(Written sometime in 1947)

(This is taken from a hand-typed document on very thin paper from "the trunk", my mother's side of the family's document storage.)

Dan H. Morris

Sherman's Shady Springs

Star Route

White Water, California

OUTLINE OF LIFE OF FRANK SABATHE

BORN: 1868

AGE TODAY: 79

As a boy in France he read of the "North American Wilderness" and dreamed of some day coming here. Next to seeing that wilderness of tall timber, towering peaks and musket-toting pioneers, his ambition was to own a wild horse. At 18, he finally got to America -- but New Orleans. That wasn't the wilderness he sought, so he went to Texas. There he got his wild horse, but he paid $5 for it and it had been wild twelve years before. He stayed in Texas, but it still wasn't the wilderness, so in 1887 he decided to go to Los Angeles.

He walked it! From 40 miles east of San Antonio, a distance of 1400 miles! With him was another French immigrant boy, here long enough to have learned the language. They followed the Southern Pacific tracks for two months, riding only three days when a cavalry troop escorted them through the territory of a rampaging Indian tribe. However, they saw only one Indian up close and he was herding cattle a few miles from Indio, Calif. Now the center of the date country but then only a couple of shacks. The Indian offered them a dollar to buy him a bottle of whiskey. Eagerly, they hiked to the store only to have the storekeeper pump out of them that the liquor was for an Indian. He told them it was illegal for Indians to have whiskey and threatened to lock them up. They wasted no time in returning the money to the Indian.

On that trip they walked across the bed of what is now the Salton Sea, which was formed by Colorado River flood waters in 1905-1907.

In Los Angeles, Sabathe worked with a survey gang in the Santa Anita Mountains; then went to San Bernardino where he worked first in a sawmill and then in a slaughterhouse, where he learned to be a cowboy. His job was to round up cattle and drive them to the slaughter pens.

While there he met a miner who had a small gold claim about 30 miles east of Twentynine Palms. He offered Sabathe a half-interest if he would help him work the mine. They loaded supplies aboard a wagon and took off for the mine in 1892.

That was the birth of the Dale District, richest goldfield in Southern California. The population of 29 Palms then was one white man and 45 Indians. Sabathe and his partner camped at a well, slowly more miners came into the territory and a small town sprung up. They named it Dale, after the first mine discovered in the territory -- the Virginia Dale, found in 1885, but only slightly worked. Sabathe's partner got a yen for Mexico and sold his share to another. He worked for awhile and got a yen for Alaska, leaving Frank with the Mine. Sabathe made enough to grubstake himself on prospecting expeditions. He filed on 14 claims, including the Supply Mine out of which more than $2,000,000 was taken and whose abandoned shaft today is 1350 feet straight down.

To work these claims, Sabathe needed supplies. He bought a wagon and a ten-horse team and began hauling from Banning 90 miles away and a ten-day round trip. Other miners asked him to haul for them and he was forced into the freight business. He added a couple of wagons and drivers and got $30 a ton hauling (today the rate is about $5).

He did that for a couple of years, never getting a chance to work his claims, then - in Banning - he met a man named Boyer from Riverside who offered to buy half of Sabathe's holdings. The deal was made for $100 a claim. They formed the Seal of Gold Mining Co., sold stock, acquired a couple of more partners and then for $100,000 bought the OK Mine. Sabathe was in charge of operations and in three years they took $500,000 worth of gold out of that mine.

By then, Sabathe was unofficial mayor of Dale. But the town was about eight miles from the mines, which were up in the hills a couple of thousand fee, and therefore not too handy. In 1898 a young engineer, Herb Ames, drifted in and told Sabathe he could pipe water from the well at Dale to a spot more centrally located in the hills. Sabathe said it couldn't be done, but he'd help all he could. Amex succeeded. Dale became Old Dale and a ghost town and New Dale was born. Meantime, the Santa Fe Railroad had run its tracks 55 miles northeast and Amboy, a section gang settlement, was formed. It was easier terrain and Sabathe blazed a wagon trail to Amboy to haul supplies. Today Amboy is the center of a huge chemical plant.

After New Dale was built -- a postoffice, a store, a doctor's office, two saloons and a call house -- Amex said they ought to have a telephone to Amboy and he could do it. Sabathe, remembering Ames' feat with the water, said he probably could. Mine owners pooled $1,500, formed a telephone company, and elected Ames president and Sabathe vice president. The Santa Fe contributed the poles; men cut them into three and Sabathe distributed them along the route. Eventually they had their trunk line, with seven phones in New Dale and always seven people who wanted to order something from Los Angeles at the same time! But it worked. Every year the stockholders held a meeting and an election but by 1906 all but Sabathe had drifted off. He was along at the meeting, elected himself president for 25 years and hasn't called another meeting since. He figures he's still president.

A man working at the OK Mine, Charlie Thomas, knew Sabathe was carrying about $18,000 worth of bullion to Amboy every two weeks. He decided it would be a worthwhile stick-up; tried to enlist the aid of another miner who said no. It became an obsession with Thomas who became convinced the other miner had talked and the whole town knew of his plans. He vowed to kill them all. There were only four guns in the town, two .45s and a rifle that were kept behind one of the bars and a .45 owned by a Joe Wagner who also worked in the OK Mine and doubled as town constable on Saturday nights. His gun was locked in the post office when he was off-duty.

