The Los Burros Mining District Explorer
Manchester, the Mines, and the Families of California’s South Coast
Gold came late to the Santa Lucias and left fast. For eight years there was a town called Manchester in these mountains, grown up overnight below Willey Cruikshank’s Last Chance strike of 1887 — hotels, stores, a school, saloons — and gone again by 1897, burned and grown over. This is an attempt to map that district honestly: where the mines were, who found and worked them, how the Plasketts, Cruikshanks, Krenkels, and Melvilles were woven through it, and — carefully — what can and can’t still be found.
How to read this map
Nothing here is surveyed. Every point is approximate — a working placeholder pending georeferencing of the 1921 district map and USGS Bulletin 735-J. Circles show roughly how uncertain each position is.
- Settlement / townsite
- Mine
- Unresolved reference point
- Uncertainty radius (bigger = less sure)
14 more places (the post office, cemetery, mail trail, creeks and most mines) have no trusted coordinate yet and are listed but not pinned.
Manchester
The “Capitol” of the district — and a genuine location puzzle. Where it stood, what the coordinates really mean, and what survives.
The Mines 22
A filterable catalog from the Last Chance and the Plaskett Ridge claims to the Queen Hattie and Goodrich — owners, minerals, and status.
Families & People 19
The Plasketts, Cruikshanks, Krenkels, and Melvilles — who discovered, worked, and lived at each claim.
The Network
An interactive graph of the district’s people, mines, and places — every link drawn from a cited source.
Timeline
From the Chinese placer miners of Salmon Creek to the 1991 marker and the 2026 field visit.
Field Expedition — 2026
The family’s modern search for Manchester and the arrastra, told plainly — including what wasn’t found.
Research Notes
Open questions, conflicting coordinates, and the discrepancies we’re still working through — shown, not hidden.