Immigrants believed the streets of America were
paved with it. King Tut insisted his tomb be dec
orated with it. Fort Worth is full of it. And Univer
sity geology major Rick Streiff stakes his liveli
hood on the fact that all that glitters sometimes
actually is_
^PfPhen ai Churchill discovered the
President Mine in 1897, miners extracted
gold with a pickaxe and sweat.
Today, a geology major and a business
graduate use dynamite and technology to
blast their share from the mine.
Not that all the sweat's gone from the
operation. Rick Streiff works hard preparing
the mine for what he hopes will be another
gold find. The 23-year-old geology student
Stories by
JOHN CROWLEY
bought the mine last year, and with his part
ner, Dave Holloman, 24, has since been
readying it. Together the pair is shoring up
old timbers, clearing tunnels, and generally
getting ready to strike it rich.
“We’re sure there’s more gold in here —
lots more,” says Streiff. “Our challenge is to
solve the geologic puzzle and find it." And
looking for gold can be puzzling.
Although Churchill s contemporaries
were more likely to discover rich gold de
postis, rarely does a modern miner find
such “free gold" in the Bohemia Mining dis
trict. "Gold is usually found in quartz, and is
generally mixed with other elements,”
Streiff explains. "You’ve got to blast it out
and crush the rock to get the gold.”
Because it takes 20 to 30 sticks of dyna
mite to get through about four feet of rock,
this can be a major operation. The rocks
loosened by the blast must be cleared by
hand and loaded into ore cars for a trip to a
crushing mill.
When the rough ore has been reduced to
near powder, it’s run through a “concentrat
ing table,” a giant panning machine that
shakes back and forth — to separate the
heavier elements from the lighter ones to
produce the elemental concentrates.
If the miner is interested only in gold, he
may fine-pan it on the spot; more sophisti
cated equipment is required to separate
and recover all elements present.
Streiff is familiar with these operations.
As a high school student, he panned and
studied prospecting. After he and a friend
visited the Star Mine in the Bohemia district,
Streiff knew he’d found his calling.
He got hired there as a watchman, "pick
ing and chipping” all the while, but he
watched well, and rose to resident miner.
As a resident he acquired the knowledge
and experience he hopes to put to work for
himself.
artner Holloman came to prospect
ing indirectly. After graduating from the
University in International Business, he
tried his hand at pro golfing.“I played the
circuit for awhile, but found out the traveling
got to me,” he said. "I prefer to settle down,
and I like working in the great outdoors —
whether I strike it rich or not.”
Undoubtedly, though, hitting paydirt is on
their minds as the partners ready their mine
for a successful dig. With Streiff’s girlfriend,
Nan Cerqui, and their rock hound B6,
they've been “winterizing” the area. A rug
ged two-mile road, their sole access, winds
over a 5,000-foot mountain pass and must
be protected against winter run-off.
The miners have just reopened a
350-foot tunnel, and are now concentrating
on another 150-foot channel. They await
results of a preliminary assay — an ore
analysis to determine ore value — before
planning their next move.
“Most small mines fail,” Streiff says.
“When a prospector finds some gold, usu
ally he rushes to build his own mill, sinking
all his money into it. Then he finds there’s
no money left to explore for gold. End of
gold rush.”
To be profitable —or as Streiff says, to be
interesting — a mine must produce ore con
taining about one-half ounce of gold per ton
of rock. The last shipment of ore from the
President Mine yielded about one ounce
per ton. Streiff’s predecessors have met
with varying degrees of success here.
Fortunes have been made and lost in the
Bohemia Mining district. These slopes,
about 35 miles southeast of Cottage Grove,
have seen riches found and hopes dashed.
The district takes its name from the na
tionality of James Johnson, who with his
partner, George Ramsey, searched the
area for gold in 1863. Small amounts of
stream gold had been found nearby. While
dressing a deer, Johnson noticed the glint
of some gold quartz in the headwaters of
City Creek. They brought a sample down to
Cottage Grove and the gold rush was on.
Within just a few years, over 100 claims
were made, and a small town — Bohemia
City — rose on the banks of City Creek.
Complete with cabins, saloon, hotel, and a
branch of the Douglas County Recorder’s
office, the town housed about 600.
1867 a mill to crush the ore had
been built, running successfully until a
heavy snow destroyed the mill building in
1877. Interest in the area waned; the fickle
prospectors moved on, and Bohemia City
emptied out and stayed that way for several
years.
Gold fever erupted anew in 1891 when
James Musick, a California prospector, dis
covered a rich ledge of the precious stuff,
renewing interest in the area. Soon after,
other gold seekers were crying, “Eureka!”
Bohemia s golden days had begun.
During this heyday a hardy prospector
named Churchill discovered the President
Mine. With the limited technology of the
day, much of the gold could not be recov
ered. "The old-time miners would wash
about half of their findings away,” says
Streiff. “There was nothing they could do
about it.”
Nonetheless, Churchill made a go of it,
and in 1910 he took a partner, a man named
Patton, and the two worked the mine until
Churchill’s death in 1921. Patton then re
claimed the mineral rights himself and per
formed the bulk of tunneling and produc
tion. He continued into the 40s, when na
ture and man conspired to change his for
tunes.
