Angels Gold Mining Company

[Matthew]

Alrighty for the last decade-ish I have been researching, excavating, and exploring the mines above Altadena. I have contributed to a few topics on our forum around the Angels Gold Mining Company aka Monitor Consolidated Lode Claims but I’d like to “consolidate” all of that information for future reference, since my friends and I have made some cool new discoveries in recent years. I studied mineral survey #4237 which has 21 claims on it with a total of 7 tunnels and 24 shafts, and tried to find the locations of all 31 workings. Since the survey is hand drawn and was conducted in 1904 without the use of aircraft, the accuracy of the specific locations of the workings would be vague requiring more information and lots of sketchy bushwhacking to locate everything. Over the years, 6 tunnels have been found in the rough surveyed area but aren’t fully lined up with the claim area. At this current moment in time, it seems that the total tunnels in the surveyed area may be around 10, which is crazy!

You as the reader are shocked to learn that there was this much mining activity done east and north east of Echo Mountain. Maybe you don’t even know about the 19+ mines in Las Flores Canyon, or even the Dawn Mine workings in Millard. I welcome you to my biggest and longest lasting research project of the mining history of Altadena and its utter lack of documentation.

My first goal was to see if there were any more records of the survey so I reached out to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and got a more “high res” copy. Using the Public Land Survey System, (PLSS) I was able to roughly align the PDF of the survey onto a map and georeferenced it into a GEOTIFF. The exact locations of the tunnels and shafts still did not align with the tunnels that actually exist and after a few more bushwhacking trips with friends I dragged along, I couldn’t find the tunnels from the survey. The shafts on the other hand would be maybe impossible to find due to the crumbling nature of the front range of our mountains. After a few more visits to the ridge and the canyon to search in the spots where adits should have been, I came up with nothing.

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I decided to change up my georeferencing strategy a bit and reference real life structures like the alpine tavern and the mt. lowe railway. This proved to be extra challenging even though it seemed to be more accurate, mostly because the railway and the alpine tavern are so far away that the accuracy of those points would stretch the middle of the image due to it being hand drawn and would become inaccurate. I ended up cropping the survey in half to get two separate surveys which I then georeferenced separately. This worked okay but I wasn’t confident in locations of the tunnels with the terrain.

Over the next few years, I put this project on hold and began working on other projects in the mountains. Once in a while I’d look online to see if anyone has found anything new but there was no activity. I randomly got in touch with a guy named Nick Grothe who runs Forgotten Mining History on instagram and has a youtube channel. He happened to be just a year younger than me and too was inspired by Hugh Blanchard’s work on lagoldmines.com. He reached out asking if I knew anything about the Eagle Lutch Mine west of Las Flores, which I had not. Hiram Reid wrote about it in his History of Pasadena book but made little mention of it or it’s details. Nick and I spent a day together where I gave him a tour of the mines in Las Flores Canyon, followed by a search for the Eagle Lutch Mine. We found the portal location pretty fast mostly by just going off of Reid’s account of it being 1 canyon west of Las Flores. After a short excavation, the tunnel opened up to a maybe 20 foot passageway. This was the last major discovery in the Altadena area since I found Tunnel #5 in Las Flores Canyon!

4 years later after this damn Eaton Fire, I’m back on the grind! During the last few years, I’ve been visiting the Huntington Library to do research on my other various history projects and recently learned about the Solano Reeve Collection which contains survey notes of various places in the Los Angeles area. One of the books, field book 403, contained notes from the original surveyors of Mineral Survey #4237, which obviously was of big interest to me. When I got my hands on the book, I quickly found what I was looking for and was met with lots of math and numbers.

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I flipped through the whole book and found some other survey notes but at the very end of the book, I had found THE GOLD!!!! This found some hand drawn surveys that showed the SW corner of 4237 and its claims, lined up with a few other claims that I hadn’t heard of before. The map showed echo mountain railway and it’s various trails that appeared to be the ones already found by Paul Ayers and other historians. What was super interesting about this map was that it was from 1904 and very well scaled to the real environment, AND it was hand drawn in a small notebook! I took some very good photos of the pages so I could eventually overlay them in QGIS and use it as the main reference for georeferencing later.

