Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Gold mining districts in the Blue Mountains (modified after Brooks and Ramp, 1968)
is 50 miles wide and 100 miles long from John Day to
the Snake River and Idaho.
Gold in the Blue Mountains province is of two
types, lode gold and placer gold. Lode gold occurs as
veins and is mined by tunnelling into the rocks to
follow tabular bodies rich in the metal. Virtually all of
the Blue Mountains vein gold is found along the
margins of batholiths which were intruded during the
Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Found in the shat-
tered wall rocks of the batholith, gold was formed
along with quartz and a host of other low temperature
minerals that were last to crystallize from the original
magma. Placer mining exploits areas where older gold
veins have been exposed by erosive action of present
and ancient streams. Gold is seven times heavier than
quartz and almost twenty times heavier than water. It
can be carried and moved by only the fastest flowing
streams where it quickly settles in the deepest part of
the channel with the slightest waning of the water
velocity. Most placer mining tactics such as panning
and sluicing take advantage of gold's heavy weight.
Gold was first reported in the Blue Mountains
region by immigrants in 1845. Under the leadership of
Stephen Meek, a wagon train on its way to the Willam-
ette Valley became lost when it struck across the desert
of central Oregon. Looking for straying cattle, several
members of the party picked up pieces of dull yellow
metal from the bed of a small stream. One of the
nuggets was hammered flat on a wagon tire then
discarded into a tool kit. Eventually the pioneers found
their way to the Willamette Valley, the piece of gold
forgotten. Several years later, the discovery of gold in
California and Idaho triggered a memory of this
nugget, and several men of the wagon party thought
they could find what was now called the Blue Bucket
Mine. This designation has several imaginative origins.
One story goes that children on the wagon train filled
a blue bucket with water from a stream which had gold
nuggets in the bottom, while in another verison an
immigrant said he would have filled his blue bucket
with the nuggets had he known what they were. Since
that time, many unsuccessful efforts have been made to
find the creek which people claim must be located in
the vicinity of Canyon City in Grant County.
Although gold finds were reported during the
1850s, it wasn't until 1861 that prospectors were willing
to face hazards from Indians and a harsh climate to
open eastern Oregon to the excitement of a gold rush.
Henry Griffin from Portland made the original discov-
