Old-Time Miners Quite Out Of Step With Modern Life -- Pair `Don't Depend On No One' As They Work The Rusty Bucket

JACKSONVILLE, Ore. - Jackson County District Judge Ray White could only shake his head at the end of the non-jury trial last month.

"The problem is, Mr. Linebaugh, to live this kind of lifestyle, you were born about 100 years too late," the judge told defendant Henry "Hank" Linebaugh.

Then he found Linebaugh, 48, and his brother, Art "Rusty Bucket" Linebaugh, 61, guilty of failing to obtain a permit for a building at their Rusty Bucket gold mine and cabin six miles southwest of Jacksonville.

The world had found them out of step again.

A VISIT TO THE 1800S

To enter the hard-rock mining world of the Linebaughs is to step into the 1800s, when self-reliant, rough-edged gold miners toiled in the southern Oregon mountains.

"We don't depend on no one," Hank Linebaugh stressed. "We're just about the last of the hard-rock gold miners around here."

Their home, a mining cabin, is a two-story ramshackle dwelling; their workplace is a 300-foot pit dug with pick and shovel into the side of the mountain overlooking Sailor's Gulch.

But that doesn't mean they don't take pride in their accomplishments.

Consider the sophisticated solar system Hank built to provide electricity to power lights in the mine and cabin. Unfortunately, his ingenuity brought on Judge White's guilty verdict.

"I just read some solar books and used some of their ideas, came up with a few of my own," he said with a shrug.

The structure contains 24 batteries to store the sun's energy, which is converted into electricity by rooftop photoelectric cells.

"The system will go four days with no sun, then the batteries get real low," he added. "After that it gets questionable."

Hank, who arrived in the Jacksonville area as a baby, was educated through the fifth grade. Rusty Bucket, born in Riverside, Calif., can't read or write, never having attended school.

"We get by," Hank said. "The encyclopedia says a bumble bee ain't supposed to fly but it does. We get by."

Although they have taken some liberties with the life led by historic miners - the solar system and a battery-powered cellular telephone to keep in touch with the world - the brothers work much as early miners did when gold was first discovered in the gravel of Jackson Creek in December 1851.

Rusty Bucket and Ed Coffman, a miner now in his 90s residing in a local rest home, worked the mine for many years.

Now the brothers toil in the mountain where the hot summer days are left at the entrance. Inside, it's a cool 50 degrees.

"She stays that way even during the winter," Hank said. "She don't change much."

THE GLINT OF GOLD

The brothers are chasing quartz veins, hoping to find one containing the glint of gold.

"We're always looking for quartz - that's what we're after," Rusty Bucket said with a grin.

"I just love to come back here and dig," he said, picking up a hammer and chisel to demonstrate his technique.

After shoveling a load of ore into a wheelbarrow, he will push it outside where it will be sluiced for heavier gold.

"WE GET BY"

"We find a few specks in the pan," said Hank, estimating they bring in almost $400 a month in gold. "We get by."

Much of their hard cash is derived from selling their gold to tourists in Jacksonville. Rusty Bucket exchanges his hardhat for an old cloth hat, then hikes into Jacksonville to sell the gold.

"He likes to tell each (buyer) a story," Hank said. "Sometimes he'll even bring them back here so they can go through the cave."

Rusty Bucket also looks forward to grocery shopping, a chore Hank doesn't much like.

"They're nice people, always friendly with a big smile," observed Sherm Olsrud, owner of Sherm's Thunderbird Market in Medford, where Rusty Bucket shopped recently.

"They've been trading with us for 25 years, but they tend to their own business. They never give us any trouble.

The mining brothers are as rare as the artifacts in their cabin. Take the wood stove, circa 1936, on which Rusty Bucket cooks. But he usually fires up a small gas stove during hot summer days.

"Meat and spuds, that's what we like," he said.

A dust-covered Sky Champion radio from the late 1930s rests on a table whose top is buried by ancient lamps and mining equipment.

Several fishing rods hang from the cabin's rafters. But the dust indicates the brothers haven't wet a line in years.

A half-dozen curs Hank describes as Australian dingo dogs slink furtively around the cabin. Meet Loppy, Curly Fuzz, Screwy Louie, Ashes and Mouth.

MARRIAGE DIDN'T PAN OUT

The tail sticking out from under an old blue car seat sitting just outside the front door belongs to Was, the sixth in the canine crew.

There are no women in the brothers' Spartan lives. The younger miner was married once but the union didn't pan out.

"I was working as a tree surgeon at the time and she couldn't take the worry," he explained.

"I ain't never been married and never will be," Rusty Bucket declared with a chuckle.

The brothers say they would prefer living in an era they understand, one in which precious metal is dug from the earth.

"We like it up here," Hank said. "We don't want to bother nobody."

And they bristle at the thought of having to dismantle the structure containing the solar panels and batteries or meet the requirements necessary for a permit.

"We're going to try to appeal," Linebaugh said.

"If I lose this, we have to go back to the old kerosene lamp," he lamented.