Nearby History: Facets of Palouse branding found in veins of gold and gems
Just in case your Halloween visitors this week included spirits of gold miners luring you to Moscow Mountain to find rich veins of abandoned ore, be glad you didn't go. While the legend of the Lost Wheelbarrow Mine and its $20,000 gold booty still intrigues us (enough to make it the subject of next week's Nearby History column), credible local historians such as J.B. West and Keith Petersen long ago exposed its questionable veracity.
Nonetheless, gold prospecting in both Whitman and Latah counties have left traces of legitimate mines and contributions to the founding and growth of towns and cities in the region before lumber became the main industry. According to West, in a 1979 issue of Whitman County Historical Society's Bunchgrass Historian, "gold was first discovered at the headquarters and tributaries of the Palouse River in the mountains of western Idaho in 1861." Palouse City, founded on the river in 1874, served as the gateway and supply hub for gold seekers.
Across the state line, prospectors discovered gold in the Hoodoo Mountains near Moscow in the early 1890s. The best account of gold mining in this region, rarely referenced in historical accounts of the Gold Rush of the West, can be found in National Parks archaeologist Richard C. Waldbauer's book "Grubstaking the Palouse" (1986). Waldbauer writes that the first registered claim in the Hoodoo Mining District belonged to an association called the Palouse Mining Company. Claims were made by individuals and associations. In 1884, the Palouse News reported enthusiastically that "the Hoodoo Mines are creating more excitement every week. Everything looks favorable for a general boom in a short time."
The Thatuna Mining Company developed Moscow Mountain's White Cross Mine, whose overgrown entrance is still accessible today by equally overgrown trails above Gnat Creek. Records show that Francis Thomson, dean of mining at the University of Idaho, assessed the production potential of the White Cross, and concluded it was not quite a "bonanza" in spite of the 5-stamp crushing mill erected at its entrance. It was put up for sale in 1918.
Mining for precious stones also generated excitement locally and commercially soon after William Leasure found opals of gem quality, including the rare "harlequin" variety 26 feet below the ground on his farm on Missouri Flat Creek while digging a well in 1890. Many of the gem stones Idaho is famous for - agates, amethyst, opals and garnets - enticed transient miners to establish remote mountain homes and communities in Latah County's timbered hills.
Leasure was reportedly much disturbed when his find generated about 200 mining claims in the area. Opals of gem quality were also found in commercial amounts by E.C. Hall on the 160-acre Chlor Patterson farm, in Whitman County about 5 miles west of Moscow. Hall immediately leased the property for 10 years. Patterson was to receive a quarter of all opals and other stones found on the property. Opal mines centered on both sides of the Washington-Idaho border, between Pullman and Moscow. In 1891 and 1892 Denver-based North American Gem Opal Mining Company mined for opals, and Moscow jeweler James Allen excited Moscow residents into thinking Moscow, with the first commercial opal mines in the United States, could become the opal mining center of the world. Garnets ultimately joined opals as the stones contributing to Idaho's branding as "The Gem State," but their commercial production did not begin until the 1940s.
Newcomers to the Palouse traveling through or flying above the endless rolling hills of our unique landscape quickly learn the region's "branding" as the capital of some of the world's most valued agricultural staples: wheat, barley, peas and lentils. Not to be discounted, however, are the rock and mineral riches that are part of our nearby history and branding as an important facet of the gems of the Palouse.
Joann Jones is curator emeritus for the Latah County Historical Society.
