"There's gold in California." The magic words swelled into a roar that swept across the United States and around the world. Men poured into the region overland and by ship. Europeans came, hard-nosed Australians left their southern continent, Americans surged into gold fields of the newest part of the nation. Whole companies of Mexican War volunteers took their discharges and headed for the gold fields.
    Focal point for the thousands was Sacramento, where James W. Marshall discovered gold in the mill race of Sutter's Mill. It was here that the overland trail spewed forth its thousands and the boats from San Francisco debarked the masses that had arrived by sea.
    Later comers were forced to spread out over the great central valley while more adventurous souls moved into the mountains seeking the mother lode from whence the rivers had received their golden cargo.
    Like a plague of locusts the gold seekers spread across the land. In twenty-five years they swept over the hills and mountains to the Fraser River in the north; from the sands of the Oregon coast to the Black Hills in the east. The cry of "Gold" was enough to set in motion a stream of prospectors and sharpshooters. If gold was there, they stayed until the next strike. If it proved to be a humbug, the disillusioned miners struggled back.
    In their wake the gold seekers left a land permanently scarred, a thousand ghost towns and a legend. It was a legend of violence and blood, of fortunes made and lost, of rough comradeship and dance hall girls, of the fearful vigilantes and of lost mines and treasures. It was a legend to fit America; lusty, young and exuberant.
    Less known but worthier monuments were the other things they left. Three new states in the union, California, Oregon and Nevada. Three territories near statehood, Washington, Idaho and Montana. Two great cities, San Francisco and Portland. A transportation net and a transcontinental railroad that provided the route to market that developed the industries which had sprung up in response to the needs of the miners, agriculture and lumbering.
    The Pacific Northwest has never recovered from the gold rush. There is still an abiding belief in the big bonanza. Though they no longer rush for gold, the people continued to rush in on succeeding bonanzas (uranium, silver, fruit and a dozen others). Every town in the region has its great bonanza just waiting for the capital to develop it.
    Nor has gold been forgotten. Prospect holes dot the landscape, new ones beside the crumbling, vegetation filled holes of the forty-niners. Sluice boxes still run in the old diggings. There are even now banks that take in gold and stores with scales for weighing gold they still receive in trade.
    Every town in the old mining country has its old prospector who has a spot. Somewhere out in the hills is a place where someone took out a fortune and there are more just like it. Every hard rock mine has a fabulously rich vein just waiting to be opened.
    So it is in the Rogue River country. Not all of the old gold camps remain. Some have disappeared almost completely. The mines are still there. Scarred hillsides bear mute testimony to the greed of the miner.
    The land between the Rogue River and the Applegate produced much of the gold of the region. Here was found the famous blue gravel as well as gold-bearing quartz and the gold-filled sands. The first miners cleaned out the streams with their sluices. Later miners plunged their drifts into the quartz. Then came the capitalist who built ditches and smashed the hills with the drenching force of the hydraulic.
    There was one difference here. The gold miner rushing to the new strikes ran head-on into the settler fencing off his acres under the Donation Land acts. It produced a strange community of miner, farmer and the hybrid farmer-miner. This latter was the man who placered in the winter and spent the spring and summer on his farm.
    Sterling Creek lies in the heart of this gold area. Millions in gold have come out of the narrow valley that reaches only five miles from the summit at its head to its mouth. Yet much of its land has never been mined. The miner came first but the farmer was not far behind. They lived side by side. They still do more than one hundred years later.

    In central Southern Oregon lies a region drained by the Rogue River. It is the area which produced the largest of the early gold mines of the state. Surrounded by mountains, it is an island of minerals and agricultural wealth.
    It is a geological never-never land. Formations are piled on each other in a helter-skelter fashion that defies reasonable analysis. Within this small region can be found evidence of most of the geologic eras of the earth.
    The principal features of the region are two ranges of mountains. The volcanic Cascades stretch to the north while the Klamath Mountains thrust up through them in an east-west line. The drainage of the Rogue is largely the interstices of this welter of ranges crossing ranges.
