Joe Rogan Experience #1918 - John from The Boneyard Alaska

1. 0:00 – 0:12

   Intro

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. NANarrator0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays)

2. 0:12 – 1:09

   Meeting John Reeves & the unlikely path from Florida to Alaska

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Welcome aboard, Jon.

   2. JRJohn Reeves0:13

      Thank you, sir.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      (clears throat) Very nice to meet you, man. I've been, uh, admiring your Instagram page and all the social media stuff forever and it's crazy and perplexing, and so I couldn't wait to get you in here and see how the hell did you acquire this magical spot that you have in Alaska?

   4. JRJohn Reeves0:28

      I'd have to give you some context.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:30

      Okay.

   6. JRJohn Reeves0:31

      And, um, I grew up on an Indian mound in North Florida, to give you an idea of-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:37

      An Indian mound?

   8. JRJohn Reeves0:38

      Yeah, my parents moved this family down from Ohio and bought nine acres on the St. Johns River in 1962. That's where I grew up, and it was on top of an Indian mound. We didn't know it at the time, so I was always out digging in the mound, looking for pottery and was always captivated by looking for treasure, and I did that as a kid and then, uh, did a lot of surfing and stuff like that, as you might think, in Florida and got to be pretty good at swimming.

3. 1:09 – 4:23

   College swimming, Bear Bryant & the moment Alaska became the plan

   1. JRJohn Reeves1:09

      Ended up in high school, uh, setting the American record in the 50-yard freestyle, and there was a fellow, an assistant coach at the University of Florida named Eddie Reese. You might recognize his name. He's the head coach at the University of Texas right here. Three-time Olympic coach, widely regarded now as the greatest swim coach of all time. I gave him a call before we came over here and just to say hello. We were in and out quick, but he, uh, rec- recruited me to Florida and I got recruited at a couple other colleges because I was a pretty quick swimmer. University of Alabama, I met, uh, Bear Bryant. The swim coach took me by the f- practice field and introduced me to him and he said, uh, "Can you catch a football? You should be a football player. You're too big to be a swimmer." And by the back... That was a couple of hundred pounds ago, by the way, I should mention.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:03

      (laughs)

   3. JRJohn Reeves2:04

      (laughs) And, uh, he says, "Can you catch a football?" I said, "Yeah, I think so." He said, "Hey Joe, Joe, come over here. Throw this guy a pass." It was Joe Namath.

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:14

      Wow.

   5. JRJohn Reeves2:16

      He says, "Go long." I said... I start running down the field. Threw me a ball and I said, "You gotta catch this, you gotta catch this." And I caught it. He says, "Throw it back," and I did. And then, uh, went to the swimming pool and met all the swimmers and all that kinda stuff and then I got recruited by Florida, uh, Coach Eddie Reese and, uh, decided I wanna go to Florida. That was... Seemed like a lot more fun. I went to Florida and the, uh, first year I was there, I was, uh, All-American Swimmer and we... I got seventh place at West Point in the NCAAs. The next year, my coach... The NCAAs were in Aus- we were in, uh, Knoxville, Tennessee. He says, um, Coach says, "You don't win this, you're, I'm gonna send you to Alaska." "Alaska? What's that?" Never even thought about Alaska. I got second place, so, "Okay, I'm going to Alaska."

   6. JRJoe Rogan3:19

      (laughs)

   7. JRJohn Reeves3:19

      I didn't win it. Now here, here I am, full scholarship, great family. I had five sisters growing up and, uh, doing real good. I said, "Fuck it, I only got se- (laughs) I got second place. I'm going to Alaska." So I dropped outta college.

   8. JRJoe Rogan3:38

      So just because he said that?

   9. JRJohn Reeves3:41

      Yeah. Yeah, I- I- I was-

   10. JRJoe Rogan3:43

       But obviously, he's probably fucking around, right?

   11. JRJohn Reeves3:46

       Yeah, he was fucking around, but the thing is, I was such a shitty student, if I didn't drop out, I was gonna flunk out, and I talked to the registrar there, by the name of Wendy Smallwood, who took care of all the athletes coming in. She said, "You... Man, you... (laughs) If you don't get out of here, you're gonna flunk out." So I said, "Well, if I drop out, can I come back my junior year?" And she goes, "Oh, yeah. You can do that, but if you flunk out, no." And I said, "Okay, I think I will," and then I saw a movie called Jeremiah Johnson. I said, "You know what? I wanna be a mountain man."

