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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (July 31, 2019)
10A | WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2019 | COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL Offbeat Oregon Chasing a golden rumor, prospectors overlooked a fortune By Finn J.D. John for The Sentinel I t was the spring of 1862, and prospector William C. Aldred had been in the gold fields of California since the Gold Rush first broke out — about a dozen years. And he’d hit just enough gold to keep him fed, clothed and hopeful. Then one day, as he was taking a little refreshment in the mining-camp saloon, a stranger blew in, took a few drinks on board and started talking about the rich gold strike that had just been hit in Florence, Idaho. This fellow must have been a pretty talented talker, be- cause Aldred and the other miners got very excited lis- tening to his descriptions. Word of the strike spread through the little mining camp at lightning speed. Most of the 100 or so miners working in the camp were looking for something new. They were diligently work- ing their claims, but none of them were getting rich doing it, and nothing they’d seen at the diggings there had given them much reason to hope that they ever would. So, very quickly, a group of some 60 of them packed up their things, pulled their claim stakes and headed for the coast. They booked pas- sage on a coastwise passenger ship to Astoria, hopped a riv- erboat to Portland, hopped another to The Dalles, and set out for the Idaho diggings on horseback — following a route that led them up the John Day River valley toward Idaho. This was not, of course, an inexpensive voyage for any of the miners; so maybe the diggings they’d been working in California weren’t so stin- gy as the story claims. But the stranger in the saloon had painted a truly golden pic- ture of the diggings in Flor- ence, and the men were all motivated to get there just as fast as they possibly could, before all the good claims were staked. Speed was especially im- portant to the man the min- ers had elected from among their number as party leader; he drove the party on with almost desperate haste. They hurried along, through the future townsites of Antelope and Mitchell and found a suitable place to ford Canyon Creek. As they were doing that, Aldred looked down in the creek bed and saw a pattern of fine gravel there, which looked an awful lot like some of the richer diggings he’d seen in California. He hollered for the party to halt — it was late in the day — and camp by that creek, so he could check on it. The leader wouldn’t hear of it. They had to get to the real gold bonanza in Flor- ence before some other jokers beat them to it. They couldn’t waste time stopping and investigating every pos- sible bit of penny-ante gold ore. Every minute counted. They would press on. Reluctantly, Aldred fol- lowed. In 1862, in the ter- ritory of the Bannocks and Cayuse tribes, it was not safe for foreigners to wander about in ones and twos — or maybe it was, but none of the miners thought so. After all, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole gold mine, and lose his own scalp? So, on they pressed; but when the leader decided to make camp a mile or so later on, Aldred hastily rode back to the creek to check out that gravel. The water was waist-deep and Aldred hadn’t brought a bucket. So, he stripped out of his long underwear, tied the legs in knots, and plunged naked into the creek. Scooping up the gravel, he filled his underwear with it, lugged it ashore, and dumped it out. Rinsing and wring- ing out his Union suit, he climbed back into it, grabbed his gold pan, and got to work. He got a quarter of an ounce of gold out of just that one underwear-load. That’s seven grams of the yellow stuff — at current prices, about $350. Not bad for ten minutes’ work. Very excited, Aldred raced back to camp to show what he’d found. But the leader — and presumably most of the rest of the party — didn’t care. Convinced that where they were going there would be even more and richer gold deposits, they insisted on pressing on. And Aldred reluctantly joined them. There weren’t enough of the miners willing to stay behind with him to be safe against Indian attacks. T he same thing happened again the very next day. The party found a very promising gold deposit about three miles east of the future townsite of John Day — but, lured on by those grandiose dreams of mile-wide quartz veins and nuggets big enough to stub your toe on, the party pressed on. When they reached the John Day River, the wa- ter was high and turbulent. Two members of the party started to cut down a tree to make a bridge across it; but the leader, frantic to get to Florence in time to stake a claim, shouted for everyone to follow him and drove his horse full-speed at the river, intending that the animal should plunge in and swim across. But when the horse real- ized what he had in mind, it slammed on the brakes right at the edge, pitching its rid- er headlong into the rapids; Aldred, jumping in to save the panicky idiot, nearly drowned himself. Eventually, the party found itself at the mining town of Auburn, in the general vicin- ity of Baker City. There they paused at a saloon to slake the trail dust, and while they were doing that, they were told that the Florence dig- gings were already petering out — the strike had only been a pocket. Golden dreams die hard, though, especially after one has invested as much mon- ey in it as the 60 miners had (both in hard costs, and in opportunity costs; after all, during a gold rush, time is money). The majority of the party was eager to press on to Florence anyway. After all, maybe the rumors were start- ed by miners seeking to keep the competition away. Who knew? But the rumors intro- duced enough doubt that Aldred was able to convince 17 members of the party to go back to that quarter- ounce-per-underwear-load creek they’d crossed, at which they’d