    The upheaval that created this strange welter of mountains has done strange things to the land. Formations run along the surface only to disappear, sheared off. Some distance further on the formation recurs. It is as though the intervening section of land had been turned upside down. An ancient lake covered most of the land before the upheavals took place. The river channels that fed and drained the lake ceased to function as the earth surged and buckled beneath them, but the channels remain, easily traced by the gravel, rock and sand of the river beds that wind through the other formations.
    Outcroppings of fossils, old beaches and the skeletal fragments of elephants appear in the valley, marking some of the ages of life in geological time. Mineral springs survive, cool reminders of the hot thrusting of a younger earth.
    The variegated land is rich in minerals and diversity is a feature of this resource. Here are found gold, silver, mercury, asbestos, nickel, cobalt, limestone, granite, tungsten, antimony, manganese, coal, bentonite, silica, copper, oil, iron, lead, platinum, beryllium, chromite, molybdenum and zinc.
    With this profusion of mineral resources it is not surprising that the early history of the area and much of its development is connected with mining. The minerals have been a source of hope, wealth and frustration to succeeding generations here.
    Placer gold brought the first miners. Gold-bearing quartz began to attract as the placers played out, though more money has been poured into them than ever came out of them. Coal had a brief flurry of development. Copper attracted interest but brought little return for investment. Granite became an important industry for a brief period. Limestone still supports a basic industry.
    The most profitable of the mining eras was the placer mining period. It has also attracted the most attention and has the greatest romantic appeal. It was placer gold that built Sterlingville and kept it going.
    Mining began in Jackson County in January, 1852. (The date and the location are matters of dispute. No conclusive evidence exists. December, 1851 is sometimes given as the date and a tributary of Jackson Creek as the place.) Gold was discovered in Jackson Creek by a group of packers traveling through the valley. Within two months the richness of the new strike had brought several thousand miners into the area and the town of Jacksonville was born.
    From here the miners spread over the adjacent mountains, seeking and finding other rich claims. A simultaneous discovery farther down the Rogue River attracted its thousands and the area between the two was soon dotted with prospect holes and placer claims. Gold seekers poured into the region from the Northern California mines. Jackson and Josephine counties were born and prospered as the streams yielded their golden harvest.
    The miners were hardly settled on their claims when another stream of immigration emptied into the Rogue Valley. A few hardy pioneers who had staked donation land claims in 1851 returned with friends and relatives from the East to settle the rich agricultural land of the valley.
    The two groups did not mix in perfect amity. Each looked down upon the other, a social attitude that was mitigated by their mutual need of each other and the development of a hybrid group, the farmer-miners, who tried to make the best of each world. It did make for a stability of life frequently lacking in the other placer mining districts.
    Another unifying feature was the hostility of the local Indian population toward the intruders. Friction generated conflict which erupted in the first of the Rogue River wars. A desultory affair, it fizzled and sputtered until colorful General Joseph Lane negotiated the Treaty of Table Rock in September, 1853.
    The hostilities had taken only a small toll in lives but had seriously delayed development of the valley. Miners did not venture out into the hills in search of gold and some of the claims were abandoned until the cessation of hostilities. The farmers huddled together in a few cabins and stockades, venturing out only in groups under the pressure of reaping the crops necessary to survival.
    The recovery was rapid. The signing of the Treaty of Table Rock brought an end to most of the terror. Crops were quickly gathered by the farmers while the miners hastily prepared for the mining season which began with the first of the fall rains. The valley was once more a scene of boom and bustle.
    Jacksonville was a lively place in the spring of 1854. Crowds of miners thronged the streets and the saloons were doing a good business. In spite of the severity of the winter and the shortage of water which hampered operations, the general level of prosperity was high and another mining season would come.
    The area had proved itself and the presence of the farmers augured for permanence. Jacksonville began to strengthen its claim to being the metropolis of Southern Oregon. The first brick building in town, the Maury-Davis store, was open for business. Across the street the brick walls of the Brunner building were rising. Brick buildings marked the maturity of the community in the eyes of its boosters.
    The settlers in the valley were prospering, too. Two flouring mills promised a good market for the farmers who had been moving into the valley in the past three years. The little community of Ashland Mills (one flour and one lumber) was showing signs of developing into a town. The group of farmers gathered around the claims of the Colver brothers was also becoming a town. Then known as Eden precinct, it was to become successively Gasburg and Phoenix.
