While it is true that our chief interest has to do with finding valuable mineral deposits in the present day, it can be both interesting and educational to read about important discoveries that happened many years ago. For this reason, I have decided to reprint a newspaper story from
The Oroville Weekly Gazette of Oroville, Washington. This particular account appeared on the front page of issue number 17 dated October 6, 1922. I hope you enjoy this peek back into the history of placer gold discoveries.
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AURIFEROUS SANDS OF THE SIMILKAMEEN
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Most Remarkable Placer Gold Strike Aside from Klondyke, Since Days of Coeur d'Alene Made Near Oroville.
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During the past fortnight a discovery of placer gold has been made on the Similkameen river, a few miles west of Oroville, that had it been discovered near any other town in the northwest it would have created a wild sensation, although in this community the find has been taken so placidly as not to create a ripple, and one never hears the incident mentioned upon the street. Not since the stirring days of the Coeur d'Alene gold discovery has there been such a remarkable placer find in the northwest, barring, of course, Alaska, as that made within the past few days almost in sight of Oroville. Since the great discovery on the Similkameen in 1856, when the washings vied with the richest on the Pacific coast, the auriferous sand and gravel of that stream have been worked spasmodically and crudely, always with some response to efforts put forth by the prospector in the way of flour, or small scale gold, but somehow or for some reason the gold hunters failed to strike the proper deposits and most undertakings of a more ambitious character—and there have been many—have been abandoned. It has been left to a single prospector, after a period of 66 years since the first discoveries, to prove that the bed, bars and banks of the Similkameen river, in the neighborhood of Rich Bar, just above the Falls of the Similkameen, contained untold riches.
During the past summer several prospectors have put in much time prospecting the gravel along the river, and while they have been encouraged with the results of their labor, it was left to a single prospector, Riley Coyle, an old resident of Oroville who has done more or less placer hunting along the same stream and on Mary Ann creek, near Chesaw, during the past fifteen years, to make a discovery that promises to create a sensation in mining circles and yield a substantial fortune to the discoverer.
Mr. Coyle had been washing gravel on the north shore of the river, on land embraced in a quartz claim that had been held for years by Julius Brechlin. Some three weeks ago Attorney W. E. Grant was driving along the road, the washings being just below the road between Oroville and Nighthawk, and stopped to talk with Mr. Coyle, suggesting to that gentleman that he prospect along a reef running from the hill into the river some 200 feet up the stream from where Mr. Coyle was working. Mr. Coyle took the hunch and immediately made the discovery that the gravel was fairly lousy with gold. Not the fine, flake gold, so hard to save, and which requires so much labor in order to obtain a quantity of any value, but large pieces of solid gold, two of which at least are as large as the first joint of a man's finger.
Mr. Coyle at once returned to Oroville for the purpose of securing a lease, or option, upon the ground, and displayed his find to a few acquaintances. Besides the two nuggets mentioned he had a small bottle partially filled with coarse gold. We have never seen such placer gold since the Coeur d'Alene discovery, and, as has been said before in this article, if the same gold was placed upon exhibition in any community in the northwest anywhere in touch with mineral bearing ground a stampede would instantly follow. Old and experienced mining men who have examined the gold declared it to be as fine a sampe of placer gold as they have ever seen, both as to size of the specimens and the quality of the gold. Mr. Riley (Coyle) states that the gold was picked out of the gravel with the point of his pen knife. He made no attempt to pan any of the gravel. There it was before his eyes and he was too excited and busy picking up nuggets to waste time with pick, shovel and pan. All he wanted was to establish the fact that the gold was there, secure sufficient to prove beyond caval that he had made a marvelous discovery, and then held off further investigation until he could secure possession of the land and thus not be robbed of the fruits of his labor by being forced off the ground.
It required some days to get in touch with the man who held the ground under a quartz location, and more days to close a deal, but at last the lease has been consumated. Mr. Riley (Coyle) is now on the ground preparing to make more thorough investigation and push work until cold weather compels a shut down. Those who have seen the gold that Mr. Riley (Coyle) picked out of the gravel will look forward with keen interest to the further extraction of the precious metal, and if the quantity increases, or even holds out to the present promise, it can be expected that there will be great activity along the Similkameen this fall and next spring and summer.