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:21

       (laughs)

4. 4:23 – 6:35

   Hitchhiking north with a shotgun—and getting arrested as a suspected sniper

   1. JRJohn Reeves4:23

      And then after that, I went down to the registrar's office, took the dropout sheet, wrote "gone fishing" on it as my excuse-

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:31

      (laughs)

   3. JRJohn Reeves4:32

      ... hung it on my college door. I had played two, two-card gut poker game the night before. I had, you know, 50 bucks. I got enough. Put that, and the next morning, six o'clock in the morning, taped that to my door and out the door I went with a backpack, a shotgun and, and that's about all I had. Hitchhiked, got down I-75 and started-

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:52

      Somebody picked you up with a shotgun?

   5. JRJohn Reeves4:54

      It was in a case.

   6. JRJoe Rogan4:55

      Oh. (laughs)

   7. JRJohn Reeves4:56

      Got me in trouble in Seattle. I got arrested for being the I-5 sniper.

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:00

      Whoa.

   9. JRJohn Reeves5:00

      And that was, you know...

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:02

       Sniper with a shotgun?

   11. JRJohn Reeves5:04

       Well, they had, they had to look at the shotgun to find out I wasn't the sniper 'cause the sniper used a rifle.

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:09

       Yeah.

   13. JRJohn Reeves5:10

       And I just walked into that. I mean, it was like, I made a phone call at a gas station and pretty soon all the g- nearby where the sniper was shooting the day before, so all these cops showed up. It's the only time I've been arrested by 60 police officers and I was... He goes, "Okay, killer, where's the gun?" I go, "What are you talking about?" I forgot where I put the shotgun. So I'm wandering around the gas station looking for it. Found it tucked between the water cooler and a wall where I'd stopped to take a drink of water before all the action started. So they, "Yeah, that's a shotgun." They took me back to the University of Seattle. I told them I had been sleeping in the, in the brush or, you know, there was a, a board there that said, "Writers, uh, needed to Alaska. Must be mechanically inkind." So I called that number. I said, "Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah, I'm a, I'm a mechanic." (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan6:02

       (laughs)

   15. JRJohn Reeves6:05

       No idea. But I said, "What do you got?" And he goes, "A Volkswagen van." Well, luckily, that was the only vehicle I'd ever turned a wrench on, 'cause earlier, like two years earlier or three years earlier, I went on a surfing safari from Florida to California in a Volkswagen van. We had to drop the engine out in Tempe, Arizona. It's only four b- four bolts, but we had a spare engine 'cause we figured that might happen. So anyways, I, I got a hold of the, the guy,

5. 6:35 – 8:29

   Early Alaska hustle: odd jobs, returning to school, then leaving for good

   1. JRJohn Reeves6:35

      ro- rode up to, to Alaska with him and got about six jobs 'cause one thing I couldn't do as a swimmer is you're always working out, you know, swimming six hours a day for six years and never made any money. I got up there and I had like part-time job swim coach, working as a film editor from the University of Alaska. Some just different bullshit jobs that I could make money, man. I'm making money. I like this. And so I came back after that, Joe, and I went back to college and I mentioned, I think, that I was a shitty student. I didn't get any better my junior year. (laughs)

   2. JRJoe Rogan7:18

      (laughs)

   3. JRJohn Reeves7:18

      So junior year, I go, "I'm done." I went to the NCAAs in Long Beach, didn't do very well. And knew I was gonna go. They had the swim banquet at the end of the year and the coach, head coach told me... By now Ra- uh, Eddie Reese had moved on to another college. I think he went to Auburn. He looked at our team and he said, "Um, I'm gonna go places. I'm gonna, instead of being a assistant coach, I'm gonna be a head coach." And then he ended up at Texas where he's been an Olympic coach three times, countless national championships. Just a good guy. And, you know, I know you love sports. He's the winningest sport- or winningest coach in swimming history. If you ever get a chance to meet that guy, he's awesome. And so I went back. The coach said, uh, at the banquet, "You've been elected captain for your- the senior year." I said, "I ain't doing it. I'm going to Alaska. I'm out of here, man." So off I went, went back to Alaska and I've been there since, uh...

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:27

      What made you want to go back?

