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Show Record boats. There were a few prospectors who came in small boats down 2508 the river, but I never saw any of them go back up in them; and the merchants at Bluff, so far as I know, did not use the river for sending out or receiving merchandise. The merchants kept a ferry boat. I have seen sand waves along the river near Bluff 2509 and further down. They usually occur in high storm water. I have crossed the San Juan River a few times with burros at a point about four miles below Bluff, where there is a crossing free from quicksand; I also had occasion to cross the river a number of times during my prospecting there in 1892, when we went across during the month of December with knee boots on and didn't get our knees wet. We were prospecting on the north side and would carry our boots and cross. In 1907 and 1908 I put in a 2510 ferry at a point three miles above Hite. We crossed the river at Hite in a row boat. A few times we could get our animals over a bar, except that they would have to swim perhaps twenty feet. 2511 When I first went to little I did some prospecting; that was in 1906, 1907 and 1908. We brought in some ball mills, settling tanks, a few tanks for leaching, amonia tanks, overland from 2517 Green River. We ferried this equipment across the river at Hite and hauled it up into White Canyon about thirty miles distant from the Colorado River. Benjamin D. Harshberger testified on cross examination as follows: 2518 The miners that I spoke of who went down the San Juan River were placer mining over a pretty long stretch of the river, and when I first went to the San Juan River in 1892 the placer miners had claims located along for about thirty miles. In later years the miners have gone to the San Juan River very largely in the winter tine and have placer mined along that river from Chinle Creek down to within twenty miles of the junction of the river. 2519 Miners would go down to the San Juan River in the winter and mine there during the years between 1892 and 1919, but the bars are now |