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When I got home, I immediately got to work in QGIS and got a new georeference that made the most sense. Referencing a hand drawn survey in a notebook made the whole survey and it’s centerlines a whole 1500 ft off of the PLSS lines from the modern era. The new reference shows the mines in the SW corner to line up with the Gooseberry Motorway, which makes sense since that particular section of the road was a wagon road built for mining according to Hiram Reid. The mine locations in the northern sections of the map feel promising too and overall I’m feeling hopeful for this project! Sadly I will have to wait a few more years until the burn area opens and some vegetation grows back well enough to scramble on. If you look closely, you'll see how insane this is!
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Below is the survey aligned with the PLSS boundaries. Notice how the Mt. Lowe railway curve doesn't line up with the survey.

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Below is the process of georeferencing the survey with the new guides from the field book.
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Below is a list updated as of today, 8/21/2026 of every mine found in the survey. This list doesn’t even count the known mines in Pine Canyon which are the exploratory tunnel, Surprise Mine, and the Scorpion Mine.

• Fremont Mine (Carrie)

This is the current most accurately mapped locations of all adits, shafts, and crosscuts of the Angels Gold Mining Company. Thank you for reading!

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[Girl Hiker]

excellent detective work!

[Matthew]

excellent detective work!

Thank you! Once the closed forest opens, I'll be digging around in all these spots

[Gene]

Excellent detective work!

What a break to see the actual surveyor's notebook. Those sketches and the lettering are beautiful.

I took surveying many years ago. Our instructor, Mr Sands, a licensed surveyor, was very clear that notes had to be written carefully, completely and legibly, not my strong suit. I still have that notebook as evidence I can write neatly.

[dima]

Cool stuff. Can you share the qgis file?

[Matthew]

Excellent detective work!

What a break to see the actual surveyor's notebook. Those sketches and the lettering are beautiful.

I took surveying many years ago. Our instructor, Mr Sands, a licensed surveyor, was very clear that notes had to be written carefully, completely and legibly, not my strong suit. I still have that notebook as evidence I can write neatly.

I flipped through a ton of other notebooks that had other survey notes over the next few days and found similar legibility. I did find a few other sketches, even earlier ones too from the late 1800s! Here are a few:

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Here are some cool things from a book on surveying the Soledad canyon mines!

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I could make a billion new topics on here talking about all the other cool things i found, but I’ll probably make one called “Huntington Collection” and post all the maps and physical stuff that hasn’t been seen on the internet but what this forum will definitely find interesting. I checked out a ton of original will thrall negatives of the mountains as well as glass negatives and his freakin CAMERA.

[Matthew]

Cool stuff. Can you share the qgis file?

Here is a google drive link to download some the qgis file and the non georeferenced files so you can do some homework and get the same result hopefully!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

[dima]

Neat, thanks! Do you think there's anything to find based on this? Where would you go look? I vaguely recall deciding that it was all gone or maybe never there to begin with. How much of this was a scam? It's this, right?

[Matthew]

Neat, thanks! Do you think there's anything to find based on this? Where would you go look? I vaguely recall deciding that it was all gone or maybe never there to begin with. How much of this was a scam? It's this, right?

Well the survey was made, mines were dug, and mines do exist. The surveyors took notes and completed a survey of the mining claims and it looks like the workings were not that big. The Fremont Mine (also mistakenly called the carrie) is the only mine from the survey that has been found, at least it's real location closely matches the survey. On top of that, there's the "pine tree" and the "summit" mines which are in a cluster on the same ridge but don't look to be directly matching the survey. Scorpion mine and Surprise mine were both dug directly into veins so there was definitely gold present but maybe not enough.

I do think that the company was a scam but I do believe mining did take place. The fact that the "carrie" and "edith" existed in 1893, 11 years before the scam stuff is to be noted. Below, I've directly quoted History of Pasadena by Hiram Reid.

