This has been in my family since before I was born in 1962. My Grandpa was in Alaska in the 1930's with the CCC building trails and what would become national parks. But his father and grandfather were Pioneers in CA, having come around Cape Horn in 1849 to San Francisco. It could either be something that he or they found in CA, or him in Alaska. The wood looks like a species more from CA. Regardless, it always fascinated me with its mystery... it was useful to someone, being heavy and everything having to be packed by a mule. They hung it on a (what was then) a small branch near the campfire probably. Then must have met with a tragic accident? It must have been remote (unlike a lot of the Placer mine camps), or someone else would have taken it. But it sat, undiscovered, for decades.