Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/760

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investment of capital and making sure returns. In a less degree the same nay be said of Douglas county, and also of Coos when the hydraulic process is applied to the old sea-beaches about four miles from the ocean, which are rich and extensive.

It was not until 1866 that silver ledges received any attention in southern Oregon. The first location was made one mile west of Willow Springs, in Rogue River Valley, on the crest of a range of hills running parallel with the Oregon and California road. This was called the Silver Mountain ledge, waa eight feet in width at the croppings, and was one of three in the same vicinity. Jacksonville Reporter, Jan. 13, 1866; Jacksonville Reveille, Jan. 11, 1866; Portland Oregonian, Jan. 27, 1866. In the following year silver quartz was discovered in the mountains east of Roseburg. Some of the mines located by incorporated companies in Douglas county were the Monte Rico, Gray Eagle, Excelsior, and Last Chance, these ledges being also gold-bearing. This group of mines received the name of the Bohemia district. E. W. Gale and P. Peters were among the first discoverers of quartz in Douglas county. Roseburg Ensign, Sept. 14 and 21, 1867; Salem Willamette Farmer, July 9, 1870. On Steamboat Creek, a branch of the Umpqua, James Johnson, a California miner, discovered a gold mine in quartz which assayed from $500 to $1,000 to the ton. Owing to its distance from the settlements and the difficulty of making a trail, it was neglected. The Monte Rico silver mine, in the Bohemia dis trict, yielded nearly two hundred dollars per ton of pure silver. In 1868 the Seymour City and Oakland mines were located, all being branches of the same great vein. John A. Veatch describes the Bohemia district as pertaining as much to Lane as Douglas county, and lying on both sides of the ridge sepa rating the waters of the Umpqua and Willamette. He called it a gold-bearing district, with a little silver in connection with lead and antimony. Specimens of copper were also found in the district. Id., July 12, 1869. John M. Foley, ia the Roseburg Ensign of August 29, 1868, describes the Bohemia district as resembling in its general features the silver-bearing districts of Nevada and Idaho. There is no doubt that gold and silver will at some period of the fu ture be reckoned among the chief resources of Douglas county, but the rough and densely timbered mountains in which lie the quartz veins present obsta cles so serious, that until the population is much increased, and until it is less easy to create wealth in other pursuits, the mineral riches of this part of the country will remain undeveloped.

The other metals which have been mined, experimentally at least, in southern Oregon, are copper and cinnabar. Copper was discovered in Jose phine county on the Illinois River in 1856, near where a vein called Fall Creek was opened and worked in 1863. The first indications of a true vein of copper ore were found in 1859, by a miner named Hawes, on a hill two miles west of Waldo, in the immediate vicinity of the famous Queen of Bronze mine, and led to the discovery of the latter. The Queen of Bronze was pur chased by De Hierry of San Rafael, California, who expended considerable money in attempts to reduce the ore, which he was unable to do profitably. The Fall Creek mine was also a failure financially. Its owners Crandall, Moore, Jordan, Chiles, and others made a trail through the mountains to the coast near the mouth of Chetcoe River, a distance of forty miles, where there was an anchorage, superior to that of Crescent City, from which to ship their ore, but the expenditure was a loss. In this mine, as welt as in the Queen of Bronze, the ore became too tough with pure metal to be mined by any means known to the owners.

The first knowledge of cinnabar in the country was in 1860, when R. S. Jewett of Jackson county, on showing a red rock in his mineral collection to a traveller, was told that it was cinnabar. The Indians from whom he had obtained it could not be induced to reveal the locality, so that it was not until fifteen years later that a deposit of the ore was found in Douglas county, six miles east of Oakland. The reason given for concealing the location of the cinnabar mine was that the Indians had, by accident, and by burning a large fire on the rock, salivated themselves and their horses, after which they had \n