    By the middle of May crops were planted in the valley. The farmer-miners began returning to their claims in the hills until the hot, dry weather of the late summer should dry up the streams and ripen the crops.
    Among the group who left the plow for the gold pan was James Sterling. He held a Donation Land Claim in Eden precinct which he was working in partnership with Aaron Davis. Living with him were his mother, the indomitable Mrs. Elizabeth Sterling, a younger sister, Lucinda, and his younger brother Richard. The family had come across the plains in 1853 from Illinois where it had stopped on its way from Pennsylvania.
    Jim Sterling was then twenty-six years old. A native of Pennsylvania, he was a tall, raw-boned, heavy-chested, powerful man. He was bearded in his later life and probably had a beard at this time. In many ways he was typical of the miners of the area.
    Sterling and Davis were partners in a mining claim on Jackson Creek. With the crops in, the two decided to return to their claim to work it while the water lasted. When they arrived at the claim, however, they found that it had been jumped. There was nothing that they could do about it. It was a generally accepted law in the camps that claims did not belong to those who wouldn't work them. In some of the areas of the farmer-miner, claims were not "jumpable" from April to October, but this provision does not seem to have applied to Jackson Creek.
    The two young men decided to do a bit of prospecting before they returned to the farm. They probably crossed to Jackass Creek (now Forest Creek) and looked over the diggings at Union Flat and Rebel Flat.
    The good claims on Jackass Creek were all taken up and the upper Applegate was not a highly productive gold area. The two men had a choice in the return home. They could retrace their steps or they could proceed up the Little Applegate to the old Indian trail that crossed the mountains to the home farm in Eden precinct.
    Whether they prospected on the way or not we don't know. The most productive gold field on the Little Applegate was just above the junction with the main Applegate. It had to wait for a more extensive operation than the rough mining techniques of the period for its exploitation. The fabulous Chinese, Gin Lin, was to take his thousands out of here with a hydraulic later on. It would not yield its riches to the lone prospector.
    Though the Indians and whites were no longer at war in this summer of 1854, both sides were nervous. Small groups of whites, particularly those with few or no weapons, had never been safe traveling through this country. They pushed some distance up the stream before stopping for lunch.
    Half way from the mouth to the source of the creek, an intermittent trickle comes in from the west. The little valley widens out at this point to its greatest width. It was here that Jim Sterling and Aaron Davis stopped for lunch.
    The pine-clad hills look down on the scene today much as they did then. The meadow grass covers the bottom and a line of scrub brush marks the course of the main stream and the little tributary. On the east side of the main stream a drainage way drops down to the main stream.
    After the noon meal, Jim Sterling began prospecting in the hole left by an uprooted tree. It was a favorite device of the prospector, affording him easy penetration to the gold-bearing gravel, if there were any. Working his pan in the small creek, he discovered a heavy showing of the pale gold, nearly a dollar's worth. Aaron Davis joined him, and in a few hours the two knew that they had made a rich strike.
    It was no place for two lone prospectors. The Indian camp was too near. Nor were they equipped to settle down and develop the claims. They needed more tools and a good load of supplies. It was time to head across the pass to home.
    It is easy to visualize the two excited young men pushing their horses to reach the farm, bursting with their good news. The way back must have been a time of laying plans for the exploitation of their rich find.
    They called in three friends to join with them. One of the friends was George Rockfellow, who later earned some local fame as an inventor and some success with a patented gate. The other two were J. P. Burns and John Bonum.
    The five men set out on June 1st to explore the find. They spent a day and a half on the creek, prospecting the site. They wished to find the extent of the field and to locate the richest portion for their own claims. In that time they washed out some $48 in gold, finding one nugget that weighed out at $12, nearly an ounce at the prevailing price of gold. The richness of the find was confirmed and claims were staked out in their minds for they did not want to give away the site to a casual passerby with the usual posted notices.
    The men set out for Eden Precinct and home. They needed to lay in a good supply of provisions and to acquire the tools and materials for extensive working of the claims. This was a bonanza and they wished to be thoroughly prepared to take maximum advantage of it.