6. 8:29 – 14:34

   Gold dreams, the pipeline era, and getting rich too fast

   1. JRJohn Reeves8:29

      Just Alaska's a big country, man. Big country and, uh, it just spacious. Just I wanted to be a gold miner too and I'd done some gold panning up there and, "I'm gonna go be a gold miner." Well, I got there in '74 and I got a job up there as a teamster. It was right before the pipeline. Started hauling freight as a teamster and put my money into a little gold mining operation on a creek that some guy sold me. He said, "There's a lot of gold on this creek." There wasn't shit on that creek, but he got my money. And so went out there and did, did our best for the summer and ended up going broke mining. And I said, "Well, I didn't do it right." So ended up getting a job running air freight, working prior to the pipeline. Then the pipeline started getting going and a buddy of mine who's a diver at the University of Florida, he came up to Alaska and, uh, he got on as a air freight driver for CF Air Freight, Consolidated Freightways. I was a teamster for him and he was driving a truck for, um, the terminal manager who owned the truck for the air freight division. And they said, "That's a conflict interest. You need to sell the truck to somebody else. Let them hire a company to do it." So he said, "Do you guys want to buy this truck, this business?" And, "How much?" "10,000 bucks." We had nothing. We went to every bank in town. Now you guys are, what, 20 s- 20-somethings, 24, you got no collateral. You want to buy a $10,000 truck. Yeah, but there's gonna be a business associated with it. Last bank we went to is, uh, was the First National Bank and the guy standing at the counter heard us talking to the manager and he goes, uh, "Hey, Bi-" Bill was the name of the manager at the bank. He goes, "Hey, Bill, I'll back their play." And we looked at the guy, he looked familiar 'cause we had delivered some windshields to him. He was a windshield guy. He had his junkyard and spare parts and stuff like that. So he co-signed a note. I knew him as well as I know you right now. And pretty soon the manager of the air freight company called us in. He says, "Boys, your life's about to change." And we said, "What's that mean?" He goes, "We just got the contract to handle all the air freight for the Alyeska Pipeline." We said, "What's the, what's the Alyeska Pipeline?" "Well, the big pipeline they're gonna be hauling, they're building up here." "Okay. What's that mean to us?" He says, "That means you're gonna get rich. Your first delivery's sitting over at Reed Tool." "What is it?" "Drill bits." "How many? H- h- how much?" "10,000 pounds." You gotta remember we're getting paid by the pound to deliver air freight. Generally speaking, a minimum piece of freight, less than 50 pounds was like $5.40 a pound or, or a delivery. We made 700 bucks or something in that, in minutes for them to drive a forklift up, unload the pallet and haul it off. And I looked at my partner, Ken, I said, "Man, we're gonna do good."And within a short amount of time, within a year and a half, we handled all the air freight north of the Alaska Range. We're bringing in 747 Flying Tigers into Anchorage every night, three of them solid freight. Trans- trans-ship the freight from the plane to a flatbed truck, get 10 or 12 trucks every morning before 8:00, take it over to the North Star terminals where it was unloaded, and we weren't allowed to touch it because those guys were a different union and we'd just drink coffee, and then they'd sign our bill of ladings and we'd be out of there every morning by about, uh, before the coffee even got cold with about 30, 40 grand worth of revenue. Now you give that to a couple of young guys that had never had money in Alaska during a pipeline, that's a recipe for disaster and boy, did we do. (laughs)

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:04

      What did you do? (laughs)

   3. JRJohn Reeves13:05

      Boy, did we go through it. You know, it was crazy. We'd, we'd walk into... A buddy of mine had a restaurant named Jack O'Brien, they called him Ivory Jacks up there in Fairbanks. Good man. And we'd go in and go... There'd be 200 people in that restaurant and I didn't know the guy very well, but we lived in the same area out in the woods nearby his restaurant. We'd go there on occasion. I'd say, "Hey, Jack. Dinner's on me tonight for everybody in here and drinks." He went, "Really?" I said, "Yeah, really." At the end of the night, it was like 40 grand. Boom. I'm telling you. All of a sudden, I had a little money. Didn't know any better and we spent it and we had fun and we built a pipeline. A lot of, a lot of stuff happened during that pipeline that people don't even realize. That thing was only supposed to cost $800 million to build. It cost $9 billion.

   4. JRJoe Rogan14:04

      (laughs) .

   5. JRJohn Reeves14:06

      It's... It seems like the companies that were building at this... They call them the Seven Sisters. You know, all the big oil companies were grouped together and the operating company was called Alyeska Pipeline. And it was like somebody flew over Alaska and said, "Let's drop $9 billion on these guys and see what they do with it." It was totally unbelievable.

   6. JRJoe Rogan14:32

      Okay, so you got all this money.