It may be stated that from the appearance of this placer gold it has not traveled a great distance, and while it is perfectly smooth showing that for ages it has been ground flat and smooth by the action of the water and gravel, some of the samples have quartz attached, an indication that the ledge from which the gold was originally broken off cannot be a great distance from where it was found. This theory is further carried out by the fact that in all the years that gold has been found on the Similkameen very little color has been discovered above the point on the river locally known as Rich Bar.
Now the discovery of gold at this particular place is not the opening up of a virgin placer ground. Placer gold has been known to exist on this stretch of the river since the first discovery in 1856. In 1856 and the year or two following fully 5,000 miners worked the river bars, and the amount of gold extracted has been estimated to have run up into the millions. The discovery was first made by accident by prospectors pushing through the country on their way to the Cariboo mining district in British Columbia, the same argonauts who found gold on Rock creek, northeast of Molson, and just across the line in British Columbia. We met a man nearly a quarter of a century ago who was at the diggings, a man who subsequently died at Nighthawk, who told us of the marvelous discovery and that 5,000 men were in camp at one time and not a single woman.
Recently Guy Fruit, a former resident of Oroville, met Jas. Healy at Los Angeles, a wealthy man far advanced in years, who told Mr. Fruit that he was with the party that made the first discovery of gold on the Similkameen. Mr. Healy stated that with fifteen other miners he was on his way to the Cariboo country in the fall of 1856, traveling through the Okanogan valley. The season being late the party went into camp on the flat at the foot of Palmer lake, on land afterward owned by Jack Long. In the spring gold was discovered on the Similkameen and the party forgot Cariboo and commenced washing. The Indians became hostile and the party left in the fall for Fort Colville, by the way of Rock creek. At Fort Colville the 16 men divided up $300,000 and dispersed. Such is the story of the early gold discovery on the Similkameen, told by one who was omong the original discoverers, and as has been said before almost every year since that time, 66 years ago, men have prospected the river shore and bed with more or less success. During the past 25 years numerous companies have been organized to carry on placering on a large scale along the river, but in every instance from one cause and another, these efforts have failed to bring returns commensurate with the capital invested in the enterprises.
Some 25 years ago a father and two sons came to Oroville from California for the purpose of dredging the river. A large boat was constructed and equipped, but for reasons unknown the effort proved abortive. The upper works of that old boat were used for a residence on the south side of the Similkameen for years, and we believe is still used for that purpose. Other companies constructed a large steamboat above the falls years ago, with the object of dredging with pumps, but that enterprise went on the rocks and the boat over the falls. Another company built a large steel coffer dam in the center of the river near Rich Bar, but high water came and wrecked the plant before it could be put to use. Other companies installed expensive hydraulic plants, one of them below the falls from which much was expected, yet nothing resulted. Thus the placer grounds of the Similkameen river have not been forgotten, although all efforts to secure the gold which exists in abundance without a doubt, have failed, and a vast sum of money has been squandered in those enterprises. Let us hope that Mr. Coyle will be able to solve the problem, and that in the months to come the long hidden treasure may be recovered to the benefit of mankind.
Naturally the writer was wraught up to a high pitch of excitement when he was shown the placer gold that Mr. Coyle had picked out of the gravel on the Similkameen, for he had seen nothing like it since the time the Coeur d'Alene placer field was first made known to the world. We have seen the scale, or flour gold that has been taken from the bars of the Columbia river for time immemorial, and much and ever larger samples taken in small quantities from the Similkameen and Mary Ann creek, but nothing that would compare in size with that which Mr. Coyle has to exhibit. That display carried our memory back to the fall of 1883, when the gold discovery on Eagle Creek was first made known to the world.
