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Blue Mountain Eagle
MYSTERY
ed together, he said.
While the cabins’ logs
disappeared over time, dry-
stacked rock cooking features
remained. Buried in the soil
and debris nearby were bones
from sheep, pig and chickens
— but no beef, Hann noted.
Continued from Page A1
to Guangdong, where most of
the miners originated.
The first assumption, she
said, is that Chinese miners
were desperate landless peas-
ants who fled China to es-
cape famine and war. In fact,
Chinese mining companies
had effective managers and
skilled laborers, and most
Chinese immigrants were ed-
ucated and came from fami-
lies above the poverty line.
A second assumption is
that the Chinese only re-
worked claims abandoned
by Euro-American miners,
she said. The Chinese pur-
chased or leased claims from
Euro-Americans, but they
greatly enlarged the mines
and adapted a wide range of
mining techniques to fit spe-
cific placer deposits.
The third assumption
is that the Chinese mostly
worked for Euro-American
companies, but most Chi-
nese immigrants worked for
Chinese companies that not
only mined but also owned
stores, gambling halls, laun-
dries, restaurants and hotels,
she said.
Digging for facts
Much of the evidence
supporting Rose comes from
archaeological digs at min-
ing sites around the Southern
Blues. Their locations were
discovered in historical re-
cords at the Grant County
Courthouse or the Kam Wah
Chung State Heritage Site
or during onsite inspections
ahead of timber sales.
Malheur National For-
est archaeologist Don Hann
walked the timber sale sites
and flagged critical locations
to protect them from heavy
equipment. Nine cabin sites
associated with Chinese min-
ing have been located in the
Middle Fork John Day River
area.
POT
Continued from Page A1
Sessions rescinded Obama-
era guidance on states with
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Early success
Contributed photo
Katee Withee, an archaeologist with the Blue Mountain
Ranger District, and volunteer Eric Hanson screen
material excavated from a Chinese mining camp site in
the Middle Fork John Day River area dating to the 1870s.
In 2016, the Malheur
Forest partnered with SOU-
LA, Kam Wah Chung and
the Grant County Historical
Museum to support the study,
protection and interpretation
of these cultural resources.
Rose and Hann co-directed
the project.
Recently 19 volunteers
donated 660 hours to work
with the archaeologists in
the first phase of the project,
which involved site clearing,
surface artifact identification,
metal detector surveying,
feature mapping and test ex-
cavations.
Historic finds
Despite signs of looting
at some sites, numerous arti-
facts were found with links to
China, including ceramic pot-
sherds, brown-glazed stone-
ware, fragments of Chinese
Winter Green porcelain and
pieces of glass bottles. The
artifacts came from cups and
dishes used for dining but also
liquor bottles and opium con-
tainers.
recreational cannabis earlier
this year, leaving the issue
up to the discretion of federal
prosecutors in the states.
An earlier “draft” version
of the report authored by the
Michael B. DesJardin
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The stamped seal on one
container was identified as
the brand of the Sheung Wan
Fook Lung company, a Hong
Kong opium producer. The
design is among the first inter-
nationally recognized brands
in the history of Asia. Opium
was outlawed in the U.S. in
1909.
The archaeologists also
found rubber boots with hob-
nailed soles used by the miners
in the cold mountain streams.
Metal items discovered at the
cabin sites included cast-iron
cooking pan fragments, veg-
etable oil cans, Chinese-style
cut-off shovel heads, remains
of five-piece gold pans, hand-
made perforated metal pieces
used to repair grizzly sluices
and a trigger mechanism from
a percussion cap rifle.
The miners often repur-
posed metal for other uses. A
piece of steel chiseled off a
railroad track was likely used
by a metal-worker as an anvil,
Hann said. Handmade nozzles
for hydraulic mining were
made from metal pieces rivet-
Oregon State Police, which
was obtained and published
by The Oregonian last year,
was decried as incomplete
and inaccurate by Gov. Kate
Brown, whose spokespeople
on Friday did not respond to
a request for comment on the
new report.