turned up their noses a week or two earlier. And so, the party split. The main group headed on to Florence and disappoint- ment, and the 17 rebels, led by Aldred, headed back to Canyon Creek. What they found there must have hit Aldred like a punch in the gut. Both sides of the creek, for miles in both directions, were lined with miners working the diggings with pans. In the few weeks that they’d been racing to Florence, oth- er miners following in their tracks had noticed the prom- ising deposits, and unlike the greedy members of Aldred’s party, they’d stopped to work what was obviously a very rich strike. Aldred wasn’t able to find 541-942-0168 P.O. Box 547 Cottage Grove, OR A Proud Supporter of Our Community Since 1983 A proud sponsor for the Kids Summer Reading Program w w w. s t a r f i r e l u m b e r. c o m Proud Sponsor of the Summer Reading Program any suitable part of the creek- bed that hadn’t already been claimed. So he and his 17 fellow travelers turned and backtracked — hoping, no doubt a little desperately, that the same thing hadn’t hap- pened with the strike they’d stumbled across on the fol- lowing day, the one near John Day. It hadn’t. When they arrived on the spot, they had it all to themselves. Staking their 18 claims, they got busy ... and got rich. How rich? Historian Ker- by Jackson, in his book “The Golden Trail: More Stories from Oregon’s Mining Years, reports,” “Some early stories claim that some miners made as much as $2,000 per hour, although this is probably greatly exaggerated.” Eventually, though, the easy gold was gone, and Al- dred’s 17 companions drift- ed off, following rumors of other strikes around Eastern Oregon and Idaho. Aldred, though, stuck around. He was still striking color, and he was not, as you will have gathered, the kind of guy who goes chasing after utopian rumors when he’s got his hands on a pretty good thing already. He continued diligently working his claim ... and then one day he found a vein of decomposed quartz, either on his claim or nearby. Now, decomposed quartz is what miners dream of find- ing. It’s often full of gold, and because it’s decomposed, it’s easy to crush to retrieve the color. 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Serving Lane & North Douglas Counties 541-735-0089 Worship Directory COTTAGE GROVE: 6th & Gibbs Church of Christ 195 N. 6th St. • 541-942-3822 10:00am Christian Education: Pre-K through 5th www.6thandgibbs.com First Presbyterian Church 3rd and Adams St 541-942-4479 Rev.: Karen Hill Worship: 10:00am Sunday School: 10:00am fpcgrove.com Calvary Baptist Church 77873 S 6th St • 541-942-4290 Pastor: Riley Hendricks Sunday School: 9:45am Worship: 11:00am The Journey: Sunday 5:00pm Praying Thru Life: Wednesday 6:00pm Hope Fellowship United Pentecostal Church 100 S. Gateway Blvd. 541-942-2061 Pastor: Dave Bragg Worship: 11:00am Sunday Bible Study: 7:00pm Wednesday www.hopefellowshipupc.com “FINDING HOPE IN YOUR LIFE” Church of Christ 420 Monroe St • 541-942-8565 Sunday Service: 10:30am Cottage Grove Bible Church 1200 East Quincy Avenue 541-942-4771 Pastor:Bob Singer Worship 11am Sunday School:9:45am AWANA age 3-8th Grade, Wednesdays Sept-May, 6:30pm www.cgbible.org Cottage Grove Faith Center 33761 Row River Rd. 541-942-4851 Lead Pastor: Kevin Pruett www.cg4.tv Full Childrenʼs Ministry available Services: 9:00am & 10:45am 2775 Row River Rd, Cottage Grove 541-942-4415 • bradschevy.com across country. This was a massive vein, running deep into a hillside. Aldred claimed it, then went around and raised some capital to build a stamp mill to exploit it. This became the famous Prairie Diggins mine; at its height, the mine and mill employed 80 men. Delight Valley Church of Christ 33087 Saginaw Rd. East 541-942-7711 • Pastor: Bob Friend Two Services: 9am - Classic in the Chapel 10:30am - Contemporary in the Auditorium First Baptist Church 301 S. 6th st • 541-942-8242 Pastor: David Chhangte Sunday School 9:30am Worship Service 10:30am Youth Wednesday 6:30pm cgfi rstbaptist.com St. Philip Benizi, Creswell 552 Holbrook Lane Sunday 8:30 AM St. Andrews Episcopal Church 1301 W. Main • 541-767-9050 Rev. Lawrence Crumb “Church with the fl ags.” Worship: Sunday 10:30am All Welcome Seventh-day Adventist Church 820 South 10th Street 541-942-5213 Pastor: Kevin Miller Bible Study: Saturday, 9:15 am Worship Service: Saturday, 10:40 Mid-week Service: Wednesday, 1:00 Living Faith Assembly 467 S. 10th St. • 541-942-2612 Trinity Lutheran Church Worship Services Sundays: 9a & 11a 6th & Quincy • 541-942-2373 Youth Worship Sundays: 11a (all Pastor: James L. Markus ages welcome) Sunday School & Adult Education Mondays: 5:30p (6th-12th grades) 9:15am Sunday Worship 10:30 am Non-Denominational Comm. Kitchen Free Meal Tue & Thur Church of Christ 5:00pm TLC Groups 1041 Pennoyer Ave tlccg.com 541-942-8928 Preacher: Tony Martin United Methodist Church Sunday Bible Study:10:00am 334 Washington 541-942-3033 Sunday Worship:10:50am & 5:30pm New Pastor Craig Pesti- Strobel www.pennoyeravecoc.com Worship 10:30am umcgrove.org Old Time Gospel Fellowship 103 S. 5th St. • 541-942-4999 “VICTORY” Country Church Pastor: Jim Edwards 913 S. 6th Street • 541-942-5913 Sunday Service: 10:00am Pastor: Barbara Dockery Join in Traditional Christian Worship Worship Service: 10:00am Message: “WE BELIEVE IN Our Lady of Perpetual Help MIRACLES” and St. Philip Benizi Catholic Churches 1025. N. 19th St. 541-942-3420 Father John J. Boyle Holy Mass: Saturday Vigil – 5:30 PM Sunday – 10:30 PM For weekday and Holy Day of Obligation schedule see website OLPHCG.net Confession: 4 PM to 5 PM Saturdays or by appointment CRESWELL: Creswell Presbyterian Church 75 S 4th S • 541-895-3419 Rev. Seth Wheeler Adult Sunday School 9:15am Sunday Worship Service 10:30 am website www.creswellpres.org Our Worship Directory is a weekly feature in this newspaper. If your congregation would like to be a part of this directory, contact us today! S entinel C ottage G rove 541-942-3325 116 N. 6th Street Cottage Grove, OR
