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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