Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/74

 62 BINGER HERMANN This was in the exploration of the Coos Bay Country by a party of miners from Jacksonville, under their leader, Perry B. Marple. Visiting Indians to the interior gave information of the immense deposits of coal in the Bay Country, of its splen- did harbor and deep sea entrance, of the gigantic timber and of its fisheries, and its gold deposits along the Coquille waters. At a public meeting of citizens at Jacksonville, a company was organized to visit and explore that country, to select and appropriate town sites, mining claims, and timber holdings. This was all done in a manner that makes another rich nar- rative of adventure, and danger, in what is now Oregon's second greatest commercial entrepot. Empire City was the name given the first townsite, and located by Captain Wm. H. Harris ; Marshfield was the second by J. C. Tolman, and North Bend by F. G. Lockhart. Soon thereafter coal mines at West Port were opened by Flanagan and Mann, who were of the Umpqua Exploration of 1850, and ship-building was com- menced by Captain A. M. Simpson at North Bend with a saw- mill beginning by H. H. Luse at Empire City. In January, 1854, the ship Demans Cove was the first vessel ever to enter Coos Bay for purpose of settlement and develop- ment and the second ship after the Nassau. The fertile valley of the Coquille nearby had: been slowly visited by trappers, miners and stockmen from the Bay, until 1858, when my father, Dr. Henry Hermann, brought to it for permanent settlement, a colony of Baltimoreans. At the mouth of that river, still earlier, indeed as early as 1853, and following the Coos Bay Exploration, gold was discovered on the beach a short distance north of the Coquille river, which yielded immense returns of fine gold, washed from the beach sand. It attracted large numbers of miners and traders and soon a town known as Randolph arose with lucrative busi- ness, which continued there for several years until the mines were exhausted and the town disappeared, with all its inhabi- tants. In 1852 another gold discovery was made which opened up to notice and development that portion of Southern Oregon