Don's father, Gary, bought the Red Wing in 1983. Gary worked it with Don and Don's brother for a few years. Gold was three hundred dollars an ounce. They couldn't make it pay. The major work eased off.

Don kept the property over the years that followed.

In June of 2023, Don came back to the property at sixty-three. He set up his quad, cleared the trail up the hill, and started picking around. He filmed it. He told the camera he was retired, worn out, and bored. He said nobody was going to get rich here, and it was going to cost him more in gas than he'd ever find in gold.

He has been working it for three years.

He built a ball mill out of a forty-dollar part from a scrapyard. He broke through a collapsed ore pass and stood, in January of 2025, in workings he had worked with his father and his brother forty years before. He pulled 13.14 grams of gold out of a high-grade run in March of 2026. He waited out the legal hold. On May 21, 2026, after the deed was signed over to him, he opened the main portal of the Red Wing for the first time since the 1990s.

A century before any of this, W. H. James was transporting gold from the same ground to the United States Mint at San Francisco. He did it thirteen times between April of 1926 and October of 1928. About four thousand fine ounces. He held the property for forty years. The federal patent was issued to him in 1949.

The Red Wing has been worked, off and on, since 1909.

May 21, 2026

I've opened the portal to the Red Wing Mine.

The wooden form for the new concrete portal Don is pouring at the Red Wing entry, with cap beam, cross-bracing, and plank floor in place.

Well, we finally got the legal issues sorted out here, so it's time to get started getting this thing cleaned out. Make it safe to be in there. This was a big job for that Kubota there, but he got it done. Took him about twelve hours.

So I guess my next job is to work on that portal — make it safe to walk underneath that vertical face. Get a door on there and keep people out. That's going to take time.

We finished yesterday with the tractor work, and today I've got everything cleaned out — all the old rotten timbers in here. Piece of rail there that got bent up. It had to come out anyway.

Now, this is where the work begins, really. That's the first wheelbarrow load right there. I can't quite fill it up — my back's not going to let me push a full load out of there all day. I'll have to bring my rotor hammer in and break up those bigger pieces. There's going to be a lot of that in there.

Excerpted from the video above — from The Red Wing Mine on YouTube.

The history

W. H. James located the Red Wing in 1909 and held it until the federal patent issued in 1949 — forty years. He carried thirteen bullion deposits to the U.S. Mint at San Francisco between 1926 and 1928. The page that follows runs the documents and brings the property down to Don's family in 1983.

The history →
Gary, Don's father, in the workings of the Red Wing in the 1980s, hard hat with headlamp burning, shoveling ore into the iron ore cart.
George Wheeldon's 1983 hand-drawn map of the Red Wing workings with assay values penciled along the vein.

The workings

The hillside carries several named workings — the Discovery Adit and the Lower Crosscut, the middle adit Don, his father, and his brother worked in the 1980s, the ore pass and the old stope, and the main vein cutting deeper than any of the worked levels. Don opened the portal of the Red Wing on May 21, 2026. George Wheeldon walked the property in 1983 and drew the workings by hand with the assay values penciled along the vein.

The workings →

The gold

What comes out of the rock at the Red Wing comes in three forms — visible gold in the quartz on the working face, fine gold concentrated in the pan after milling, and piles of clean flakes after a high-grade run.

The gold →
A thick band of gold running through dark quartz host rock from the Red Wing.
Gary, Don's father, at the red Huntington mill drum at the Red Wing in the 1980s, ore bin framework above.

The 1980s

Don's father, Gary, bought the Red Wing in 1983. He worked it with Don and Don's brother through the eighties, running the Huntington mill on the bench above the road and hauling ore out of the portal on rails. The family photographs from those years are on the next page.

The 1980s →
More from the channel

Three videos from three years on the ground: the breakthrough into the middle adit in January of 2025, the rotor hammer Don had to dig out of the stope after the heavy rains, and the high-grade run that put 13.14 grams in his hand.

January 18, 2025

Going back into the Red Wing mine after about 30 years

The video that runs the breakthrough. Don walks the middle adit for the first time since the 1990s. Forty years earlier he had stood there with his father and his brother. The walls have been sloughing off since. He calls it sad to see it in that condition, then keeps walking.

This is where it gets interesting. This is the way the good stuff. This is all where it started. We started right here, ready to go to work.

In the middle adit — from the video above.
February 3, 2026

Rotor hammer rescue

The heavy rains of January 2026 buried the old stope. Don's rotor hammer, the tool he used underground every day, went under tons of fresh slough. He had to cut the cord to pull it out. In the video he digs the tool out of the dirt, bags rock from the same working face above, and goes back to work.

March 26, 2026

Red Wing Mine High Grade part 2

13.14 grams of gold from one run. The largest single recovery in three years of work. Don weighs it on the scale and says he doesn't know what to do next. The video ends pointing at a three-ton slab on the working face. He says he won't be the one to bar it down.

On YouTube

Since June 1, 2023, Don has been documenting the work on a YouTube channel he calls the Red Wing Mine, after the property. By May of 2026 the channel carried eighty-seven entries: the portals, the wall rock, the ball mill, the muddy gloves, the bad days and the days that paid out. It is the only contact point for the property.

Subscribe on YouTube