    One of the greatest puzzles connected with the discovery is why they did not leave two or three of their number to hold the claims for them while the others returned the following day. None of them ever said. What they did do was to agree to keep the news a secret and to wait until the following Tuesday before coming back to the creek. Tuesday was election day and they wanted to vote before returning to the strike.
    The reason for the secrecy is well understood. Once a suspicion of a strike was out a stampede would result. But why the delay? There were no real important issues in the election. It was not a presidential election year. We shall never know and it is impossible to guess, for gold fever is a disease that strikes hardest at the reasoning faculty, usually rendering it completely inoperative.
    The five took the trail back up the valley and across the pass. Coming down Coleman Creek they had to pass the claims of Hubbard and John Coleman. There they found a group of men gathered to help the brothers "raise a house." To have passed by this pioneer community project without lending a hand would have aroused both suspicion and resentment. They joined in with their neighbors.
    The men at the house-raising party sensed the excitement in the little party that joined them. Curiosity aroused, they began to question the gold seekers to learn what was in the wind. The young men stood firm and would not divulge their secret, and the house raising went on to its completion.
    Ab Giddings was not content with the evasive answers. He knew young Aaron Davis quite well and he was determined to get the secret out of his young friend. Getting him alone, Giddings went to work and Davis finally broke down and told him of the rich strike.
    Anxious to get in first on the discovery, Giddings convinced Davis that the others would keep the secret no better than he had. It was imperative that they get to the creek immediately. They gathered gear together and set out early the next morning, Sunday, to the site of discovery where they staked claims and began mining.
    Monday one of the discoverers went to Jacksonville to be on the scene so that he could vote early Tuesday morning and be off for the new gold field. During the course of the evening, he got quite drunk. As the liquor flowed, his tongue loosened and the news leaked out. Soon the crowd had learned the location and a stampede resulted as the eager gold seekers stumbled through the night in the race for the best claims.
    Jim Sterling arrived at the site of his discovery early on Tuesday morning. The creek was staked from source to mouth and rim to rim. Blanket tents were everywhere and the miners were busily stripping their claims or sinking shafts in the flats.
    He went down to the point where the claims were being registered and found his erstwhile friend, Aaron Davis. Jim was offered a half claim as the discoverer of the mine. (The usual discoverer's portion was a claim and a half or two claims.) He angrily rejected the offer and returned to his home.
    Who gave away the secret of the discovery in Jacksonville? On January 22, 1900 the Ashland Tidings printed an account of the discovery that claimed that the culprit was Jim Sterling himself. It is the only account which names the man. The other stories do not divulge the identity.
    There are several things wrong with this identification. Chief of them is that Jim Sterling would not have gone into Jacksonville to vote. His Donation Land Claim was in Eden Precinct and he would have voted there. Nor does it fit the picture of the sober, hard-working young man who brought his mother and two younger children across the plain from Illinois and supported and cared for his mother for the remainder of her long and active life.
    There is one other point. Only once in his later life did Jim Sterling take a partner. He and Allen Lee, his brother-in-law, went to the Idaho mines in 1863 and mined for a time near Florence. After that, he always worked alone. I think that it was his partners rather than liquor that betrayed him.
    This ended Jim Sterling's association with the creek that bears his name. He farmed the claim near Phoenix for a year or two but turned it over to Allen Lee after Lee married Lucinda in early 1855.
    Jim Sterling moved to Cottonwood Creek where he took up land just north of the California line. Here he and his younger brother, Richard, farmed the land while his mother kept house. He filed for a water right in 1870 and continued to develop the prosperous farm.
    Sometime after this Jim Sterling bought a house in the town of Cottonwood (now Henley), California. He sold his farms and moved his mother into town. It was a good location for Mrs. Sterling for she was not too far from the Lees, who had moved to Yreka. Jim Sterling went back up in the mountains, prospecting for gold.
    In June, 1882 Mrs. Sterling felt the end approaching. She made the trip to Yreka to see her daughter and the grandchildren once more, for Lucinda was too ill to make the journey to her mother. The doughty old pioneer of 80 died four days after her arrival, on June 14.
