Bill Hickman's Phonograph Claim
Only two of the Hickman mining properties appear to have been patented, and thus be shown on early 1900's Bingham mining maps. Bill Hickman participated in staking the first claim in Utah, the Jordan, on September 17, 1863. The Jordan claim has its own interesting story, which can be explored by clicking here. Little is known about the other claim on the Tooele County side of the Oquirrh Mountains, shown on the map below, but it can be visited with relative ease by driving from Tooele to the top of West Mountain (at the bottom of this map, elevation 9068), then hiking from there. Click here for access to this map in its regional setting.
The phonograph, from which this claim takes its name, was invented by Thomas A. Edison in 1877. Bill Hickman died in Wyoming in 1883, so the discovery was likely made between those two dates, and most likely in 1877 or 1878. Currently all that is known about the Phonograph, aside from its location, is the following brief mention in an old mining journal:
"Barkley and Jasperson are sinking [a shaft] on the Phonograph, on Clipper hill, and getting some fine galena ore. It is an old discovery, located twenty years ago by the notorious Bill Hickman. He was attracted to it by finding a boulder of galena in the gulch below, that weighed nearly a ton."
--Inter-Mountain Mining Review, Oct 29 1896 p.5
