Clipper Mountain Wilderness, California, courtesy of Wikipedia.
In 1894, railroad worker Tom Scofield was surveying near the Clipper Mountains northwest of Essex, California, when he decided to do a little exploring. About three miles up the mountain, he came across an old abandoned stone house that appeared to have been built years earlier. Continuing along, he hiked about nine more miles before coming upon a spring. There, he followed a trail that led over the hill, where he came upon a rock atop the peak that he described as big as a house. The large boulder was split in two, and the trail continued straight through it. Beyond the passageway, he stumbled into what looked like an old Spanish camp.
Tom found himself standing on a high shelf surrounded by high walls. Through other openings in the rock walls, he could see the “shelf” sat high above the ground, about 500 feet up. The split rock was the only way in or out of the little flat. Scattered about the long-deserted camp, Scofield found rusty mining tools, pots, pans, fragments of a bedroll, and an old iron Dutch oven.
On the shelf was also a mine shaft, where he found seven burrow skeletons. Next to the shaft was a mine dump containing numerous stones still rich in gold quartz. When he finished exploring the campsite, he realized it was too late to return to his base camp. Cold and hungry, he bedded down on the shelf, planning to leave at daybreak. In the morning, as he left, he tripped over the Dutch oven and tumbled onto a mound of pure gold nuggets. Shocked, Tom gathered as many nuggets as possible and returned to his base camp. From there, he caught a train to Los Angeles, where he spent the next two months in a drunken frenzy, gambling and living the high life. Scofield found himself sober and completely broke after squandering all the money he had received from selling the gold nuggets. It would be two years before he could return to the Clipper Mountains to search for the “Dutch Oven Mine.” Try as he might, everything had changed, and he could not retrace his steps. Disillusioned, he finally gave up the search.
Mojave Desert, California.
When Scofield was 84, Walter H. Miller and George Haight interviewed him in 1936. Living in an abandoned store in the Mojave Desert outside Danby, California, Scofield was at first hesitant to tell his story. After being hounded for four decades by treasure hunters seeking more information about the mine, he grew tired of the story, though he kept insisting it was true.
Today, the Dutch Oven Mine remains lost, or at least no one has ever claimed to have found it. The Clipper Mountains are located in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California. The range is found just South of Interstate 40 and the Clipper Valley, between the freeway and National Old Trails Highway, northwest of the small community of Essex. The range is home to at least three springs and the Tom Reed Mine.
© Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.
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