Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/184



MINING LAWS OF JACKSON COUNTY, 1860-1876

With Introduction and Notes By VERNE BLUE

One example of the interesting subjects for research that county archives offer is the mining records in those counties where mineral wealth has been an important or controlling factor in their civilization. Nowhere in the state is this more apparent than in Jackson County. It found its origin in the gold mining camps of the early fifties, a county government being erected in 1852. All interests centered in the mines and if in the passing of seventy years they have lost their dominance, the mines still remain one of the important sources of wealth to the county and of livelihood to a large portion of its people. The early history of the county could be written from the records of its mines; they are extremely valuable, usually interesting, and sometimes curious documents. A short digression describing them will not be out of place.

They consist of a series of small volumes not uniform in size, bound in board covers. The series is not complete, but it covers about twenty years from 1880 to 1880 with references to earlier dates. Volume one is one of those missing, but a large and essential part of it appears in a later volume of copies of Conveyances of Mining Property made from these general records by an order of the County Court in 1889. 1 Two or three volumes appear in the Kecorder's office while the rest were dug up, here one and there another, from under the eaves of the attic in the wood shed, mingled

1 Mining Locations and Water Rights Records, No. 1, page 1. In vault at Recorder's office. County court order for January term, 1889. The county clerk was instructed to copy into "a suitable record book all the records of mining claims and water rights which are now contained in the old volumes of such records and carefully index the same." The copies were made and the files of mining records under the title given at the first of the paragraph are complete to date, but the interest and importance of the old records which were then tossed into the discard and which only chance has preserved from destruction, is in the fact that the Mining District Laws were not copied into the new records. If there were any other important omissions only a careful reading would show, but it would seem that nothing but that for which the title called was copied.