Senate Democratic Leader
Ginny Burdick of Portland
said, while she thinks the
regulatory system has been
well developed, enforcement
is the next area to emphasize.
In the most recent leg-
islative session lawmakers
created the Illegal Marijuana
Market Enforcement Grant
Program, which will offer
$1.5 million per year for six
years to local police to fight
the illegal market.
Burdick pointed favorably
to the OLCC’s temporary
moratorium on new licenses,
announced in June, and said
THANK YOU!
Researchers are unsure
when the Chinese first came to
Grant County, but commerce
between the West Coast and
China existed before the early
gold strikes, Rose said.
The earliest record of a
Chinese-owned placer-min-
ing claim belongs to the Ah
Yee site in the Middle Fork,
recorded in an 1867 mining
sales agreement found in the
Grant County Courthouse.
Chinese mining activity
ballooned after that. By 1870,
according to federal mining
reports, about 82 percent of
placer claims in Grant County
were owned by Chinese com-
panies.
The government found
it difficult to assess the gold
yield from Chinese miners
as they were reluctant to talk.
While the Chinese report-
ed about $126,000 in gold
production in 1870, federal
agents suspected it was twice
that amount, equivalent to
$4.5 million today.
Chinese mining compa-
nies in Grant County were set
up in a similar fashion to the
kongsi business partnerships
found in China. Partners were
not paid a wage but earned a
share of the profits based on
their level of contribution and
their expertise.
The miners sent their earn-
ings back to China where
it helped finance commu-
nity centers, libraries and
tower-shaped family homes
called dialous.
Shortened
timeline
As gold diggings played
out, the Chinese survived the
Friday it may be time to con-
sider limits on the number of
licenses that can be issued.
Oregon currently has no
limits on the number of rec-
reational marijuana licenses
it can issue, and received a
surge of applications after
announcing the moratorium.
She also supports remov-
ing cannabis from the list of
controlled substances under
the federal Controlled Sub-
stances Act. And she’s not
alone. In a sign of growing
support for relaxing federal
laws on marijuana, the Na-
tional Conference of State
Legislatures passed a direc-
tive this week calling for Con-
gress to legalize cannabis.
The directive prompted
Burdick and two other state
senators — Senate Repub-
lican Leader Jackie Winters
of Salem and Sen. Elizabeth
Steiner Hayward, D-Beaver-
ton — to issue statements in
support.
They say legalizing can-
nabis would allow the indus-
try to enter the national bank-
ing system and avoid some
of the perils of a system that
transition from placer mining
to hydraulic mining. Accord-
ing to a 1892 federal min-
ing report, about 79 percent
of the workers at hydraulic
operations in Grant County
were Chinese, and two-thirds
of the gold was extracted by
Chinese.
But the Chinese popu-
lation had significantly de-
clined — by 1890, only 6
percent of the county’s pop-
ulation was Chinese. One
reason for the decline was the
move to underground hard-
rock mining, which required
a larger investment in equip-
ment, a hurdle the Chinese
mining companies could not
meet, Hann said.
Another reason was grow-
ing anti-Chinese sentiment,
which made it difficult not
only for Chinese to find jobs
with Euro-American hard-
rock mining companies but
also to make the transition
from mining to farming or
commerce. The Kam Wah
Chung business in John Day
was an exception.
This sentiment was made
law in 1882 with the Chi-
nese Exclusion Act, which
prohibited all immigration
of Chinese laborers. The
act was made permanent in
1902 and not repealed until
1943.
The federal agents who
wrote the 1870 mining re-
port would have been sur-
prised. While they noted that
“it does not seem likely ...
that the Chinese will either
be universally introduced
or universally excluded as
a race,” the agents expected
the Chinese to easily transi-
tion into underground hard-
rock mining.
The Happy Camp 2 ar-
chaeological site was one
of the last Chinese mining
sites active in Grant County.
A 1901 federal mining re-
port noted that a few Chinese
miners were working the “old
placers of the Happy Camp
mining district.”
is now almost entirely cash
based.
Sen. Floyd Prozanski,
D-Eugene, said he has ideas
about ways to improve reg-
ulations and licensing, but is
keeping the specifics close to
his vest for now.
