LEARNING FROM A LEGEND
Visits to Lucky Strike Mine Produce Great Memories and Material
Kop (Leonard) Kopcinsky was a legend in the Oregon rockhounding community. He owned the Blue Mountain Jasper Mine in SE Oregon plus the Valley View and Lucky Strike Thunderegg Mines in Central Oregon. A war injury from World War II left him with poor balance and using a cane, which didn’t slow him down a bit. I am not sure where he got his strong work ethic or stubbornness, but those attributes seem a necessary part of living a miner’s life. And I was lucky enough to meet him several times.
He moved to Mitchell, Oregon, in the early 1960s with his wife, Tessie. Already a rockhound, he soon went into mining full time. Kop discovered and filed a claim on the Blue Mountain Jasper Mine in 1967. This beautiful orbicular jasper has since become famous as one of the finest jaspers from Oregon.
The Valley View Mine that Kop owned was closed to public digging in the 1980s. It produces thundereggs with a flying saucer-shaped interior rather than the butterfly or four-pointed star interior common in thundereggs. The production here is mostly banded agate with plumes, while other patterns are rare. The finest plume ever to come out of the Valley View Mine was taken back to the nearby Lucky Strike Mine to be saved as a specimen. Nobody told Kop that an exceptional plume was in the pile of thundereggs, and he sold it to visiting rockhounds that same day. I sure hope they appreciated it!
The Lucky Strike Mine was opened in 1958, and Kop purchased it in 1963. Today, it is one of only two commercial thunderegg mines open for public digging in Oregon and the only fee digging mine with fine quality moss agate and occasional plumes.
In the early days at the mine, the cars of rockhounds had to be winched up the hill. Today,
most cars can drive right into the parking area next to a cabin, where piles of thundereggs are available for those who don’t want to dig their own.
The Lucky Strike Mine’s thundereggs were discovered when a spring washed the overburden off, exposing the eggs. That spring now provides water for the cabin at the mine, but the excess water coming out of the hillside also creates mud at times. According to one story, once a Caterpillar bulldozer got stuck in a mud hole, and it took four trucks to extract it. Another time, a backhoe sunk, and it took a month of digging to get it out.
STORIES APLENTY
Those aren’t the only stories affiliated with the Lucky Strike Mine. At one time, Kop was in a prolonged legal battle with the Forest Service over the Valley View and Lucky Strike mines. The Forest Service thought that he was mining beyond the scope of his original plan of operations for the claims. It was also believed that he didn’t need a cabin at the Valley View when he had a better cabin nearby at the Lucky Strike, and in addition, it was thought an endangered Canadian Lynx might be further endangered by
the mine, even though there were no reports of a Canadian Lynx seen in that part of the forest.
The Forest Service locked the gates to the mines, and Kop and the government locked into a prolonged legal battle. After a lot of wrangling, it was agreed that Kop could keep the Valley View cabin for the rest of his life, the Lynx wouldn’t be harmed, and the gates to the mine were reopened.
As a side note: when Kop died, it was found that he had not done the reclamation work required for the Lucky Strike claim to stay valid, so in order to pay for the reclamation work, the Blue Mountain Jasper claim was sold to West Coast Mining.
MEMORABLE INTRODUCTION
It was in the late 1980s when I first met Kop up at the Lucky Strike. I am sure he never remembered our meeting, but I sure do, and my kids will never forget it. I had gone to the mine with my sister, Janet, and my kids, Sarah and Evan, who at the time were nine and five, respectively. I wanted to go somewhere the kids would be guaranteed to find thundereggs, and the Lucky Strike is just the place.
We traveled Highway 26 into the beautiful Ochoco National Forest, and near the summit between Prineville and Mitchell, we turned off and drove northwest for 11 miles to reach the mine. The mine is marked on Forest Service maps, and the entrance is a well-maintained gravel road. Just be sure to have a map or a GPS to navigate.
Upon our arrival, we got out of the car and were met by this very old man (my age today) with a .44 magnum pistol on his hip. The kids looked at him with bugged-out eyes while he looked at them with adoration. He never paid a lick of attention to my sister or me after that point. He just doted on the kids.
He asked if they wanted a ride up to the digging area in his old WW2 Willy’s
Jeep, and they jumped right in. My sister and I walked behind. Fortunately, it is just 100 yards up the hill to the diggings.
At that time, the open-pit mine had a wall on the south, and on the hill side was a 40-foot tall face. You could walk up to the wall and see dozens of thundereggs embedded in the rhyolite, but you couldn’t dig them out as that would have undercut the face. The rock face was bulldozed starting at the top, with benches cut one after another to the bottom. The excavated rock containing thundereggs was bulldozed into many small piles, which were easy to dig through.