    Following his mother's death, Jim Sterling began to devote most of his time to mining. He made a noteworthy strike on Hungry Creek, just south of the Oregon line, in 1892. He discovered a quartz lead some eight feet wide which assayed initially at eight to twelve dollars a ton and became richer as it went into the mountain.
    He spent several years in developing the mine, generally working alone though he would hire young boys to cook and help out during the summer. In 1894 he bought a house in Ashland where he was a frequent winter visitor but he rented the house and never lived in it himself.
    In 1897 Jim Sterling bought a small house in Henley which he occupied during the winter. It was near enough to his mine and he apparently planned to retire there.
    The rigors of a long life of pioneering and mining began to take their toll. Sterling sold his Hungry Creek mine in 1900 to a promoter named Fore. It was a typical transaction, Fore purchasing an undivided 7% interest in the property for the sum of $17,500 and re-selling it to a West Virginia group for $42,000.
    Sterling had sold his Ashland property in 1899 so he was now ready for retirement. He gave up his home in Henley and went to live with his sister Lucinda in Yreka. Lucinda was a widow now, living with one of her daughters.
    James Sterling died in Yreka on June 5, 1903 at the age of seventy-six. He left all of his estate to his sister and, according to the probate, it amounted to only $1165.80 in cash after the discharge of all obligations. It was a small sum of money for the man who had discovered the fabulously rich Sterling Creek mining district.
    He left only one monument, the small creek that still bears his name. His name has long since disappeared from the mine on Hungry Creek and the ranch on Cottonwood Creek. His name does not appear at all in the history of Phoenix, Oregon.
    There is a legend, though. On Sterling Creek they will tell you that Jim Sterling owned the whole creek. He developed the mine, dug the ditch that supplied it with water and brought in hundreds of Chinese to work the mine. He took out millions in gold; the story ranges from fifty to one hundred million. No one knows what happened to him, though. Sold out and went back east, they reckon.
    It's a strange tale and like most of those that concern the Pennsylvanian who lies in an unmarked grave in the old cemetery at Yreka.

    Every new gold strike brought one immediate problem to the men who staked the claims. Some sort of organization had to be established to govern the area until the normal processes of government could operate. By the time the rush to Sterling Creek began a regular pattern had been established so that organization could be done almost to a formula.
    The first move on the part of the men to organize was to establish a mining district. This district needed a set of mining laws and these were adopted by the first comers. The later arrivals were expected to subscribe to these laws as a price of staking claims to the district. The process was democracy in action in a tradition extending in America back to the famous Mayflower Compact of the Pilgrims.
    To the miners, the important laws were those governing the claiming, occupation and possession of their claims. There was plenty of law around to take care of normal necessities, it was felt, but nothing much in the way of formal mining law. The miners also professed to recognize a need for some variation in laws of districts according to the differences that existed.
    Sterling Creek offers a particularly good illustration of the problems arising in legislating on claims. There were four classes of claims here. The most important were, of course, the usual "creek" claims, those adjacent to the stream. Of nearly equal importance, because of their richness, were the "flats" claims. These were claims on the land where the little valley widened out and were mined by sinking a shaft to bedrock and sending the gold-bearing soil and gravel up by bucket. The next class of claims was the hillside claims. Removed from the stream, these claims were usually larger and not as rich as the first two types. Sterling Creek also had a type of claim that took in the hillsides along the bottom of the valley. These claims were worked by drifting, running a more or less horizontal shaft into the hill to reach bedrock.
    It is not possible to be precise in describing the mining laws of Sterling Creek, for they have disappeared. The laws were probably recorded in Volume I of the mining laws of Jackson County. In the course of time this volume has disappeared from the county archives. [The volume is now held by the Oregon Historical Society. Mining claims were rarely officially registered with the county recorder; mining laws even more rarely.] It is possible, however, to reconstruct these laws in a sketchy way.
    The standard claim in Jackson County seems to have been twenty acres with a two-hundred-yard creek frontage. In the first rush, it is probable that the creek claims were only half this size. Claims on the flat were smaller and one source states that at Sterling Creek they were forty-foot squares because of the richness of the ground. Later, after the gold rush had subsided, flat claims were limited to 100 square yards. Hillside claims seem to have been twenty-acre claims while the claims at the foot of the hills were the same size as creekside claims.
