WORLD’S DEAREST CAFE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5029, 20 September 1926, Page 1

WORLD’S DEAREST CAFE

IN THE WILDS OF CALIFORNIA. SCENE OF THE GOLD RUSH. The world's most expensive restaurant is to be found not in London, Paris, or New York, but out in the wilds of California,, among a hastily run-up scattering of plank and galvanised iron huts, the scene of a gold rush in the hinterland of the village, of Kramer (writes Bassett Digby,’ F.R.G.S., in the. “Daily Express”). Crude paintings on the outside walls announce that makeshift but filling meals are procurable for five; dollars (£1) upwards,, and that water costs two bits (lOd) a cup, All food and water have to make, a long journey through the desert. . Bootleggers were among the first arrivals, and Were soon selling illicit still rye whisky at the same price as water ! The camp would be a remarkable site for the rough, bearded, hard-bit-ten old miners of ’49. No red flannel shirts, no oxen-drawn waggons and littered packs df picturesque impedimenta. The modem gold-rushers we.ar wrist watches and silk shirts. They have come across the Mojave Desert in expensive motor-cars. The great majority of the first-comers are. men from varied stations in life, the only thing they have, in common being a complete ignorance of the elements of mining, a touching trust in th.e lead given by qxperts, and a haunting desire to grab a seemingly worthless piece o>f jvaste land and sell it for a large, sum. The new field, which has been named Gold Dust, covers about 40 square miles, and is amout 70 miles north of San Bernardino. About £7OOO worth of gold was mined there 20 yeiars ago by aj poor prospector named Bercham, who then moved on to investigate a still more promising vein that proved to be the Yellow Aster, and made millions of dollars for him. The. culminating incident sounds like a story by O. Henry. An old stager turned an interested eye upon another abandoned shaft in the district and found three holes bored 20 years ago for a, charge of dynamite that had never been exploded. He bought the derelict claim, plugged the holes, with dynamite, and pressed the switch that ignited it. The ore that came clattering down was worth £2O a ton.