In fact, it was really easy for my kids to dig because Kop did all the digging for them. Needless to say, the kids had better production numbers for the day than my sister and me. We left with a five-gallon bucket of eggs that produced some great moss agates and some great memories for all of us. Among the other interesting stories associated with Kop and his claims is the connection with other rockhounds. Another lifelong rockhound, and recently widowed Cindy, began prospecting near the Lucky Strike Mine in the 1980s. In 1989, she filed claims in this gem-rich area that produces jasper and opal plus agate containing tubes, banding, moss, and plumes. Filing new claims in this area is now difficult, because it is eligible for wilderness designation, which makes cutting a road to a new claim near impossible, so commercial mining is impractical.
For years, Kop and Tessie had the best water supply in the area, so whenever they were near the claim, Cindy and her kids began spending a lot of time at the Lucky Strike, becoming fast friends with the couple. After Tessie’s death in 1993, Cindy began to help Kop
more and more with his claims. After some years, a romance started between the two rockhounds of varying generations, and eventually, they were married.
LEARNING FROM A LEGEND
On another trip to Lucky Strike in 2015, I was joined by my cousin Denny, a flintknapper looking for clean material. I was looking for anything pretty. Just as in the past, upon our arrival, out of the cabin came an older Kop, now in his 90s, but still mining. We had a nice talk, bought some already dug eggs, and then went up to the nearby Whistler Springs public digging area to see what we could find. We got more material from Kop than we were able to dig up at Whistler. I will always regret not getting pictures of the kids on that first trip or of my cousin and myself with Kop on that last meeting with him.
In 2017, I made my way up to the mine only to find the gate locked during the middle of summer rock hunting season. I later found out the mine was temporarily closed because Kop had died, and his ashes were spread up at the mines.
Another two years passed, and in 2019, I once again headed to the mine. This time, I spent a lot of time with Cindy Kopcinsky, who carries on the traditions set forth by her late husband, Kop. This time, I wanted to dig into the face of the mine and extract eggs from the rhyolite. I like to get material directly from the rock it was born in, and during that visit to the Lucky Strike, it was possible.
TRUSTING THE EXPERTS
The face of the pit is now cut with benches that are accessible using steps Cindy hand digs to the spot she is working on a particular day. From my perspective, the wall face didn’t have any eggs visibly exposed. However, Cindy would say, “Start working this area,” and sure enough, a ball of thunderegg would begin to appear. After digging where she instructed, I’d have thundereggs in my bucket, and after a while, I’d once again be facing a plain wall of rock, and nowhere promising to start. Cindy would once again suggest a spot to dig, and soon another egg would be dropping into my bucket.
During this same dig, the next morning, we drove to the Valley View Mine, where Cindy was dismantling the old falling-down cabin. I was able to help her take down the old outhouse. The cabin has to be completely removed as part of the reclamation of the mine. Once the structures are gone, the bond covering the reclamation will be released.
The day we were at the mine, multiple thundereggs were exposed in the face of the rock, but I did not try to dig any, although I was tempted. The surrounding rock is much harder to dig, and much more effort is needed than at Lucky Strike, to extract the thundereggs. Instead, I found some nice banded material in the mine tailings, and Cindy gave me a small boulder comprising hundreds of thundereggs less than an inch in diameter each, all cemented into one big rock.
I bid farewell to Cindy and drove down the mountain to the little town of Mitchell. Here I meet Janis Smith, Cindy’s daughter who runs their rock shop and museum on the North side of the highway at the edge of downtown. The Lucky Strike Mine opens in May after the snow clears and is open through September, and the rock shop and museum are open year-round, so there are plenty of opportunities for rockhounds to get rough material all year.
I still have rough and slabs from my various visits to the mine, and from the slabs I’ve cut I can say it produced nice moss agates with purple or green moss from which I have cut cabs and used in jewelry. I also have eggs that I have not yet cut, but they are easy to identify as being from the Lucky Strike Mine, since thundereggs from this mine have a unique greenish color.
The Lucky Strike mine reportedly produces an average of 200 pounds of thundereggs per square yard. The digging is not difficult. In fact, one day, an 11-year old dug 80 pounds in four hours. While not all eggs produce good quality agate, a very good percentage do produce beautiful mosses and other patterns. It is estimated that there is a 200-year reserve of thundereggs still waiting to come out at the current rate of mining.
IF YOU GO
For more information about Lucky Strike Mine, call 541-362-1915, email 2016thundereggs@ gmail.com, or find them on Facebook by searching for Lucky Strike Mine.