Jesse Ewing Mine

Almost anyone can tell you where to look for the Lost Ewing Mine, but no one knows where it is! All you have to do is go to Jesse Ewing Canyon on the Green River in Brown's Hole and locate Ewing's old cabin. Actually there are three cabins, and his grave is near one of them. There's also a 1,500' tunnel he dug, but that's not his lost mine, only a low grade copper working. Jesse Ewing's lost mine is somewhere close by, but it's still lost.

In the spring of 1868 Ewing rode a raft down the Green River into Brown's Hole, long before it became an outlaw hideout. He stopped to prospect and discovered an outcrop of copper ore in a steep canyon that later became Jesse Ewing Canyon. He was a powerful man, kin to the old-time mountain men. One who knew him well said that he never saw him wear a coat in a country where temperatures were often 40° below zero! Ewing thrived on hard work and lost no time driving a long tunnel into the solid rock canyon side.

But Ewing was not a friendly man, and avoided company. A grizzly bear had clawed his face, leaving him "the ugliest man in the mountains!" A miner, who knew him for years, called Ewing "an odd freak of humanity who cared little for his own life and even less for others!" Ewing had one habit that bothered other miners and prospectors. He liked to take in new mining partners, work them till they fell, and then kill them!

Ewing would talk someone into becoming his partner, always someone with money to invest in his mine, and preferably one who was a hard worker. But when his new partner's money was gone, Ewing would pick an argument and drive him off, and if they wouldn't leave he'd kill them. He shot several partners, knifed another and even poisoned one.

But one who Ewing never got the best of was Pick Murdock, the full-blooded Indian, who discovered the Dyer Mine and was sometimes a partner of Caleb Rhoades of Lost Rhoades Mine fame. He was also, incidentally, the author's great-uncle. Ewing gave Murdock some pieces of nearly pure copper ore heavily laced with gold to entice him, but Murdock knew what had happened to Ewing's other partners and declined the honor. Instead, he sent a young outlaw named Duncan to help him.

Duncan was different than Ewing was used to, and when he tried to run him off, Duncan grabbed Ewing's rifle and blew his head off with it. Duncan was already wanted by the law so he fled the country, taking Ewing's common-law wife with him. Other miners buried Ewing on a little hill near his cabin.

After Ewing's death, Pick Murdock showed mining men around Vernal the chunk of gold ore Ewing had given him, where it caused great excitement. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, almost pure copper shot through and edged with lacy gold. Some claimed later that the ore actually came from the Dyer Mine which Murdock had discovered, but the ores were entirely different. To settle the argument, Murdock let an assayer test both ores. While ore from the Dyer Mine was rich, assaying several hundred dollars in copper, Ewing's chunck of ore went $5,000 to the ton, mostly in gold!

Pick Murdock was a knowledgeable mining man, having made discoveries at Park City, on the Ute Reservation and with Caleb Rhoades. He certainly didn't believe Ewing's ore came from the same formation as that at the Dyer Mine, for he spent much of the rest of his life looking for Ewing's Mine. But still people will tell you it shouldn't be hard to find, just go up Jesse Ewing Canyon and...--Some Dreams Die, pg. 116