“I recognized that this was
an issue in 2015,” Prozanski
said. “I still see this as an is-
sue, and some of this stuff is
coming home to roost.”
He’s already floated ways
to tweak the law to deal with
Oregon’s cannabis bounty.
In 2017, Prozanski spon-
sored a bill that would have
allowed the governor to
enter into agreements with
states that have legalized
marijuana and border Ore-
gon so the product could be
legally transferred across
state lines, but it didn’t make
it beyond the Senate Rules
Committee.
The OLCC, meanwhile,
is preparing its own sup-
ply-and-demand study of
the state-legal recreational
market for lawmakers head-
ing into the 2019 legislative
session.
Contributed photo
Terry and Sharon Smith’s
home as it appeared
before it was destroyed
by fire in mid-July.
MISSING
Continued from Page A1
“Information from fami-
ly, friends, neighbors and the
public continues to come in,
and we are appreciative of the
response we have received
during the inception of this
case,” Palmer said. “It has
actually been overwhelming
at times. Without information
and people willing to talk to
us, the investigation would
not be where it is today. Even
though information we have
is circumstantial at this point
and the Smiths are still miss-
ing, we are taking this case
seriously and treating it as a
crime.”
Family and friends told the
Eagle about the social nature
of Terry and Sharon Smith
and how unusual it would be
for them to disappear for any
length of time without com-
municating with their friends
and family.
Cathy Hinshaw, Sharon’s
sister who lives in Hawaii,
told the Eagle she spoke to
Sharon the evening of the fire,
and Sharon had told her they
were headed to bed. She said
the Smiths’ disappearance is
very unusual and could sug-
gest foul play.
Hinshaw also said the
Smiths sometimes let people
stay on the 80- to 100-acre
property on Nan’s Rock Road
they bought in the mid-1990s,
but the man who served as a
caretaker for the property was
gone at the time of the fire.
The agency takes issue
with some of the HIDTA
report’s data points — for
example, the number of rec-
reational marijuana producer
licenses the report cites is
about 1,000 more than the
actual current number of
producer licenses as of Aug.
1, said spokesman Mark Pet-
tinger.
“We need to figure out if
there are other inaccuracies
in the report,” Pettinger said.
He also said the report
doesn’t make enough of a
distinction between the three
sources of cannabis in the
state: the regulated recre-
ational market, the medical
marijuana market and the il-
licit market.
Pettinger says OLCC will
have “a larger presence and
more systemic enforcement”
as the fall harvest season be-
gins.
And hundreds of medical
marijuana growers are being
incorporated into a “seed-to-
sale” tracking system called
Metrc that was previously
used just for recreational can-
nabis.
Grant County Sharp Shooters would like to thank the following
sponsors and supporters for our State 4H shooting contest
Mark LeQuieu
Steve Parson
Nydam’s Ace Hardware
Jeanette Hueckman of State Farm
Phillip & Toni Drain of Salem
American Legion
Christopher & Winona Bowden
1188 Brewing
Lenny & Sherry Dowdy
T&H Automotive
Mary Ann Vidorek
Shawn Duncan of Squeeze In
Bear Creek Shooting Range
Land Title Co of Grant County
Terri Bowden of A Flower Shop N More
Gardner Enterprises
Grant County 4H Leaders Assc.
Mike Slinkard of HECS
Dennis Reynolds
Joes Barber Shop
Jim Spouir
Jim James
Old West Federal Credit Union
Les Schwab Tire Center
Andy Day
72417
THANK YOU
The John Day Swim Team would like to thank the
Butterfy Sponsors who supported us during the season.
• Blue Mountain Hospital
• Chester’s
• Law Office of Robert Raschio
• Blue Mountain Healthcare Foundation
• America’s Best Value Inn
• Wildcat Basin Outfitters
• Tanni Wenger Photography
• Gardner Enterprises
• Clark’s Disposal
• Nature’s Calling Sanitation
• Hutch’s Printing
• Grant County Fairgrounds
We’d also like to thank the many other sponsors.
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