Lost dutchman mine – One-Eleven Books2

The Mystery of the Lost Mine created by Gertrude Chandler Warner

The Aldens are visiting an RV park in Arizona. Grandfather has to help a friend build a cabin. The kids are free to make friends and explore when grandfather is busy.

There is an old prospector, who the children meet not long after arriving at the campground. He always gets coffee on credit at the campground restaurant. He goes up into the mountains to look for gold and maybe even the Lost Dutchmans Mine. The Aldens loan him some money and soon make a new friend out of him.

There are some interesting people in the campground, such at newly weds that seem to have too much money for newlyweds. There is another guy who dresses like a purdy cowboy, that everyone local can see through. He thinks you must have sunlight to make fire with two sticks.

Some things start happening. Some of the people up and leave, and even disappear, but the whole story soon comes out. Maybe that lost mine really was found.

What I liked

I grew up in gold mining territory, in Georgia. In fact, there was a chapter of the LDMA at the end of the dirt road I grew up on. The LDMA stands for The Lost Dutchmans Mining Association. Every year groups of people in RVs descend on the road, clouding dust everywhere, to pan for gold in the creek and lake.

This is a long way of saying this Lost Dutchman business is real, although, the surviving organizations are just people who like to pan gold, not the people who originally went mining.