P6 The SpokeSman • WedneSday, January 12, 2022
OFFBEAT OREGON
Lost soldier’s mine: Lost ledge of rocks worth $8 a pound
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For The Spokesman
Early in the summer of 1853,
deep in the Coquille Moun-
tains of what’s now Douglas
County, six U.S. soldiers were
trudging dispiritedly through a
trackless wilderness.
The wilderness wasn’t to-
tally trackless, though, be-
cause that’s what the soldiers
were there to do: scout a route
through the mountains, from
Port Orford to Jacksonville.
The problem was, they were
lost. The track they were scout-
ing wasn’t going anywhere un-
til they figured out how to get
un-lost. And they were almost
out of supplies, so if that didn’t
happen soon, they’d all starve
to death.
As evening approached,
Lieutenant George Stoneman
called a halt. “We may as well
camp here for the night,” he
said.
So the men set about mak-
ing their camp. Private Manley
Martin was sent down to the
creek for water while the oth-
ers — Sergeant Mann and Pri-
vates McKenna, Schlisk, and
Schnedicker — set about the
usual tasks: fire, bivouacs, etc.
Down at the creek, Private
Martin was filling the canteens
when he saw a glint of yellow
in a rock in the streambed.
Drawing his saber, he used it
to pry the rock loose, and then
he picked it up. It was white,
with a streak of yellow running
through it.
Martin was probably a little
disappointed. He probably had
hoped the gold gleam came
from a nugget in the stream-
bed. The California Gold Rush,
which had broken out five
years earlier in 1848, was still
in full swing, and one of the
many bad things about Army
life in 1853 was being stationed
so close to the diggings, with
no opportunity to do anything
about it.
It would be good for a joke
anyway, he thought, and pock-
eted the rock and headed back
to camp.
“Hey, look at this,” he told
his comrades when he got
there. “I found gold!”
Everyone laughed — every-
one but one fellow soldier, who
stared at the rock.
“That really is gold,” he said.
“That’s a piece of decomposed
quartz with a gold thread
through it. Where did you find
that?”
Everyone scrambled to his
feet, and the soldiers followed
Martin back to the creek where
he’d filled the canteens. The
soldier who recognized the
quartz quickly started scouting
uphill and upstream from the
spot, and after a time found
what he was looking for: the
ledge of decomposed quartz, a
piece of which had broken off
and rolled down into the creek
and washed down to where
Martin had found it. It looked
like the real deal — a vast for-
tune in rich gold ore.
Before they moved on the
next day, Lieutenant Stoneman
had the men blaze four trees
in a square centered on their
campsite and carve their
names into it. That way, they
had a chance of finding the
place again, after their enlist-
ments came up and they were
released from the Army. De-
serting or going AWOL wasn’t
really an option with Stoneman
in the know; the lieutenant was
a career Army man and a stick-
ler for regulations. He would
later rise through the ranks and
retire as a general, later serving
as governor of California.
So the men trudged on,
hurrying to reach Port Orford
before their supplies ran out,
dreaming about the fabulous
riches that awaited them after
the Army released them.
So goes the origin story for
one of Southern Oregon’s most
famous lost-gold-mine stories:
The Lost Soldier Mine.
The soldiers, of course, re-
turned to the field as early as
they could, but that wasn’t very
early.
The site was too far into
the bush for a weekend trip,
so they had to wait until they
mustered out of the Army be-
fore taking up the search. By
the time that happened, all of
them had forgotten how to get
back to the campsite.
Another soldier, Capt. Wil-
liam Packwood, had also mus-
tered out of the Army at about
the same time, intending to
join the Gold Rush. Packwood
was a good friend of Private
Ross McKenna, who told him
everything he knew and re-
membered about the ledge,
and it was in Packwood’s mind
a great deal as he worked on
his own claims. But then he hit
a worthwhile pocket of gold
on one of them, and for several
years after that, he was busy
enough with his bird-in-the-
hand to not have much time
to think about the bird-in-the-
bush McKenna had told him
about.
Years went by. Packwood’s
claim played out, and he
moved to Enchanted Prairie to
try his hand at farming. There,
one day, he got talking to some
prospectors, who said they’d
found the soldiers’ camp and
their blazed trees, but no sign
of the ledge.
Intrigued, Packwood set out
on the 50-mile trek to the site
with a neighbor to try his own
luck. Like the prospectors, he
found the campsite readily
enough; but there was no sign
of the ledge.
He and the neighbor hunted
for some time, then gave up
and headed home to their
farms.
That August, Packwood
saw a man approaching his
cabin. He quickly recognized
him: it was his old friend and
Army comrade, Manley Mar-
tin, whom he hadn’t seen since
1853.
