L. W. Currey, Inc.

WRIGHT, JAMES WILLIAM ABERT. The cement hunters lost gold mine of the High Sierra by James W. A. Wright. Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1960. 21 cm, pp. [i-ii] [i-iv] v-vi [vii-viii] ix-xi [xii] [1] 2-52 [53: colophon] [54: blank], 7 illustrations, publisher's pictorial boards with brown cloth shelf back, spine panel stamped in gold. First edition. 200 copies printed by J. Wilson McKenney. J. W. A. Wright moved to California in 1868 and settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the late 1870s he began spending more and more of his time on trips to the Sierra and the new boom camps of California, Nevada, and Arizona. Within about four years, he had explored a great part of the High Sierra south of Yosemite Valley and in 1882 he made a detailed map of the Kings-Kern region which was published in W. W. Elliot's History of Fresno County ... (San Francisco, Cal.: Wallace W. Elliott & Co., Publishers, 106 Leidesdorff Street, 1881) and A Guide to the Grand and Sublime Scenery of the Sierra Nevada ... (San Francisco: Prepared and Published by W. W. Elliott & Co. Lithographers and Engravers, 1883). Wright's account of the legendary "lost cement mine" first appeared as part of a serial, "The Owens River War and the Cement Hunters," in the San Francisco Daily Evening Post, November 8-December 13, 1879. The mine, consisting of rich, gold-bearing "cement" or lava, was purported to have been discovered in 1857 by a member of an emigrant party who died before he could return to the site. Wright described later efforts to locate the lode which by all accounts was near Mammoth Mountain. A somewhat different version of the gold discovery is found in Mark Twain's Roughing It (Hartford, Conn: American Publishing Company, 1872), pages [259]-264. For a novel utilizing this legend see Charles Herman Bruno Klette, The Lost Mine of Mono (New York: Cochrane Publishing Company, 1909). Wright's story of the cement hunters is preceded by a description of the High Sierra in the Mammoth region and a brief account of his mountain ascents in the area in the summer of 1879. Edited by Richard E. Lingenfelter with textual notes and biographical sketch of Wright. The 1984 edition adds additional notes, three maps, Mark Twain's account of the Cement Mine from Roughing It (1872), and Nina Kelley's illustrations. A fine copy in unprinted mylar dust jacket as issued. (#179388).