7. 14:34 – 22:00

   From boom-and-bust to building a mining-and-land empire

   1. JRJohn Reeves14:34

      Yeah. Got all this money and then at the end of the pipeline, told my partner, "You want to buy this company from me, or you want me to buy it from you? We'll flip a coin, come up with a fair price." Flipped the coin, he won, he bought me out and I said okay. Now I had a little money, went to work drilling for uranium for Exxon and Chevron up in the Seward Peninsula for a company called Resource Associates and was just a guy hauling a drill rig around. And from there, I started getting more interested in the mining end of things and keep in mind, I'm still a young guy, I'm not married yet and, um, we'd go to Costa Rica. I bought a farm down there, decided I'd be a coffee farmer. Wasn't worth a shit at that either. I had some lemon trees growing and the first deal I made, I sold 500 lemons for three bucks. I said, "I don't think I'm gonna make money not farming." So I go back to Alaska and I protected my... The little wealth I had, I was able to protect by going to Costa Rica and this... Costa Rica is named Costa Rica because of its beauty, not because it's got a lot of treasure. But when you have conquistadors going by going, "Let's call this place Costa Rica." These murderous guys going totally... And the Incas and the Aztecs can attest to this, they were there for its treasure. And so I got back to Alaska, started getting serious. My wife's name is Ramona, we got married when I was 28 and we have five kids of our own. You met the youngest out there, Elora and Drew is my CEO and her, her husband. And her part- her, uh, sister, you know, uh, just older than her, they own a company called Gold Daughters. And my wife and I bought a... an old dredge after I'd gone... I went... decided to go mining for somebody else as an equipment operator. So I went up and I drove a loader, 7-12s, and was able to get paid in gold and that would help get me through Costa Rica and the gold... price of gold when I started was 250 bucks an ounce and when I ended, it was 800 bucks an ounce and I said, "Oh, this is gl- this is glorious." So I was making money gold mining and learned a lot about gold mining and I learned a lot about how to do it and I learned a lot about how not to do it. And so after that, I decided, well, I got to get into something else and I was driving back to town and I was... had to stop, had been drinking some beers and I had not had a beer all summer and through the, through the, uh, trees, I see these big metal... big metal pipes sticking out of the ground. It was the fall time, so I walked back there and it's a gold dredge. Are you familiar with what a gold dredge looks like?

   2. JRJoe Rogan17:26

      The machine?

   3. JRJohn Reeves17:27

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan17:27

      Yeah.

   5. JRJohn Reeves17:28

      It's a big, huge floating barge with a digging ladder and a tailing stacker and a trommel. This one was about... It's a six cubic foot dredge, meaning each bucket would hold six cubic feet of dirt. And while I was there, some other people drove in, they walked in and that was... I'd never seen one. I didn't even know it was there just outside of town and these people were going on it and I said, "Man, this, this would be a cool tourist attraction." So I found out who owned it and I got a hold of the guys that owned it and I said, "Hey, you guys want to buy... uh, sell that dredge?" And they said, "Sure, we'll sell it." We were gonna turn, turn it into a tourist attraction, but we bought some, uh, leases in a... in a place called Prudhoe Bay.... oh, okay. You guys don't, you guys don't wanna be in tourism anymore." He, they had some of the best leases in Prudhoe Bay where the oil was coming from. So I bought it, we bought it, moved a bunkhouse over there to it, turned it into a really nice tourist attraction. It's ... And then I said, you know, Carnival Cruise Lines owned a company called Holland America West tours. They came up and said, "Hey, you're..." I was in my 40s. And they say, uh, "You're a pretty young guy. We don't think you should ever have to work again." (laughs) I said, "I've been thinking the same fucking thing." So they bought it from us. Okay, now I'm out of tourism, and I wanna go mining. And I got to know the owners of a company called Alaska Gold Company, who prior to that was called Fairbanks Exploration Company, and the parent company to that was called United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company. So I was the next guy in line. It was a privately owned company all that time. And, um, at the, at the time I bought that company, I became the largest private landowner in Alaska with 10,000 acres of patented land with proven reserves close to 800,000 ounces, and gold was low. These guys were tired of it. They'd run it from 1925 until I bought it and took out over eight million ounces. Uh, I'm gonna say over eight million, but records indicate a little bit different. And in the process of that, I went down to Utah and got all their archive material, which included the, all the notes and the correspondence files and exploration files and stratigraphic files and the researches, all the, all the paperwork they had in Boston because Boston is where USSR&M was headquartered. So I had kind of a, an advantage of in the gold mining business because now I have 10,000 acres of land, a lot of it already mined out by the dredges, but the dredges only took what they could make at $20 an ounce. And when they stopped, it was $35 an ounce. And I didn't check today, but I think it's close to $1,800 an ounce, and they only mined what was good at that time. It's like if you imagine a, a chicken. You got the, the white meat, which is where all the pay was, and then you got your drumsticks and your wings on the margins, and this, that's the kinda stuff that was left, and it wasn't worth mining back when I bought the company, but it is now. So, now we have some really good properties and the exploration files that cover the entire state of Alaska. And Drew out there, he's got hard rock claims in Valdez that we picked a file out of the exploration files and identified an area that no one even knew about except our, our company engineers who died decades ago. Um, we're ... Our consultants are all dead. All these, all these, all these reports that we read were written in the '20s and '30s and '40s. The ... They're all gone, and they weren't trying to promote mining. They were trying to find gold. So if they say there's gold here, there's gold there.