    Another clause that was invariably present in mining laws was one limiting the number of claims that might be held by pre-emption and the total number of claims that might be held by one person. In the days of the first rush the limit was one claim by pre-emption and not more than one by purchase. Occasionally a limit was set as to how many claims might be worked together but this does not seem to have been in effect at Sterling Creek.
    A very important provision in every set of mining laws was the provision regarding occupancy. Claim jumpers were always a serious problem in a mining district, especially a new one. The miners did not want a claim standing idle when a willing man was available who wanted to work it. On the other hand, there were reasons that a miner might have to leave his claim temporarily for a short time that did not constitute abandonment in any sense. The miner usually wanted to be reasonable and just in the matter and this clause was always a serious problem in a mining district.
    During the first flush of the rush into a district a miner had to occupy his claim continuously. Until he had established his ownership as a matter of general knowledge, it was not safe to leave it. This is why most miners had partners. Someone had to be on the claim at all times. After the first days of the rush continuous occupation was not necessary and the mining laws usually provided periods when no occupation at all was necessary.
    At Sterling Creek few of the miners worked a claim by themselves. Very few of the claims were rich enough so that a man could make wages working alone. Additional hands increased the take considerably, usually far beyond the cost of the additional labor. Sometimes men worked claims in partnership, sometimes they hired others to work for them. Occasionally men who owned adjacent claims would work both claims in partnership. Most of the rich areas found groups of men working together. The usual size ranged from three to fifteen men working in a company. A group of fifteen could work enormous quantities of gravel in a short time.
    The law of occupation still holds in the mining country. A man must post his notices and be in physical possession of the claim on July 1 each year in order to continue holding it. There is a good reason for this. Miners abandon claims for a number of reasons: death, illness, discouragement or moving to another district. It was felt that a good claim should not remain inactive when there was someone willing to work it and the original owner was no longer interested in it.
    These, like most of the regulations of the mining camps, were simple, practical provisions. The miner was vitally concerned with possession of the claim and with water rights. Other laws seemed unnecessary. The miners had come to work their claims. They resented anything which interfered with this. The mining season was short enough without taking time out to attend meetings or worry about government.
    Law and order at Sterling was never a problem. The camp was just a few miles from the county seat at Jacksonville and government was firmly established there, the first territorial court session having been held in September, 1853. Shortly after the strike at Sterling the Jackson County court appointed a justice of the peace and the regular machinery of law and order began operating.
    The summer of 1854 was warm and somewhat drier than normal. Some of the men who had rushed to the new strike became discouraged and left. This was normal. There is an hysteric quality to a gold rush. Men get caught up and carried away by the excitement. After a time the fever wears off and they return quietly to the places they had left. Others became discouraged by the lack of water. To work their claims required carrying the dirt down to the creek and it did not seem worthwhile. Those who had the less promising claims and those who had less persistence had left Sterling Creek even before the end of that first summer.
    When George Miller West arrived at Sterlingville in the early fall of 1854 he found the miners generally camped around on the hills under the larger trees, disdaining further shelter. By this time the town boasted some buildings, a hotel, a bakery and a grocery having been added, and another hotel and a couple of boarding houses were under construction.
    The scarcity of water was being felt and there was little work to be had until the rains came. West reported plenty of unclaimed ground but none of it supplied with water. He found a small patch of ground and located it. Working the ground and carrying his dirt to the water was a tedious chore but he had compensation in making as much as $5.50 to the pan, a return which indicates the richness of the strike at Sterling.
    Sterlingville took on a more settled look as the year wore on. The additions of buildings to the infant town and the organization of some of the ground into company-style workings marked the maturing of a gold rush community.
    With winter coming on, activity increased. The fall rains would supply the water to work the claims while the winter weather made it necessary to build something more permanent than a blanket under a tree for shelter. Cabins were built and some of the company operations constructed cook shacks to take care of their employees.
