FOOTSTEPS OF THE FORTY-NINERS BATTERED WOODEN TRUNK OPENS NEW CHAPTER IN DISCOVERER'S LIFE.Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer PEARBLOSSOM - Nineteen months ago, Jerry Freeman became famous. Newspapers around the world wrote about him. He appeared live on ``Good Morning America Good Morning America is a weekday morning news show that is broadcast on the ABC television network. The show was adapted from The Morning Exchange, a morning show created by and airing on the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, and was launched nationally as .'' Less than three weeks later, he was infamous. It was all about a battered wooden trunk Freeman found in a cave high on the borders of Death Valley. Inside were 150-year-old gold and silver coins - and a weathered letter bearing the name of a forty-niner who died trying to find California gold California Gold were an American soccer team, founded in 1998. The team was a member of the United Soccer Leagues Premier Development League (PDL), the fourth tier of the American Soccer Pyramid, until 2006, when the team left the league and the franchise was terminated. fields. But within weeks the National Park Service pronounced the chest bogus: Its experts said a bowl, photographs, and glue found in it were all post- 1849. More than 1 1/2 years later, Freeman still believes the trunk is authentic, left by gold seeker William Robinson William Robinson, or Will Robinson or Bill Robinson or other nicknames, may refer to:
``I will go to my grave believing that was William Robinson's,'' Freeman said. Now stricken with cancer, Freeman says he is writing a book about the trunk and the back-country treks that led up to it - including two furtive fur·tive adj. 1. Characterized by stealth; surreptitious. 2. Expressive of hidden motives or purposes; shifty. See Synonyms at secret. excursions across Nevada's Yucca Mountain Yucca Mountain, mountain in the SW Nevada desert about 100 mi (161 km) northwest of Las Vegas. It is the proposed site of a Dept. of Energy (DOE) repository for up to 77,000 metric tons of nuclear waste (including commercial and defense spent fuel and high-level nuclear test ra purported Area 51 - on his quest to follow the trail of the lost forty- niners who were the first white people to see Death Valley. ``Basically, this has turned into a race,'' Freeman said of writing his book, talking the other day as he sat in his Pearblossom surrounded by Death Valley and Area 51 books, papers and his word processor. ``I'm hoping I have the strength and time to complete it.'' A former high school substitute teacher, Freeman, 58, became fascinated with the lost forty-niners after a 1989 backpacking exped Badwater in Death Valley to the top of Mount Whitney. Horrendously lost, seeking a shortcut (1) In Windows, a shortcut is an icon that points to a program or data file. Shortcuts can be placed on the desktop or stored in other folders, and double clicking a shortcut is the same as double clicking the original file. to the California gold fields, the forty-niners had blundered into North America's lowest, hottest and driest desert, then spent 32 days staggering out. Several died, Robinson. In 1996, on the first part of the forty-niners' trial, Freeman led a group that included his two grown daughters 300 miles from Utah into Death Valley. Four months later, Freeman returned by himself for an unauthorized trek through an area that his group had to detour: the Nevada nuclear test site and the top secret Area 51. Freeman was looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. an inscription ``1849'' said to have been left in a canyon wall by the lost gold seekers. He spent seven days but couldn't find the marking. In November 1998, Freeman returned to Death Valley to scout the route for another trek with the same companions, this time following the lost gold seekers' path out of Death Valley. On a rocky barren ridge some four miles away and 3,000 feet above Highway 190, Freeman found part of an ox shoe and a skinning knife. Then in a cave, raised above the ground on a weathered piece of wood, he saw a trunk. ``I thought it was a box of mining tools,'' Freeman said. He pried pried 1 v. Past tense and past participle of pry1. open the lid. Covered by a shawl and a layer of dust, he found dozens of objects, including old bowls, books, a flintlock flintlock Ignition system for firearms developed in the early 16th century. It superseded the matchlock and the wheel lock and remained in use until the mid-19th century. The most successful version, the true flintlock, was invented in France in the 17th century. pistol, and dozens of gold and silver coins, plus the letter, signed ``William.'' Freeman returned a week later with his brother Doyle, who found inside the trunk, under the shawl, a list bearing the name William Robinson. On Christmas Eve, Freeman led his hiking companions to the cave. They removed the trunk and carried it down the mountain to the highway, then drove it to his brother's house. Thirteen days later, after concluding their trek, the group held a Palmdale news conference, and Freeman the same day turned the trunk over to the National Park Service. Over the next two weeks, the media frenzy began to build, as reporters from as far as England were attracted by Freeman's estimate that the trunk's contents could be worth $500,000. From that came news reports calling the trunk a treasure chest, ``filled'' with gold and silver. Then it all ended. Three weeks after Freeman turned over the trunk, the Park Service declared it had found 20th century glues on objects, that a bowl was manufactured no earlier than 1914, and that two photos were tintypes Tintypes is a musical revue conceived by Mary Kyte with Mel Marvin and Gary Pearle. With its time frame set between the turn of the 20th century and the onset of World War I, this chamber piece with a cast of five provides a musical history lesson focusing on an , from a process patented in 1856. Suspicion fell on Freeman and his group as the hoaxers. ``We got pounded,'' Freeman said. The Park Service mounted an exhibit at Death Valley National Park's Furnace Creek visitor center for three months of the trunk and its contents. The sign over the exhibit read: ``All That Glitters All That Glitters (shortened from "All that glitters is not gold", a famous misquotation from The Merchant of Venice, the original line being ) is the name of a number of different works:
While the Park Service is sure the trunk was not left by a lost forty- niner, the mystery remains of who hauled it up a barren mountain and left it, Death Valley's museum curator Blair Davenport says. ``We're not sure who put it there or why,'' she said. At the end of last year, Freeman returned for another solo try at another obsession: finding the ``1849'' inscription inside the forbidden government land in Nevada. This time on a wall of Nye Canyon he found the marking, which he says is the only physical evidence the forty-niners were ever in Nevada. He also found a giant sandstone arch, 10 stories tall or so, scarred by what he thinks is a missile or cannon shell, not far from where the government wants to create a nuclear waste disposal site. Freeman said he was almost caught about 1 or 2 a.m. one morning, eight or nine days into his journey and 50 miles or so from the highway where his brother had dropped him off. He had stopped for a rest when a lens popped out of his glasses. To find it, he briefly turned on a flashlight, and the light among the stunted sagebrush sagebrush, name for several species of Artemisia, deciduous shrubs of the family Asteraceae (aster family), particularly abundant in arid regions of W North America. The common sagebrush (A. must have been spotted by someone near a tall tower in the center of Yucca Flats. A truck headed toward him, then stopped maybe a half-mile away. Freeman hid. ``I'm sitting there wondering what I was going to say. I was going to be arrested.'' But in the darkness the driver couldn't find him. Freeman crept away before dawn. That was his last trek, Freeman said. His prostate cancer prostate cancer, cancer originating in the prostate gland. Prostate cancer is the leading malignancy in men in the United States and is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death in men. , thought cured, has metastasized against his spinal cord spinal cord, the part of the nervous system occupying the hollow interior (vertebral canal) of the series of vertebrae that form the spinal column, technically known as the vertebral column. , Freeman said. He got out of Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley Hospital two weeks ago after treatment for pneumonia. The manuscript he is writing is about 70 percent finished. If he gets too weak to type, he has a video camera set up to capture his dictation. ``That's all I ever wanted to do is follow the path of the forty-niners,'' Freeman said. ``Following the path of the forty-niners has turned into an absolutely fantastic story. I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if I have the time to finish it.'' This is the text of the letter found by Jerry Freeman in November 1998 in the Panamint Mountains, purportedly left by a member of a lost band of forty-niners trying to escape Death Valley. My dear Edwin Knowed knowed v. Chiefly Southern & Upper Southern U.S. A past tense and past participle of know. now we should have gone arowned but am thankful not to be sickwith the agir cause others are worse ofen me. My last ox falled in his checks afor morn and I caint carry down the steep. The locket was your mahs. The boles and the wagon shrod were the preachers wife. I toted her youngen. If you shouldove already seen my Lydia, tell her my heart beats Discography Track listing # Title 1. I'll Be Over You 3:46 2. Tokyo 3:14 3. Hey (I've Been Feeling Kind Of Lonely) 3:06 4. Only Wanna Be With You 3:54 5. Play It For The Girls 3:30 6. Blue 3:12 7. Purest Delight 3:02 8. with hers. Kindly leave me a half stake and my short gun. Ifen I don't raturn by end of fifty I wont never come. Lord be precious to your soul. William Propity manafest of William Robinson second Day of the Lords year 1850 1 grub stake $52.75 1 short gun 1 looken glass 1 small bole 1 large bole 1 metal one 1 shrod 1 hym book 1 law book 1 water 1 injun basket CAPTION(S): 5 photos Photo: (1 -- color AV edition only) Jerry Freeman believes a trunk he found in Death Valley is authentic, left there in 1850 by gold seeker William Robinson. (2 -- 3 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) Jerry Freeman stands next to Papoose Lake, reportedly the last place the forty-niners camped together before splitting up. (4 -- 5 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) Clockwise, from top: Jennifer Freeman Jennifer Nicole Freeman (born October 20, 1985) is an American actress. She was born in Los Angeles, California. Career Freeman is best known for playing the role of Claire Kyle in the ABC sitcom My Wife and Kids. , Allan Smith, Jerry Freeman, Holly Freeman and Clay Campbell. This etching is said to be one of seven thought to still exist from an ill-fated Death Valley wagon train wagon train, in U.S. history, a group of covered wagons used to convey people and supplies to the West before the coming of the railroad. The wagon replaced the pack, or horse, train in land commerce as soon as proper roads had been built. of 1849. Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer |
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