   6. JRJoe Rogan21:36

      Okay.

   7. JRJohn Reeves21:38

      And that's what, that's what we're doing now. We're a mining company, but now we've morphed into a land management company because we- we've got a half a dozen mines that are on different pieces of our ground, mining, and we just manage the land, make sure that, you know, we got legitimate people mining.

   8. JRJoe Rogan21:58

      Okay, so this is how you get to the land.

   9. JRJohn Reeves22:00

      This is how-

8. 22:00 – 23:35

   The first mammoth tusks: how the Boneyard discovery began

   1. JRJoe Rogan22:00

      Now how do you get these bones? How does this all start?

   2. JRJohn Reeves22:03

      Well, I'll get into that.

   3. JRJoe Rogan22:04

      Okay.

   4. JRJohn Reeves22:05

      And, uh, the way I discovered the bones was after I bought the property. Uh, there was a, a stripping pile done by, uh, an adjacent miner that was dumping overburden on this, on these flat tailings, and I had a tour guide, and I ... A big guy. I said, "Josh, run over there and find me a mammoth tusk." I'd never found a mammoth tusk, but I'd heard they were finding 'em over there, and the ground they were dumping on was on my ground. So he, he went and he, he says, "What do they look like?" I said, "Well, they're ... They look like tree trunks, only they got a curve to 'em." So he went, and he was gone half an hour. He comes back with a seven-foot tusk over his shoulder. I went, "Holy shit." I said, "Go get me another one." He went and came back an hour later with another one about three feet long, a broken one. So I walked over there to look at this area where the mining was gonna take place, and they ended up mining it, and they had a right to mine it. The company took out about 3,000 ounces out of this one little area, and I was like, "Goddamn, this stuff stinks." So one day, we were walking around the area after they had mined it and moved on to another place, and we followed the smell. We walked around the side of this hill, and we got up in this little draw, and we were picking ... My kids were with me too. We were picking bones

9. 23:35 – 31:33

   How they extract bones from permafrost (and why it reeks)

   1. JRJohn Reeves23:35

      off the, off the ground, little shards, little leg bones and stuff. So, we filled up a garbage bag with those. We went back again and again and again, and then I took a excavator back, built a little road around the side so we could get back to it with a machine, took a couple dirt digs out of the muck, found a mammoth tusk. I said, "Oh, boy. Let's get something going." So then we got a big floating barge and put a pump on it, 471 Jimmy, with a giant. They're, they're called giants, but they're ca- actually hydraulic monitors. They look like big long pipes that you spray water out of, and our pump was a eight-inch intake, six-inch outtake, and we nozzled it down to two, two inches, two and a half inches.We could fire the water way out there and wash the overburden away. And the overburden there is about 60 feet high. It's permafrost, silt. And underneath that, you have your gravel layer, and underneath the gravel, you have the gold and the bedrock. And the, uh, gravel layer and the muck interface is where most of the bones are. So, we started finding lots of bones. I mean, a lot of bones. And in the first three years, we found thousands and thousands of tusks and bison heads and bones. And by the way, your... all those skulls you got out there in your- in your building here?

   2. JRJoe Rogan25:00

      Yeah.

   3. JRJohn Reeves25:00

      You ain't got a steppe bison skull. I'm gonna fix that shit.

   4. JRJoe Rogan25:05

      (laughs)

   5. JRJohn Reeves25:05

      (laughs) Okay?

   6. JRJoe Rogan25:07

      Okay.

   7. JRJohn Reeves25:07

      I'm gonna. And then, uh... I don't even know how many we have. We've stopped counting. And mammoth tusks, same thing.

   8. JRJoe Rogan25:16

      And when did steppe bisons go extinct?

   9. JRJohn Reeves25:18

      12,000 years ago.

   10. JRJoe Rogan25:20

       Wow.

   11. JRJohn Reeves25:21

       And these- (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan25:22

       And so, the permafrost is slowly melting, and you're hosing it down and pulling it, so the stench is literally, like, this ancient, rotting biological material.

   13. JRJohn Reeves25:35

       It stinks.

   14. JRJoe Rogan25:36

       Wow.

   15. JRJohn Reeves25:37

       It's organic.

   16. JRJoe Rogan25:39

       But it's been frozen forever.

   17. JRJohn Reeves25:41

       Thousands. 20,000 years, 30,000 years, 50,000 years.

   18. JRJoe Rogan25:44

       So, this is, uh, you with the hose, spraying it onto the side of this wall.

   19. JRJohn Reeves25:49

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:49

       So, the way you do it is you just spray the side of these... Like, what would you call that hill?

   21. JRJohn Reeves25:55

       It's a muck bench.

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:56

       A muck bench?

   23. JRJohn Reeves25:57

       Yes, sir.

