The Story of Shorty

Shorty and Frank

In the early 1990s I worked as a gold assayer and doré smelter for a gold mine in the southwest. In the course of my work I met and became acquainted with various other local miners and prospectors. Eventually I was invited to make a presentation at a meeting of the Small Miners and Prospectors Association in Yuma.

There were around twenty men at the meeting, all owners and operators of small mining claims locally. These were hard-working salt-of-the-earth types, friendly, and anxious to learn anything new about their favorite subject, gold. I explained the theory of gold origin in stellar explosions, the hot and cold theories of gold agglomeration, the formation of gold in quartz veins and black iron placer deposits. I offered some quick tips on field testing of gold, which no doubt most already knew.

After the presentation a man approached me and introduced himself as Frank. Frank told me he and his partner were working a small placer claim not far from town, and asked if I would be willing to come out sometime to look around. Of course I agreed.

Upon my arrival at the claim site I was met by Frank who immediately introduced me to his mining partner, Al, “Shorty”. Shorty was a little Italian guy, soft-spoken and friendly. He was only about 5’2“ in height, thus the reason for his nickname. By his accent I surmised that Shorty was probably a first-generation immigrant to the United States.

Over the next few years I got to know Frank and Shorty pretty well. When not working their claim, Frank’s primary ambition was to sit, drink beer and tell tall stories about prospecting, lost treasures and mining.

Shorty was just the opposite. In his upper middle-age years, he was quiet, introspect, but a very amiable person and a tee-totaler, as far as I know. He never spoke of a wife or family, and I got the impression he didn’t have relations nearby. To a great extent he was a loner, spending his spare time scouring the local canyons and dry washes for whatever gold they might contain.

Shorty spent the warm winters in southern Arizona, and when the temperatures started getting uncomfortably hot he would leave for his claim in Alaska for the summer. And Shorty did VERY WELL! He was quite good at his chosen profession. Frank always said Shorty could “smell gold”, and one year I almost started to believe it.

In early March the temperatures on the lower Gila River were comfortable, neither cold nor hot. Shorty was making plans for another trip to his claim on the Yukon, but was keeping in practice by doing a little prospecting locally. He ask me if I wanted to accompany him on a short sampling trip in what I had arbitrarily named La Cueva Canyon, and I eagerly agreed. The quebrada was dry and we had no water to pan, so we just dug holes as close to bedrock as possible, scraped the rock surfaces, the ledges, etc., and bagged the sweepings to carry back and pan later. I took one side of the canyon, shorty took the other. We sampled for about three hours then headed back to the claim.

Shorty and I carefully panned out our sweepings and concentrates with water. After weighing our finds, the result was astounding. Shorty had more than 2.5 OUNCES of raw gold from that canyon. I came up with around half a gram! Whether he could "smell" it or not, I had to concede that in finding gold Shorty was by far the better man!

The following October I was visiting them at their claim, and Shorty had just returned from his usual summer trip to Alaska. I arrived that day with chemicals and reagents to show Frank how to chemically refine raw gold with aqua-regia and ferrous sulphate. I greeted Shorty, and he was obviously as happy to see me as I was to see him. I asked how he did in Alaska over the summer. He replied, “Ok”.

After finishing the demonstration with Frank and cleaning up a bit, Shorty approached me and asked if I wanted to see his findings from Alaska. Of course I did, and happily followed him to his small trailer on the property. On entering the trailer Shorty pulled back a makeshift curtain to expose a very sturdy set of shelves, and I got a shock that nearly set me on the floor.

On the two top shelves were several clear glass containers, mostly canning jars of pint size, plus a couple smaller glasses, all but two of which were filled to the brim with pieces of raw gold, sorted roughly by size. The smallest flakes and “dust” were on the left, followed by larger flakes and “pickers” up to about pencil eraser size. Next were larger nuggets up to maybe thumbnail size, and finally a single jar with only three nuggets inside, each of which had to be at least three or four ounces each. I had read of such things in the Klondike but never dreamed of actually seeing it. Even with extensive experience in gold mining and assaying, this was more raw gold than I had ever seen at one time in my entire life!

Shorty was a MILLIONAIRE, but Shorty didn’t seem to know nor care. Like George Carmack, the man who effectively started the Klondike Gold Rush, he was into gold prospecting for the thrill of the hunt, and wealth was not a priority for him.

A couple years after this, Frank and Shorty sold their claim to a man from Connecticut who knew little about business and less about gold mining. Under his guidance the whole project just collapsed, and the claim eventually reverted back to BLM property. Frank and Shorty moved on in their separate ways, and I heard later that Shorty had gone to his reward. I never heard about Frank afterward. He always talked of going to Costa Rica, so hopefully he made it.

If ever a rich man entered Heaven, it was surely Shorty. Whether or not he could smell gold, he certainly had a heart made of the stuff!

This is an AI-generated image, not Shorty's actual gold, but it is remarkably similar to what I saw.