Thirty-nine years ago this month A. J. Prichard, the discoverer of placer gold in the Coeur d'Alene, walked into the office of the Spokane Falls Review and casually said "he wanted to show us something." Mr. Prichard asked for a sheet of white paper and we opened out a quire of white newspaper. He reached down into his clothes and pulled out a fat buckskin purse, in Alaska known as a "poke," and proceeded to pour the contents out upon the paper. Heavens, what a sight. A mound several inches high of virgin gold. The greater portion of his gold was no larger than the flakes and pieces displayed the other day by Mr. Coyle, but there were chunks as large as a large man's thumb and graduated from that size down to the smallest flakes. We had hardly passed the age of callow youth, we had never seen placer gold before, and the sight of so much wealth in the very raw fairly took our breath away. A remarkable feature to us was the apparent placidity and indifference of Mr. Prichard, the owner of so much riches. He tossed the gold about as though it were so much dirt, and did not consider the showing of any considerable importance, for, as he said, there was plenty more where that came from and all he had to do was to pick it up.
Of course the Review broke loose in great head lines and extravagant descriptions of the new El Dorado. It was big stuff for a newspaper and every scrap of information from the land of gold was grabbed with avidity and worked to a finish. The demand for copies of the Review from Butte, Salt Lake City, from every point of the compass was greater than the old hand press could supply. A stampede, such as the west had not seen since the discovery of gold in California followed, Spokane Falls became the outfitting point for the mines. People flocked to that embryo city by train, by wagon, by horseback, by foot and such a heterogeneous mass of people was hardly ever seen before. Accommodations were inadequate to meet the demand. Exhaused men paid a dollar a night to sleep in chairs. People camped anywhere and everywhere. The lust of gold had drawn out all kinds and classes of men. There was a feverish anxiety to get to the diggings. It was every man for himself and the devil take the hindermost. Every human instinct was bent on gain, and while there were many instances where humanity overcame the power of greed, the outstanding feature of the rush was selfishness and eclipse of the higher virtues.
One unfortunate feature of this rush was that it took place late in the fall and winter, and hardships untold were suffered by those who were the first to make the trip, for the trip was made over almost impassable trails on foot at first. The winter of 1883-4 was one of the hardest that had been known for years. Snow fell to a great depth in the mountains over which the trails crossed and mining was impossible. Many returned to the outside disillusioned and cursing the country as worthless. It was not until the next spring that mining could commence in earnest and much gold was taken out. But the wealth of the Coeur d'Alenes did not rest upon the placer washings. That ground was soon worked out as the gold was confined to a rather restricted district, but miners turned their attention to quartz leads, many leads were discovered from which great mines were evolved and to this day the Ceour d'Alenes is one of the richest mining districts in the world.
The original discoverer, A. J. Prichard, has passed to his fathers. For four years before he finally located placer gold, he lived and prospected in the Coeur d'Alenes, far from any civilization and living the life of a hermit. We have an original letter, somewhat yellow with age, written by Mr. Prichard in January 1883, the writing as distinct as the day the aged hand traced the words. In that letter he spoke of the discovery of gold and also of a ledge after his years of hard searching. It appears that Mr. Prichard was obsessed of a cult, or ism, and his chief desire was to benefit his brethren of that cult. The letter was written to one Mr. Chow, of California in which Mr. Prichard tells of his find and explains how he wants the friends of this cult to reap the benefit. He proposed to withhold publicity of the find until these people could secure all the gold they desired.
It seems that Mr. Prichard also wrote to "friends" in Montana and that parties started both from California and Montana for the Coeur d'Alenes in the dead of winter. They met Prichard, but at that time the ground was covered with snow and Mr. Prichard was unable to locate is discovery. The crowd that made the long trip in expectation of a fortune was incensed against Mr. Prichard, believing at the time that he had intentionally deceived them, and the Montana people were so exasperated that they wanted to hang Prichard, but the Californians prevented that drastic proceeding. The way we came in possession of the letter was that when the Californians returned home the man who had received the letter from Prichard sent it to the Spokane Falls Review with the request that the paper "roast the everlasting life out of the old dotard," and use every effort to warn people from going to the alleged placer mines. How little those birds dreamed of the marvelous wealth hid away in the mountains of the panhandle of Idaho, which have since given employment to thousands of people and produced great fortunes for many men.
What did Prichard get out of it? Nothing, so far as we know, except to have a creek named after him. Like the pioneer in every enterprise, he sowed that others might reap.
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