Man followed vision of a gold mine underneath Rogers

One of the weirder events in Rogers was a vision of a huge gold mine located there. The story starts with Henry Kruse who moved to Rogers in 1883. He bought an 80-acre apple farm and gave each of his children 10 acres.

This land would today border Oak to Olrich Streets and Fifth to Eighth Streets. This area encompasses all of the Heritage High School complex, with a little bit in a residential area.

One of his sons, William H. Kruse, would later move to Le Sueur, Minn., and then to Minneapolis. In Minneapolis, he became a successful businessman. It was said that Mr. William Kruse had the ability to foresee the future, which was shown to him in visions.

It is said that, at first he thought maybe he was going crazy. But he couldn’t get rid of these visions, and eventually started to write them down. Most of the events he wrote down came to fruition. He seemed to be able to predict the wheat market accurately.

In 1899, he started to have a vision that there was an immense amount of wealth hidden on his old family farm in Rogers. In his vision, he saw the gold buried in the shade of an apple tree. He had written to his family, and they could not find an apple tree on the property. Finally, a tree was located in the underbrush. In 1902 Mr. Kruse came to Rogers to look for the gold.

He, with his nephew R. Scriber and son-in-law L. M. Proctor started to dig a hole, working in the evening hours. In his dream, he saw that the hole was to be 7 feet deep. After reaching the required depth of 7 feet, to make the work easier, he sloped the hole to the center. After this, he drove a steel drill down into the ground hoping to see some gold. Not finding anything, he drilled down deeper until the drill got stuck in the rock. At that time, he left, not to return until a later date.

Mr. Kruse continued to have visions and three years later, in August 1905, he returned to start digging again. A white tent was set up in the middle of the field. Mr. Kruse and J. P. Huber started digging again, looking for the gold in Mr. Kruse’s vision. They cleared out and continued to dig where the old shaft was located. But this time they staked out an area of 15 to 16 square feet, leaving the original shaft right in the middle. At that point they hired a couple of men to start digging out the area. Mr. Kruse believed that this would lay bare all the gold ore in the mine.

After that area had been dug out to 3 ½ feet, Mr. Kruse had a new vision that the hole was totally too small. Strange things got a lot stranger. He now determined the hole was to be 65 feet in width from corner to corner.

It became necessary to employ more men, according to his dream. So, he took out an ad reading: “Wanted at the Kruse mines: 10 men, 3 men with teams and

scrapers. Will pay: For 8 hours work, $1.25 for man, $2.50 for man and team.” Several days later there were people who could be seen working at the site.

A little while later the size of the hole was increased to gigantic proportions, finally settling on an area of 125 square feet. The removal of seven feet of earth was to lay bare a layer of gold, according to the vision.

At this time, according to the vision, they needed to have an opening day. He also increased his workforce to 40 men to be paid $2, and 10 teams of horse and men for $4 for six hours’ work. A band was hired for the opening. Ten ladies were hired to serve lunch to the laborers and musicians. The event was planned for Oct. 18, 1905. It was to start in downtown Rogers and go to the mine. The Rogers Cornet band was hired and played “Silver Threads among the Gold” and “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” The men with shovels and teams of horses followed the band to the mine. Lunch was served and by the afternoon the men were back to work.

Once they had almost reached the 7 foot level, Kruse had a vision that on the third day of digging at midnight, W. H. Kruse, J. P. Huber and L. M. Proctor (a local Rogers merchant and son-in-law of Kruse) were to go to the mine and finish digging to the required depth and fill two bags with gold ore.

The bags were then sent off to be tested by assayers, but they found little gold. Kruse had another vision saying the assayers needed to try a different method. Kruse started to do his own tests, which the assayers did not go along with. He stated that there was $425 of gold in a ton of rock, and later said $2,500 to $5,000. But there is no source that supported this claim.

The main headquarters for the mining operation was located at the L. M. Proctor Company store in downtown Rogers. They were supposed to dig a shaft 125 feet down to get the gold, but no one knows how far they actually dug down. As mining operations continued, several buildings were built on the mining site, including two buildings that were about sixty feet tall, but these were destroyed by a tornado before they were ever completed.

Mining at the site continued off and on until around 1912. But no gold of any amount was ever found. Also, in 1909, L. M. Proctor’s business went bankrupt. It was believed to be from his support of Kruse’s visions. Kruse never borrowed money from anyone for this project of his. It is said if he found gold, he was going to share it with all the citizens of Rogers.

So today the question is, did they look under the wrong apple tree? Are there still billions in gold buried below Heritage High School? We will probably never know.

(Submitted photo) These are the two 60-foot-tall buildings that Mr. Kruse built at his mine. They were both destroyed by a tornado.