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 were following the Oregon Trail out west in search of their dreams and a better life. In California, the gold rush was in full swing drawing many folks in search of that lucky strike. Back east, the Civil War was heating up and it is widely believed that five Confederate Soldiers on their way to the California gold fields discovered gold right here in the Blue Mountains.............. A cabin was built and named Fort Sumter after the infamous Civil War fort in South Carolina. Placer Gold was plentiful but it wouldn't be until much later near the end of the century when the town would really begin to grow with the advent of stamp mills and other, more efficient methods to extract gold from the ore. Until 1892 Sumpter was very much isolated from the outside world. With the arrival of the Sumpter Valley Railroad, came more people, more opportunities and thats when this small placer mining town exploded in growth and opportunities! The first US Census records Sumpter's population at about 3500. But Chinese, Women and Children were not counted so the actual population must have been quite larger. The first post office was opened in 1874 but soon discontinued and a new one opened in 1883. It has been said that the government required the township to change the name of the town from Sumter to Sumpter to avoid connection to the civil war. Some believe it was just changed to avoid confusion. on the scene in 1913 with the building of the first Yuba-Style floating mechanized placer mining dredge. Two more such dredges would be built in the next 20 years. Unfortunately, this was an inefficient form of mining which tore through the valley leaving in its wake 1600 acres of rock piles called "tailings." Though the dredges operated in the valley for over 40 years, most of the gold was left behind and can still be found today. The last of the three Dredges, The Sumpter Valley Dredge, operated from 1935 until its buckets were halted in 1952. The Sumpter Valley Dredge still exists today thanks to an ambitious restoration and preservation partnership between Oregon State Parks and Friends of The Dredge, a private group formed by local residents interested in preserving the dredge. The ongoing restoration project began back in 1993 when the Oregon State Parks purchased the dredge from a private owner. The CCMM and Friends of The Dredge also work together in Sumpter to further efforts of preserving our gold mining heritage. Visit the Friends of The Dredge website here! and discovery of one of the largest continuous gold veins in this area made hard rock mining a reality and large mining companies were formed and soon mining camps began to spider across the mountains; the remains of some mines can still be seen today. Some mines are still being worked today, privately, on a much smaller scale and according to the US Geological Survey, much of this hard rock gold vein still exists. As Sumpter grew to be a progressive town, new ways to extract the gold began to surface in the Sumpter Valley. eventually numbering about 35 total and some of the original mines are still being worked today. One of the more famous gold producing mines was the The Bonanza. It gained the attention of a well known geolist named W. Lindgren for the U.S.G.S. Here is an excerpt from his famous report written in 1900: "The Bonanza Mine is situated about 10 miles west of Sumpter on the head waters of Burnt River at an elevation of 5,140 feet. The first location is said to have been made in 1877 by a pioneer prospector named Jack Haggard, who sold it in 1879 for $350 to the Bonanza Mining Co. In 1892, the mine was bought by the Geiser brothers for a reported sum of $3,000 and worked by them until 1898, when it was sold to the present owners, a Pittsburgh, Pa. for a price believed to have been $500,000." Most of this ore was shipped on the Sumpter Valley Railroad to smelters in Washington State despite the existence of a large smelter in Sumpter which prompted its closure with only three years of operation. Hard rock mining seemed to hit its peak by the turn of the century with a recorded take of nearly $9 Million. And....there is still more where that came from! in the local area and in some cases along side the existing Sumpter Valley Dredge. In some cases, the Monighan was called in to dredge shallow areas ahead of a floating placer dredge........... The Monighan continued working until it was ordered to stop for the same reason as the Sumpter Valley Dredge: World War II. hard rock mines are still producing gold in satisfactory amounts. Placer mining is also still active in local streams and even within the Oregon State Sumpter Gold Dredge park right here in Sumpter, Oregon! And........with the price of gold on the rise.......gold mining in this once famous area may be mining up ghosts from our gold rush past! |