Beschreibung:

2pp. Autograph Letter Signed. To his former boss in the Hedges mining camp, discussing his future prospects. Kerr had two propositions, one from a mining operation in Mexico, the other in Australia though “most of my chances of later drop out at the last minute”, and he seemed to be angling for a better offer from Adsit. Apparently responding to his former boss’ inquiry, Kerr wrote, “The Machine shops here are not sending out much Mining Machinery. Quite a number of mining men leaving here for Alaska and some for South Africa. I suppose you will soon be leaving there…” The mining camp of Hedges was once the largest town at the eastern edge of San Diego County, having 400 mostly Hispanic inhabitants, drawn to mines originally discovered by Mexican prospectors, worked by Hispanic miners, and owned by Eastern and Southwestern capitalists.. One of these was H.B. Adsit, a Denver hotel owner and mining entrepreneur who had been running a mining operation in the Joshua Tree area of San Bernardino before briefly becoming superintendent at the mining camp first called Gold Rock, and later, Hedges, in an isolated mountainous desert canyon. Like Kerr, Adsit did not remain long at Hedges, where the operations were later alleged in a lawsuit to be grossly mismanaged, causing fires, cave-ins and the loss of valuable ore. By 1907, when the area was incorporated in the new Imperial County, operations which yielded nothing had been shut down and Hedges became a ghost town.