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
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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. It also often appears
in very large veins running
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(Sources: The Golden
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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!
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541-942-3325
116 N. 6th Street
Cottage Grove, OR