Page:Oregon Geographic Names, third edition.djvu/508



about the word pitsua, although a few of them said they thought it referred to a rodent of some sort.

PITTSBURG, Columbia County. Pittsburg is one of Oregon's ghost towns. It is on Nehalem River at the mouth of East Fork and at the junction of Nehalem Highway and the highway east to Saint Helens. The place was named by Peter Brous, who made settlement there in 1879 and built a sawmill and a gristmill operated by waterpower. Brous had formerly lived in Pennsylvania and named the new settlement for the city in that state. The post office at Pittsburgh, Oregon, was established April 17, 1879, and Peter Brous was the first postmaster. The name was changed to Pittsburg April 26, 1892, and the office was discontinued November 30, 1908. There is now not much left at Pittsburg except a substantial highway bridge. Omar C. Spencer was kind enough to dredge up the facts given above. The place was within his field of activities when he was a small boy in the '80s. Pix, Baker County. Pix post office was apparently established to serve the Pyx mine. The word can be spelled either way but probably Pyx is the more modern form. Pix office was established August 27, 1890, with William Parker postmaster. It was discontinued June 11, 1895. There is no doubt as to the spelling of the post office name Pix, and the office is said to have been in the extreme west part of Baker County, It may actually have been over the line in Grant County but officials in Washington did not know it. The Pyx mine was close to the divide but all the records say it was in Grant County. It was in section 2, township 10 south, range 35 east. Whether the post office was actually at the mine or over the hill in Baker County the compiler does not know. The Pyx mine was in what was called the Greenhorn district. The word pyx has several meanings. One, of course, is ecclesiastical. There is also an important meaning associated with metallurgy. It refers to the box used at the Royal Mint in London, in which are deposited sample coins struck off in the mint. These are examined annually in the "trial of the pvx" by a committee of the Goldsmiths' Company under direction of the King's Remembrancer. This trial is well known to metallurgists and may have been the reason for naming the Pyx mine.

PLACEDOR GULCH, Grant County. Placedor Gulch drains into South Fork John Day River just south of the mouth of Murderers Creek. It is about a dozen miles south of Dayville and drains a small area east of the river. It is said to bear the name of a Mexican, Placedor Bravo, well known in that part of the state. Bravo came into central Oregon probably about 1890 and was much interested in horses and horseraces. He died at Mount Vernon Hot Springs about 1940.

PLACER, Josephine County. Placer was named for the placer mining in the vicinity. The place is on Grave Creek a few miles east of the Pacific Highway. The Placer post office was established August 10, 1894, with N. F. Inman first postmaster. The writer does not know the date the office was closed, but it was about 1924.

PLACIDIA BUTTE, Harney County. Placidia Butte, elevation 5513 feet, is at the west edge of the county, about ten miles west of Riley and a little to the south of the Central Oregon Highway. The name has long been a puzzle and its origin uncertain, but in the summer of 1946 Alphene Venator, pioneer resident of the Harney Valley, told the compiler the butte was named for a Mexican horse trader many years ago.