An outcrop of the same vein occurs in the west wall of Pine canyon, which lies between Eaton and Rubio canyons; and the "Carrie Mine" was there being developed by its owners, E. V. Carson and Jesse Dickey, when I visited it September 30, and again December 1, 1893. Their first tunnel starts into the face of- the mountain some 50 or 60 feet below the mineral outcrop and extends inward 100 feet on a level, running due north. At about 50 feet from the entrance it passes through the fissure vein, and at the inner end it strikes another vein less rich than the first, though still deemed worth working — but here a caving down occurred, and work at that point had to be stopped for the present. At the junction with the first vein side drifts or tunnels were worked both eastward and westward, the west one dipping downward and yielding "pay rock" of the kinds called in miners' parlance, "oxide," "sulphide," "honey-comb," and "sugar quartz." Besides the "Carrie" mine, the same parties had staked the "Pine Tree" mine, adjoining it on the east ; the "Edith " mine on the west; the "Summit," a deposit of lead carbonate gold-bearing rock near the top of this mineral ridge; and the "Surprise," a twelve-inch vein of gold-bearing peroxide quartz several hundred feet lower down, and in the east wall of Pine canyon, all the others being in the west wall. The following assays were made and duly certified by Wade & Wade, assayers, of Los Angeles :
July 26, 1893 — Ore from the "Carrie "mine, per ton, $89.50 $3.85 " " " " " 249.07 12.28
July 13, 1893 — Ore from the " Edith " mine, " 75-45 $1.92
Besides these results from professional assayers, Mr. Dickey had made numerous tests for his own satisfaction, by the method which miners call "horning out" — that is, reducing the ore to a fine powder in an iron mortar, then separating the gold by using a horn spoon for a washer, and weighing it in delicate pocket scales that tip the beam even to grains and pennyweights, or "the small dust in the balance."

The "Carrie," the "Edith," and the "Pine Tree" mines lie about 3,000 feet above sea level. June 22, 1894, ^ corporation was formed called the " Loris Gold Mining Company," to operate these Pine Canyon mines under a patent process for reducing the ores and extracting the precious metal in some quicker and cheaper way than by the old stamp-mill process. The inventor of this patent was Geo. W. McGee of Chicago ; and of the new company, the Star said :

"It is formed with Messrs. Ed. Kennedy, M. McCament, J. V. and Eugene Carson, J. H. Dickey (all of this city), A. W. Myers of Ishpeming, Mich. ; Newell W. Bloss of New York City, and Geo. W. McGee of Chicago, as incorporators. All these gentlemen except Mr. McGee, are now here and have thoroughly examined the property in Pine canyon which the}^ have bought for the purpose above set forth. Thej- will order mill machinery and engine at once, and prosecute the development of the mines and the milling of the ore vigorously, having plenty of capital at their command."

The company was named "Loris," from Mr. Kennedy's little daughter, about six years' old, he being the largest stockholder, and was organized by electing Ed. Kennedy, president; N. W. Bloss, vice-president ; J. O. McCamant, secretary, and San Gabriel Valley Bank, treasurer. A good pack trail was made from the mines down to the wagon road ; a band of burros secured; a mill erected, with ample ore-deck at top; machinery put in; a forty horse-power oil-burning steam engine set in place to drive the mill ; and M. G. Burns, a miner of twelve years' experience in the Black Hills, engaged to superintend the works. The capital by this time invested was said to be about $12,000.

October 23, 1894, I visited this mill. It was then expected to steam up and commence regular work in two weeks. About 100 assays had been made there at the mill camp, I was told, and had averaged $40 per ton. There were fifty tons of ore ready for the hoppers. But the season had been unusually dry, and the water supply from the canyon, being small at best, was growing more scant day by day ; and up to December 15, 1894, the mill was ready for work but lying idle because there was not water enough at command for the necessary uses of the mid and camp. \_Later. — September, 1895, I am informed that the Loris mining works have been abandoned and the mill moved away.]

After the foregoing digression, I quote again from my report of January, 1894:

"The same fissure vein of mineral-bearing quartz crops out also on Echo Mountain, only a few rods northward from the hotel reservoir ; and the east bridle road to Mount Lowe crosses a slide of debris from this outcrop which I named "Temptation Slide," because for twenty years past it has semi-occasionally tempted some old miner or prospector to follow it up and dig awhile ; and thus it has been "discovered," "staked," abandoned, and rediscovered several times over. It is now staked and claimed by John E. Bennett of Los Angeles, and named the " Professor Lowe Mine ;" but no tunnel or shaft has been worked into it. From this cropping it dips both northward into the body of the mountain and southwest down into Las Flores Canyon. The vein varies from two and one-half to four feet thick.

[Matthew]

I know I've made a lot of posts but I forget to add important information. On the opposite page from the big echo mountain sketch, there were 2 more sketches. 1 of them shows 3 more claims just south of Monitor and Grace.

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You can clearly see a "Jefferson" claim that also VERY CLEARLY shows the location of what I presume to be the stamp mill used for the mines. I want to post this here but to be completely honest, I haven't georeferenced these next 2 sketches so I want to do some homework and report back!

[dima]

Yeah, at least the Carrie was dug before this, by different people. So cool to have these old maps