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:57

       So, you spray that until you see something poking through?

   25. JRJohn Reeves26:00

       Yes, sir. Well, you spray it, and then you walk up there and you turn the nozzle off to the side and you'll pick up the bones, the little pieces, leg bones, backbones, uh, vertebrae.

   26. JRJoe Rogan26:09

       Why is there so much in this one area?

   27. JRJohn Reeves26:12

       Nobody knows.

   28. JRJoe Rogan26:13

       Really?

   29. JRJohn Reeves26:13

       Nobody.

   30. JRJoe Rogan26:14

       Well, that's what's so crazy. Like, when I watched the documentary on your place-
10. 31:33 – 44:08

    Why are there so many? Extinction theories, migration corridors, and burned bedrock

    1. JRJohn Reeves31:33

       And the reason this site is so interesting to 'em is because it's from all from one little area, so the context is there, and it spans what's called the extinction event. Y- uh, Graham is-

    2. JRJoe Rogan31:49

       Yeah.

    3. JRJohn Reeves31:50

       ... and Randall.

    4. JRJoe Rogan31:50

       Yeah, the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.

    5. JRJohn Reeves31:52

       Yeah. And so, I'm kinda going along with them because it would-

    6. JRJoe Rogan31:57

       But that wouldn't make sense why they're all there.

    7. JRJohn Reeves31:59

       Well, you gotta remember that the world, the Pleistocene started, what, two and a half million years ago.

    8. JRJoe Rogan32:05

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JRJohn Reeves32:05

       And stopped about 11,800 years ago.

    10. JRJoe Rogan32:08

        Yeah.

    11. JRJohn Reeves32:10

        So, that whole area was ice except for a ice-free corridor between Siberia and Alaska and the lower 48 that went right through where we're at. So, there was migration happening, coming through there. And these animals lived there for tens of thousands of years, the grazers. Well, wherever there's grazers, there's gonna be carnivores. You have the short-faced bear, you got the cave lions, you got... We found all that stuff.

    12. JRJoe Rogan32:40

        You found short-faced bears?

    13. JRJohn Reeves32:42

        Yes, sir.

    14. JRJoe Rogan32:42

        Really?

    15. JRJohn Reeves32:43

        Yep.

    16. JRJoe Rogan32:43

        You got a f- short-faced bear head?

    17. JRJohn Reeves32:46

        Yes.

    18. JRJoe Rogan32:47

        What does that look like?

    19. JRJohn Reeves32:48

        It's huge.

    20. JRJoe Rogan32:49

        How big is it?

    21. JRJohn Reeves32:51

        Probably about that long.

    22. JRJoe Rogan32:52

        Oh. (laughs)

    23. JRJohn Reeves32:53

        They stood, when they stood up on their hind legs, they were 12 feet, uh-

    24. JRJoe Rogan32:57

        Yeah, we've shown-

    25. JRJohn Reeves32:58

        ... to the top.

    26. JRJoe Rogan32:58

        ... photos of, uh, these replicas standing next to people.

    27. JRJohn Reeves33:01

        Yeah. No, it's, they're huge.

    28. JRJoe Rogan33:02

        It's nuts.

    29. JRJohn Reeves33:03

        Yeah. And, and not only that, but, you know, you have... A little mini factoid for you. How, you know, it takes a mammal 22 seconds, 21 seconds to take a leak. Did you know that?

    30. JRJoe Rogan33:14

        No.
11. 44:08 – 54:09

    Museum politics and the ‘bone rush’: AMNH crates and bones dumped in the East River

    1. JRJohn Reeves44:08

       Yeah. We have, we have a, uh, specimen that was found called Effie for Fairbanks Expiration that's a, you know, a mammoth trunk, and its leg, and its skull cap, and stuff. We have, we have a l- found a lot over the years, and they all ... You know, there was a deal with AMNH, and you might've heard me rant about that a little bit.

    2. JRJoe Rogan44:33

       No, what's AMNH?

    3. JRJohn Reeves44:34

       Alaska, uh, American Museum of Natural History. Back in 1920s, uh, when the company started hydraulicing, they started unearthing all these fossils, and the company had eight g- bucket line dredges running, so they were moving millions of yards. They moved 277 million yards of silt hydraulically, which was just 17 million more yards than they dug outta the Panama Canal. And so all those bones, there was a guy named Childs Frick in New York, his father was Henry Frick, the US steel magnate with, uh, Carnegie, they decided to get ahold of th- the USS R&M Company in Boston, and they said, "Hey, how about we finance to get these bones out of Alaska and bring 'em to AMNH?" So they worked a three-way deal with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, uh, President Bunnell up there, and a guy named Otto Guice started going out with a bone wagon, and they collected bones for, from 1928 till 1958. Now, they were only supposed to s- collect scientifically important bones, and for those, they were supposed to do research on 'em, and write reports, and submit 'em to my company. Well, they didn't do that. They collected the bones, sent 'em to New York City, where they just languished in the basements of AMNH. When I bought the company, I started going through my files, and I found this deal, and I got ahold of the University of Alaska, and I said, "These are, these are our company bones. Let's go find out what's, what's going on with 'em. They haven't done the reporting they're supposed to." So myself along with, uh, a guy named, uh, uh, what the ... I, I got the reports right here. Dick Osborn, who was the author of this report. I'm gonna give you this report, by the way, because I've told everybody that I'm gonna start a bone rush.

