LOS ANGELES -- With new doubts raised about the authenticity of a battered chest found in Death Valley, a National Park Service expert painstakingly examined its contents Thursday to determine if they were really left behind 150 years ago by a lost Gold Rush expedition.
Western Archeological and Conservation Center conservator Gretchen Voaxs began analyzing the objects -- including gold and silver coins, ceramic bowls and a flintlock pistol -- but no word was released on her findings."There's probably going to be a million questions from all of us as to what should be our next step," said Terry Baldino, supervisory ranger at Death Valley National Park's main visitors center.
Park Service officials said it's likely that scientific analysis will be necessary to verify the find, made by archaeologist Jerry Freeman of Pearblossom as he researched the possible route taken by the lost gold miners trying to escape Death Valley.
Meanwhile, one noted Death Valley authority expressed new doubts about the chest's authenticity because of a term -- "grubstake" -- used in a list of its contents purportedly written by pioneer William Robinson.
A gold seeker of the time would never have called the $52.75 left in the chest a grubstake, a concept that developed in the waning years of the Gold Rush, said Richard Lingenfelter, a research physicist at the University of California, San Diego, who in 1986 wrote a comprehensive history of Death Valley.
Merchants, not wanting to be left behind as miners left played-out gold fields in search of richer strikes, were willing to provide supplies and food, or grub, for a stake in whatever was found, Lingenfelter said. The earliest reference he has seen to the term came from the late 1850s.