Chapter 10
Having finished the history of the mining district of the country, I will take up another theme and endeavor to my poor way to pay tribute to the prospector and sincerely regret my inability as well as that of any other writer to do him the justice accomplishments, hardships and privations entitle him. I have said that he was a great liar, but this uncomplimentary designation only applies to him when he is speaking about the extent and richness of his mining locations. Otherwise he is as truthful as the average man. Mark Twain was a prospector for a time and everybody knows that Mark was a terrible liar. It was the prospectors who discovered the rich placer deposits along the western slope of the Sierras, extending from Calaveras to Siskiyou; who crossed the mountains and found the placers of the Rogue River district in Oregon and at Canyon City and Auborn.
Thcy invaded Idaho before its creation as a territory and found the wealth of the placers of Orolino, Florence, Warren and Idaho Basin in 1861 and 1862. Later they turned their attention to prospecting for quartz and found the great gold producing mines of Amador and Nevada counties, where now, after 80 years since the first discoveries men are still working and in some cases more than a mile below the surface. They crossed the mountains from California and found the great Comstock vein, the greatest deposit of rich ore the world has ever known. The output of this immense discovery with those of others in California and Nevada saved the credit of the nation at the end of the Civil war. They went into Utah and Arizona and there discovered rich mines of gold, silver, lead and copper.
They went into the wilds of Shoshone county in North Idaho and there discovered the richest silver-lead producing veins the world has ever known, where thousands of men have been toiling far below the earths surface for nearly half a century and more riches are found as they pursue their work.
They found the rich placers of Montana and the great copper lodes of Butte.
The placers were worked out many years ago but Butte is still sending out its thousands of tons of copper year, after being worked now, for more than half a century. They crossed the dreary deserts of Utah, Nevada, California and Arizona in their search for earths riches. Sometimes the other side was never reached and his whitened bones were found not far from those of his faithful donkey who had perished with him. They crossed the snow-clad peaks and glaciers of the far north and found the riches of the Klondike and many died on the trail.
I was born in the mines of California and my first recollections are of the miner and the prospector, for my father was one of the argonauts who crossed the plains, deserts and mountains between the Mississippi and California in 1849, there to seek a fortune, which he never found. With all their great discoveries they seldom profited by them but some one else reaped the reward,
Thousands of them lie buried in unmarked graves around the mining camps they had discovered and in which they once prospered. No one can estimate the value of their efforts and no class ever did more for our country than they.
Many amusing stories are told on the old prospectors, one of which I heard many years ago runs about as follows:
There were two of them who lived in a deserted ghost town down in Calaveras County, California. After everybody else had gone the placer claims had all been worked out and gleaned by the Chinamen after the white men had quit. These old fellows believed that there were still rich pockets to be found around the old camp and each day they would strike out on a search for one. They followed up a trail to the top of a ridge, where a huge quartz boulder laid and there they would sit down on the boulder and discuss the pocket question. After resting they would go in different directions in their search for the coveted prize and always get back to the boulder about the same lime and sit down and compare notes. One day they were returning to the boulder and saw a crowd of men around it working with sledge hammers, breaking the rock in small pieces. When they came up, they found the outfit was a bunch of greasers, who packed off the quartz to their arastra a few miles away and took forty thousand dollars out of it. The old fellows spent the remainder of their lives cursing the greasers for robbing them of the rich pocket on which they had been sitting for years. A greaser is a sort of salmagundi, composed of Spaniard, Indian, Nigger and White Horsethief and he inherits the traits of all of his ancestors.
The early prospectors who came into the hills and mountains of Washington County were of the same type of those I have been describing. They came with high hopes and implicit faith in the discoveries they made, only to meet with disappointment later. They are nearly all dead now. Levi Allen, Albert Kleinschmidt, Old Frenchy, Lou Morton, Charlie Walker, Al Tousley, Al Donart, Crazy Horse Smith, Andy Adams and others of the early days of the Seven Devils have all gone over the divide.
Charlie Anderson, now of the Devils country and Riel Wilson of Cambridge are the only survivors I know of now. Reil Wilson and his brother, Bill, located the Blue Jacket and some adjoining ground which they sold to Albert Kleinschmidt for a comfortable sum and retired from the mining game for good, a wise decision on their part, for had they stayed on, they no doubt would have fared no better than did their less fortunate neighbors of the district. Tom Heath, Jim Ruth, Billy and Stewart Simpson, Old Scotty Atwell, Jim Summers and probably others of the Ruthberg section have all passed on.
Only Two Remain
Billy Eckles and Charlie Anderson, as said before, are the only survivors of the pioneers of that camp. Of the early Mineral residents, Jim Peck and John James, the two first to make locations there, George and Charlie Huffman, Billy Gilbert, Emery Boggs, Jim Landy, Old Hudson and others have gone the way of all men to prospect in new Fields, but with what success I am not advised. CC. Wing, Dave Gorrie, Louie Sommer and Ed Darby, who went into the district to mine and operate a smelter have likewise followed the others. Dan Kerfoot, whom I have previously mentioned as being in Mineral in its best days, still survives.
He was elected sheriff and afterwards assessor of this county and later chief of police of Ontario and for two terms sheriff of Malheur county, when he went to Portland and served for a number of years as an investigator for the treasury department. He now resides in East Portland where he has a comfortable home and is enjoying the winter of life as much as that season of our existenc can be enjoyed.
The first silver ore found in Mineral, located 30 miles of Weiser, was in the 1870s when Jack Landy discovered the Daniel Boone.
According to Muriel Dudgeons book, "John Flynns Stories of Mineral," the present Rock Creek route was nonexistent and to reach Mineral one could go to Huntington and travel down Snake River to a ferry which took them across Dennit Creek; or go up Monroe creek and over Iron Mountain.
Many places of business existed there in the late 1800s including, a butcher shop, livery stable, assay office, blacksmith shop, grocery stores, saloons, post office, three hotels, plus many private cabins. And, of course, there was the red light district. In 1892 when silver was demonetized, all the mines and smelters had to close. Mining did resume later but not to the extent of the first explorations.
Only a few broken down old buildings remain at the old townsite which is
now part of Rocking M Cattle Company