    4. JRJoe Rogan46:47

       A bone rush?

    5. JRJohn Reeves46:48

       Yes, sir.

    6. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       What does that mean?

    7. JRJohn Reeves46:51

       Well, they took 500,000 or so bones from Fairbanks to New York City, left 'em in the crates, and there's a picture on there someplace when I went there to visit, in crates that have yet to be opened. But in the '40s, they took about a whole boxcar load of these bones, they ran out of storage, and they dumped 'em in the East River.

    8. JRJoe Rogan47:22

       What?

    9. JRJohn Reeves47:23

       In the East River. And I've told everybody that, again, with Joe Rogan, it's the only place I'm gonna divulge that location.

    10. JRJoe Rogan47:32

        So all that stuff in those pictures is all from your property?

    11. JRJohn Reeves47:35

        Yes, sir.

    12. JRJoe Rogan47:37

        What a crazy piece of land you stumbled upon.

    13. JRJohn Reeves47:40

        It's unbelievable.

    14. JRJoe Rogan47:42

        And so they dumped how much in the East River?

    15. JRJohn Reeves47:45

        I'm told by Dick Osborn a boxcar load, 50,000, or 50 tons.

    16. JRJoe Rogan47:50

        Just threw it in the water?

    17. JRJohn Reeves47:51

        Yes, sir.

    18. JRJoe Rogan47:52

        Is it still there?

    19. JRJohn Reeves47:54

        I don't know. That's what-

    20. JRJoe Rogan47:55

        Could it, could it be still there?

    21. JRJohn Reeves47:57

        Could be.

    22. JRJoe Rogan47:58

        Some of it maybe?

    23. JRJohn Reeves47:59

        Certainly the tusks.

    24. JRJoe Rogan48:00

        Do you know where it was?

    25. JRJohn Reeves48:02

        Yes, sir. Let me t-

    26. JRJoe Rogan48:03

        So you gonna hire some divers? What are you gonna do?

    27. JRJohn Reeves48:07

        I've told a ... Now, you have a lot of people that follow you on your Instagram. I got, I got a lot of people that follow me thanks to you, and, uh, I said, "You know, those bones, as far as I'm concerned, that they dumped in the East River, they're, they're no longer mine." They're finders keepers, so if any of you guys wanna go out and find some bones, I'll tell you exactly where the fuck they're at, but I'll only tell Joe Rogan.

    28. JRJoe Rogan48:34

        So I have to tell people?

    29. JRJohn Reeves48:36

        Tell 'em right now.

    30. JRJoe Rogan48:37

        Okay, tell 'em right now.
12. 54:09 – 1:05:12

    What the bones are worth—and why John keeps building storage instead of selling

    1. JRJohn Reeves54:09

       Dude, let me tell you something about mammoth bones, mammoth tusks. They're extremely valuable. And a complete set of tusks, like, the day ... Did you see that little video s- snippet I said about the day we found a full-grown woolly mammoth, I mean, all of it?

    2. JRJoe Rogan54:29

       Yeah. Yeah, I did see that.

    3. JRJohn Reeves54:30

       Okay. Well ... And thousands, thousands of bones within a week, and another mammoth the next day. Tusks don't float. They don't roll along the bottom. They sit where they're at. They're curved. They weigh a lot. They're very dense. Same with the leg bones, they're dense too. I don't know what kind of current that river has, if it even has a current. All I know is this is where they say they dumped them, and I gotta go with that. If this is where they say they dumped them, this is where they dumped them.

    4. JRJoe Rogan55:05

       So, all it would take is just so- a well-healed expedition of guys who know how to scuba.

    5. JRJohn Reeves55:13

       Yeah, I wouldn't even be well healed. I... you know, you can take an underwater camera and drop it over with your fishing pole.

    6. JRJoe Rogan55:20

       Or, or like they have those underwater drones now, too-

    7. JRJohn Reeves55:23

       That... none of this.

    8. JRJoe Rogan55:24

       ... with cameras on 'em.