Sabathe and Wagner were returning from the mine one evening; rounding a bend about 25 yards from the post office they saw about 20 resident lined up against the wall, hands in air. Thomas, the two .45s in his belt, had the rifle leveled at them. He ordered Sabathe and Wagner into line. He said the execution was ready to begin and victim No. One would be the "squeeler." As he swung the rifle down the line looking for the squeeler, Wagner jumped through the post office door - knocking it down with his shoulder - grabbed his pistol and fired a shot through the window, killing Thomas. They buried him in an unmarked grave.

In 1912 Sabathe and his partners sold their interests to another company and Sabathe went to San Francisco with his wife and three children for his first vacation since arriving in the States. But the new owners continually had trouble with their supplies. They wired and asked him if he would take their freight contract. He agreed - at $20 a ton from Amboy. He spent $12,000 for wagons and horses. In the next three years he collected $85,000 from the company. He also got a stagecoach and charged passengers $5 for a one-day trip to or from Amboy. But that was too slow for some of the mine owners. So Sabathe bought a seven-passenger, foreign made "Simplex" car for $7,000 and ran that, too, but in three hours and for $50 a head.

Then America entered the First World War. Miners drifted off; some into the services, others into one phase of war work or another. That was the beginning of the end for New Dale. After the war, the cost of labor and materials continually rose while the value of gold remained the same and so New Dale became another ghost town as one mine after another became unprofitable to operate.

During that war America had a crying need for manganese. Sabathe, too, dropped everything in the Dale District and went to Blythe taking up a couple of unworked claims on a royalty basis and mining for the metal. He poured ton after ton into the war effort on a contract that extended six months after the war. Then J.M. Nieland, owner of the California-Southern Railroad - a 55 mile line from the gypsum companies at Rice to Blythe, gave Sabathe a contract to repair the right of way.

That done, Nieland said he wanted to build a town - Ripley, about 20 miles south of Blythe. He gave Sabathe a contract to lay it out, install streets, etc. Meantime, Nieland built a $185,000 hotel. The town was built and Sabathe and his wife became managers of the hotel - and the Colorado River broke through its levees. The town was flooded, five feet of water was in the hotel lobby. Sabathe sent his family to Los Angeles, lived himself on the second floor of the hotel for 45 days traveling in and out by rowboat. When the water receded, two feet of silt remained in the hotel. "What now?" Sabathe asked Nieland. "Frank, you own a hotel," Nieland replied. Title was transferred but when Sabathe saw the tax bill, about $200 a month, he went back to Dale and prospecting. The walls of the hotel still stand and Ripley today is a thriving little community in a rich agricultural belt, fed by the All-American Canal.

It was 1927 then. Sabathe bought and sold a few claims, sank a lot of test holes and in 1935 made the strike he was looking for - the Southern Cross Mine. He acquired a couple of more partners. They sank a couple of test holes, one 160 feet. Then they began to drill for water to establish a millsite. They spent $10,000 and still found no water; decided to buy land with gravity flow for their mill. They did, 160 acres in a town called Morongo about 60 miles west of the mine. They also bought the Morongo Lodge, a vacation resort, as part of the deal.

Then the second war broke out. Gold was a valueless commodity so they did no work on the mine. Sabathe moved down to the lodge and operated that. The books showed an average of 1000 guest a month, but no income! They were all friends of his, miners, Caltech scientists, mineralogists, cowboys, and what-have-you, and "a man can't charge his friends can he?" So they sold the lodge and Sabathe moved to the ranch. For the past few years he's lived there, letting anybody's horses and cattle pasture free, and entertaining friends - but on a smaller scale than at the Lodge.

And from those friends, the scientists and the mineralogists, Sabathe learned that many of the metals that had gone into the tailings slide (the gold mine's refuse dump) are nearly as valuable as gold. Iron, copper, silver, lead and many metals first used in the second war such as tantalum and molybdonum are all present but were disregarded in the Dale District gold mines. By mining all of them and sending ore concentrated to the refinery, rather than just extracting gold, it will again be profitable to operate the Dale mines although labor and material costs are still higher than ever and the gold value is the same.

Other miners have learned that lesson, too, and already a handful have returned to the Dale District and begun blasting new roads, re-enforcing old mine shafts and generally getting ready to mine again. In the Spring Sabathe will be there, too, directing the operations of both the Southern Cross and the El Dorado - an established producer - that he and his partners bought a couple of years ago.

As for the love interest. Here's how Sabathe met his wife:

In 1902, another Frenchman had the mail contract between Amboy and Dale. His family lived in Algiers. He received a letter that his niece had taken a job as a French government clerk in Tahiti and was enroute to San Francisco to catch her ship. He had her come to Amboy for a visit. There Sabathe met her. It wasn't quite love at first sight but it was enough to keep her from going to Tahiti. Instead, she went only to San Francisco. They corresponded, then she moved to Riverside to live with Sabathe's partner, Boyer. Mrs. Boyer taught her English, she taught Mrs. Boyer French and music. For eight months Sabathe rode horseback every chance he could to Banning - a day and a half ride - where he caught the train to Riverside. Meantime he'd had a great stone house built at the Supply Mine. They were married in 1904 and that was the bride's first home. Their first child, Dale, was born in 1905, the first child born in the Dale District.