Over supper, Martin told
Packwood the reason for his
visit: He’d heard about Pack-
wood finding the old camp-
site. The ledge, he said, was not
in the campsite; it was several
miles away from it. He, Mar-
tin, could easily find the ledge,
if he could find the campsite;
and Packwood knew where
the campsite was. Would Pack-
wood like to team up and go
make some money?
Yes, Packwood would! But
Packwood, unfortunately, had
a big mouth, as soldiers often
do. So when, in the middle of
the two men packing their kit
for their journey, a neighbor
named Mr. Brown dropped by
and asked what they were up
Bureau of Land management photo
A gold miner works his pan at the Cow Creek Recreational Gold Pan-
ning Area.
to, Packwood told him.
Brown then begged to be
allowed to come along, and
Packwood said that was fine,
and off went Brown to pack up
his own stuff.
This turned out to be a very
expensive mistake
The problem was, it was
1861. Pro-Confederate and
pro-Union men had started
killing each other in April of
that year, and it was now Au-
gust. Manley Martin was from
Kentucky and was a committed
Confederate rebel sympathizer;
Brown, as it turned out, was
a passionate abolitionist and
zealous Union man. Packwood
had his hands full keeping
his two traveling companions
from murdering one another.
They quarreled and battled all
the way to the campsite.
Finally, with what must have
been a profound sigh of relief,
Packwood brought his belliger-
ent companions into the clear-
ing at the center of the blazed
trees, where a skilled woods-
man could still plainly discern
the five-year-old remnants of
the soldiers’ encampment.
Martin promptly disap-
peared into the bush and was
gone all day, returning just be-
fore dusk. Packwood figured
he’d gone to make sure the
ledge was still there.
But the following morn-
ing, Manley Martin coldly in-
formed his companions that
he’d decided not to look for the
ledge, and stalked off in the
direction of the Rogue River
road.
Packwood was unable to
persuade him to stay. Plus, he
was sick of the constant bick-
ering. So he let him go. Most
likely he expected to find the
ledge himself anyway — it
could only be within a few
dozen yards of the creek, up
a steep slope, somewhere up-
stream from the campsite.
Now that he knew it wasn’t in-
side the square of blazed trees,
it should be easy to find, right?
But it wasn’t
Finally, out of time and out
of patience, Packwood and
Brown returned to their farms.
And a week or two later, Pack-
wood got a letter from Martin.
Martin wrote that he had,
as Packwood and Brown had
surmised, gone to the ledge
on that day, and taken some
samples off of it. But he’d got-
ten so angry with Brown that
he didn’t want to share his find
with him, so he’d decided to
come back later. But, he added,
when he got the ore samples
assayed, they turned out not to
be as rich as he’d thought they
would be — only $200 a ton or
so. So, he’d decided to skip it.
Whether that was true or
not, Packwood never learned.
A little later that year, gold was
discovered on China Creek
out in Eastern Oregon, and
Packwood — who knew from
experience the importance of
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getting to the diggings early
— flew to the scene. There, he
staked and worked a fruitful
claim and became one of the
most prominent citizens of the
town of Auburn.
It wasn’t until 1914 when,
as an old man, William Pack-
wood returned to the scene of
the soldiers’ lost ledge in the
Coquille Mountains.
When he arrived, he found
that a forest fire had burned
through the canyon, destroy-
ing the blazed trees and all the
landmarks that he’d noted.
Not that it much mattered;
it had, after all, been more
than 50 years since he’d last
been there. It would have been
transformed beyond recogni-
tion anyway.
In the end, the ledge went
undiscovered. So far as is
known, somewhere in the
mountains near Cow Creek
that ledge still peeps through
the topsoil, and many local
hunters and fishermen over the
years have kept an eye out for it
on the off-chance of rediscov-
ering it.
And, if Manley Martin’s
“$200 a ton” estimate is correct,
it would be a fabulously rich
mine. $200 would buy almost
10 ounces of gold in 1861; to-
day, that amount of gold would
fetch about $15,725 — per
ton. That’s about $400 in ev-
ery five-gallon bucket of rocks.
Which might have been a fair-
to-middling prospect, as mines
went, during the height of the
California Gold Rush; but it’s
pretty dazzling today.
(Sources: Lost Mines and
Treasures of the Pacific North-
west and Treasure Hunting
Northwest, two books by Ruby
El Hult published by Binfords
& Mort in 1957 and 1971 re-
spectively; Gold Dust: Stories of
Oregon’s Mining Years, a book
written and published by Kerby
Jackson in 2011)
e
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon
State University and writes about odd
tidbits of Oregon history. His book,
Heroes and Rascals of Old Oregon, was
recently published by Ouragan House
Publishers. To contact him or suggest a
topic: finn@offbeatoregon.com
or 541-357-2222.