    9. JRJohn Reeves55:24

       And they got the, they got the side-scanning sonar and stuff that you can use.

    10. JRJoe Rogan55:29

        Oh, yeah.

    11. JRJohn Reeves55:30

        Uh, we've, we've tried looking at, um, using those kind of things at the Boneyard, but they can't pick up tusks buried 10 feet down. Um, you know, they'd shoot pulses into the earth and it's supposed to refract back up. Um, just gotta find them where they're at. And, uh, I was g- I was gonna tell you, uh, how valuable these tusks are. The set we found on the day, we had an offer for $485,000 for the pair the next day.

    12. JRJoe Rogan56:00

        Whoa.

    13. JRJohn Reeves56:01

        And guess what, Joe? You and I both know what $485,000 looks like. What would you rather look at; a set of 12-foot mammoth tusks or a bunch of Hondos sitting on a, you know?

    14. JRJoe Rogan56:15

        Depends on what phase of my life I'm at.

    15. JRJohn Reeves56:18

        Yeah, well...

    16. JRJoe Rogan56:20

        (laughs)

    17. JRJohn Reeves56:20

        I think at this point in your life, you'd rather look at the tusks.

    18. JRJoe Rogan56:22

        I'd look at the tusks.

    19. JRJohn Reeves56:23

        Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan56:23

        Yeah.

    21. JRJohn Reeves56:23

        Yeah, I think so.

    22. JRJoe Rogan56:24

        12-foot tusks?

    23. JRJohn Reeves56:26

        Yeah.

    24. JRJoe Rogan56:26

        Jesus.

    25. JRJohn Reeves56:27

        But I'm not inter-... I wanna see the tusks.

    26. JRJoe Rogan56:30

        Yeah.

    27. JRJohn Reeves56:30

        Now, I don't have as many sunsets in front of me as I do behind me, but I have an idea I won't have to sell those in my lifetime. I'll let Drew out there and Alora decide what happens to those things. We just built our own... You know, they said, "Well, storage is a problem." We just built, this fall, before we came down here, framed up a 5,000 square foot building to house some of the collection. We have so many bones. I've filled up four vans, uh, delivery trucks, big, you know, semi-trailer, filled. Started off with, eh, we got a few. Now we got a few hundred thousand.

    28. JRJoe Rogan57:11

        And you're not even done digging.

    29. JRJohn Reeves57:13

        Oh, fuck no.

    30. JRJoe Rogan57:14

        That's what so crazy. In a five-acre parcel. Wow.
13. 1:05:12 – 1:47:59

    Alaska life around the site: wolves, bears, moose hunting, and frontier realities

    1. JRJohn Reeves1:05:12

       Here, here's the qualifications. Now, have you been to Fairbanks before?

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:05:16

       No, I have not.

    3. JRJohn Reeves1:05:17

       I'd like to invite you to Fairbanks.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:05:18

       I'd like to go.

    5. JRJohn Reeves1:05:19

       And if you do, I want you to-

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:05:20

       It's only summer, though.

    7. JRJohn Reeves1:05:21

       I want you to come up in the fall-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:05:22

       (laughs)

    9. JRJohn Reeves1:05:22

       ... so you can go moose hunting.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:05:23

        Okay.

    11. JRJohn Reeves1:05:24

        Have you tipped a-

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:05:24

        Okay.

    13. JRJohn Reeves1:05:24

        You ever tip a moose over?

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:05:25

        Yes. Yeah, shot a moose-

    15. JRJohn Reeves1:05:27

        Do you like-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:05:27

        ... once in BC. Delicious.

    17. JRJohn Reeves1:05:28

        Do you like moose meat? Okay.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:05:29

        I love it. I love moose meat.

    19. JRJohn Reeves1:05:30

        We'll, we'll put you on your own creek. We'll give you a four-wheeler or a truck, whatever you need. Come up, bag a moose, take it to the boneyard. Within minutes, you will be a boner. All you gotta do is find one.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:05:45

        I'm sure.

    21. JRJohn Reeves1:05:46

        But the people involved in this, just my family and some family friends.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:05:53

        Wow. That's incred- and Dick Mol. (laughs)

    23. NANarrator1:05:59

        Do, do we have to be called Boners? Can we call each other that?

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:06:01

        Yeah, you have to, Jamie.

    25. JRJohn Reeves1:06:02

        Oh. (laughs)

    26. NANarrator1:06:02

        All right.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:06:02

        Don't be scared of a name.

    28. JRJohn Reeves1:06:04

        Uh, yeah. No, it's, uh, well, my kids are all master boners 'cause you ha-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:06:08

        (laughs)

    30. JRJohn Reeves1:06:09

        In order to be a master boner, you gotta find 10,000 of them.

Episode duration: 3:04:20