Patton had built the treacherous road
over the mountain (the cynical U.S. Forest
Service predicted it would take over two
years; Patton did it in 93 days), and over it
he hauled enough materials to construct his
own mill. He had just completed it when the
first snow of the season turned into a mud
and-rock slide that ruined the mill.
Not too long after that, a partner cracked
Patton over the head and made off with a
good part of his fortune. Patton’s interest
diminished.
A few years later Bohemia Minerals
bought the President and other mines in the
area, and brought out a modest amount of
gold. But mining was not the main interest
of the Bohemia Lumber subsidiary, and in
the early 60s the company deeded the mine
to Hal Barton, a geologic consultant who
had performed assessment duties for them.
Then last year, Barton sold the mine to
Streiff.
Now the partners ready their site for bet
ter days. Along with the mine they inherited
three claims active since the 1920s, and
have reactivated two other claims from that
period. Staunch party-members, Churchill
and Patton named all of them after Republi
can presidents.
Barton likes to tell about the time he vis
ited Patton’s cabin for dinner. As he ap
proached, Patton’s dogs began yelping
loudly. “Shut up, you damn Democrats!”
yelled Patton. “You’re always begging for
something.”
'urrently, Streiff and Holloman are
working on Coolidge.
“As we’ve plotted the vein so far,” Streiff
says, “it looks like we ll have a couple more
claims pretty soon.” Each claim can cover a
maximum of 20 acres, and at least $100
worth of work must be performed annually
on each claim to retain the rights.
“In the old days, that was a sizable
amount of work,” Streiff observed. “But
these days, you can do that in a weekend.”
They’ve more than met that requirement
this year. All summer Holloman worked at
the mine, and on weekends Streiff heads
through the rugged terrain and over the
mountain road to join him working the
claims.
Streiff says he’s at home in the hills. Last
summer he worked in the area as a miner
als technician for the U.S. Forest Service
working in part with district research to de
termine areas of historical significance. The
Forest Service has set aside the Bohemia
district as a special area, and Streiff’s find
ings are helping to formulate the Umpqua
National Forest land-use management
plan.
In addition, Streiff serves as vice
president of the Bohemia Mine Owners’
Association, a group of mining enthusiasts
who meet once a month to talk shop and
keep up with recent mining legislation. He
especially savors the post; at the turn of the
century Churchill, discoverer of Streiff’s
mine, served as president of that organiza
tion.
And just as the old prospector did,
Streiff’s got big hopes for the President
Mine. “You can say I’ve got gold fever — a
mild case.”
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Emerald photos
Darrell Rossell has been in the gold business for years. Not in some New York
financial office, but in the wilderness, sifting the precious metal from mountain
streams with a simple dredge. He also runs a specialty store in Springfield, selling
all the tools of his trade to weekend goldminers.
Anyone can find gold
according to merchant
Darrell Rossell sells dreams.
With his wife Rose, Rossell runs Gold
finders in Springfield. Here gold pros
pectors of all levels can find the tools and
expertise they need to pursue their
dreams of striking it rich.
“Anyone can find gold," Rossell con
fided. “All it takes is an hour or so with a
pan. You can find gold in any spring
around.” In fact, within eighty miles of
Eugene are four mining districts, accord
ing to Rossell, and through each one run
gold-bearing streams.
In his shop Rossell buys gold, sells
gold, and talks gold. He fashions the
precious stuff into jewelry, and helps
others with gold fever hunt their piece of
the lode.
Underwater dredging is his specialty.
With a floating three-inch gold dredge
made by Keene Engineering, Rossell
scours stream beds. A mix of water,
sand and gravel is drawn through a suc
tion hose, and sent washing over a rip
pled “sluice box." The heavy gold parti
cles sink into a special reservoir.
“If you take the time, you can make
quite a profit. With two or three days, the
proper equipment and the right stream,
you can pull in between $50 and $500 a
day.”
Rossell recalls when he unwittingly
helped some fellow dredgers do even
better than that. "They were working a
ways behind us, and complaining that
we were muddying the water. So we o
bliged and moved on a bit. Come to find
out later they raised about four ounces in
less than two hours from that exact
spot.”
Lest that amount seem a trifling, gold
was selling Tuesday for $222 an ounce,
a record. In 1970 the price was $35.
“The price fluctuates according to a very
fickle market," Rossell pointed out. “All it
takes is for the U S. Treasury to an
nounce a gold sale, and the price drops
thirty or forty dollars an ounce.'
Like most prospectors, Rossell’s had
gold in mind for a long time. For the last
five years, though, he's been prospect
ing in earnest, and this spring he bought
Goldfinders, where he'd been trading.
This small storefront in the McKenzie
West Plaza stocks metal detectors, sif
ters, pans, pickaxes, miners’ helmets,
and even a flintlock and black powder,
for any “b'ars" encountered while for
tune hunting.
After taking over in April, Rossell av
eraged one dredging operation a week
until the seasonal lull and a mechanics
injury slowed him down. Now he
dredges occasionally and supplies
others.
A true prospector, though, the dream
of finding The Big One stays with him. “I
think about it all the time." he says wist
fully.
“But dreaming doesn't bring in money
for groceries."
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