gold in a big quartz ledge there in 1924 but lost interest in it. Then, during the Leadfield excitement, some of Camp’s friends found surface rock running up to $276 a ton, relocated the ground, and cut him in when they formed the Death Valley Mines, Inc.
Although by March 1927, the mine shipped a carload of ore by rail from Bonnie Clair station on the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad, Camp and partners decided that that selling-out was a better play than mining. They got a beefy, balding Texas oil promoter, Chester R. Bunker, to buy a controlling interest for a reported $100,000.
Bunker was publisher of the Fort Worth Western World and a Texas oil wildcatter whose subscribers that purchased shares in the oil drilling venture shared a million-dollar bonus when the well came in. By 1926 Bunker branched out into mining with a $2 million venture he called the World Exploration Company. In the summer of 1927, Bunker awed his readers with tales of “sensational new strikes” and “spectacular developments” all through the summer, as he pushed hard both the mine and the stock. “SKOOKUM!” he shouted from full-page ads, was nothing less than “The Hope of the West for the Mine of the Century”: “SKOOKUM IS SO BIG IN SIZE, AND IN PROMISE…. THAT SINGLE-HANDED IT CAN SWEEP WORLD EXPLORATION COMPANY TO MAGNIFICENT SUCCESS – CAN RETURN TO EACH AND EVERY STOCKHOLDER A FORTUNE IN CASH DIVIDENDS…SKOOKUM CAN WIN – WIN SO STUPENDOUSLY – WIN SO QUICKLY – THAT IT OVERSHADOWS EVERYTHING ELSE.”
And so it went, week by week for months. Bunker boosted the stock price from $1 to $1.50 and ordered in heavier machinery to drive through the “BIG QUARTZ in all directions, searching out…its riches.” In the weeks that followed he pushed the stock even harder, for the future was now “virtually assured.”
But then Bunker suddenly brought out a new “WINNER” – a silver mine over in Nevada – and Skookum began to slip into oblivion. The last report came in December 1927, with word that all digging had finally revealed a magnificent mass of “at least two hundred thousand tons of quartz” – but not a mention of ore! The “Big Quartz” was just that, and nothing more. By then no one was supposed to care. Nevada silver was his big thing. Skookum was just a misnomer. The machinery was hauled away the following spring, and a year later Bunker too was hauled-off to jail for using the U.S. Mail to defraud investors.
Death Valley Mining History - Thru Scripophily 