    James M. Sutton, one of the first miners at Sterling, has left us a fine description of his cabin and of the life that he and his partners led in these early days on the creek. The cabin was a commodious structure eight feet wide and ten feet long. The logs that composed it had been hacked down by brute force using the old root ax. As this was the only tool that the partners had for carpentry, the resulting structure was lacking in elegance. A few nails driven in the wall of the cabin served to hold the gum boots and the clothes of the men when they came in at night.
    The furnishings of the cabin consisted of a rude table, benches and bunks. The bunks were built against the walls, a saving in space and in construction time and were filled with fir boughs for comfort and warmth. The fireplace was a crude structure of mud and sticks rising from a stone hearth in one end of the cabin and served for heating and cooking both.
    The cooking was as primitive as the arrangements for shelter. A camp kettle and a frying pan were the sole utensils employed and proved sufficient for the culinary activities of the men. The diet was beans and bacon. (This was augmented by bread purchased from the bakery.) A batch of beans was prepared once or twice a week. The pot of beans was warmed slightly for breakfast. If the men were not too tired from the day's work, it was warmed again in the evening. Frequently the toll of the day's activity was so great that the men could not bother to heat the beans at night but gulped them down cold from the pot.
    Each night the results of the day's labor were brought to the cabin in a gold pan. Sutton relates that he and his partners made a game of guessing the amount obtained. The gold was then weighed with a scale, an indispensable part of the equipment of anyone in the mining country. This chore performed, the partners checked the vicinity of the cabin closely to make sure that they were not being spied upon. Then they went to their cache where the accumulated results of their labor were hidden. Sutton says that they had bored a hole in one of the logs of the cabin with an auger. The hole was plugged with a pin. Inside the hole was the community poke, and the daily take was added to it each night after the return to the cabin.
    After putting the poke back into its hiding place, the men either ate some cold beans or just crawled into their bunks. There was no time for night life and no energy even if there had been time. They had to be up at work on the claim by dawn the next morning. The mining season was short and no one could afford to waste a minute of it.
    It was a hard life but it had its compensations. Frequently the partners became very close and the comradeship of the completely male society was fondly remembered by nearly all the miners as they reminisced in their later years. The invigorating mountain air and the restful beds of fir boughs were pleasures not to be despised, either.
    Sutton's experience was with a group of men working in partnership. Life in the larger companies was somewhat different. Here all of the men were hired hands working for wages and the attitude was, consequently, a less devoted one. These men were the ones who engaged in the night life of the camp along with the storekeepers, gamblers and other non-mining people who made up the community.
    The companies usually employed a dozen or more men. The owners might also be the supervisors but the usual pattern was to hire a manager or a foreman to run the mine. The company usually provided food for the men and hired a cook to prepare it. Occasionally bunk houses were also provided though the miner was usually expected to furnish his own shelter.
    George West found employment with one of these companies during that first winter in Sterlingville. His own hillside claim was not productive enough for a one-man operation and working for a company offered security. For many this was more important than the unlikely chance of a bonanza that might be discovered working for themselves.
    The company that West went to work for was owned by two men whom he identified as Tex and Halick (probably Halleck). Tex may well have been Tex Helm who was well known in the area. Halleck was a lieutenant with the Army garrison at Fort Lane on the Rogue River, according to West. The company operated several claims adjacent to each other and employed two gangs of men working the combined holdings. It also had its own cook shack and employed a cook to feed its help.
    Tex and Halleck had come to suspect their foreman of stealing from the cleanup. It was a suspicion that was probably well founded and Tex, as a hotel owner and a gambler, was in good position to note any peculations. West was given the job as foreman for the company, a responsible position for a young man in his early twenties.
    The job was an arduous one. Each evening West had to clean both strings of sluices and pan out the gold that had been collected during the day. He kept the take at the cook shack and turned in the gold once a week to the partners. At this time he would receive the pay for the men and would turn it over to them. The men were paid in orders on Sterlingville merchants but West was to receive his pay in gold.
    It was a good job for a young man and George West let his pay pile up with his employers, hoping to acquire a nest egg. He wanted to settle down to farming and this was the means of acquiring capital for that purpose. It turned out to be a bad move. Tex was an inveterate gambler and hit a losing streak. He gambled away his hotel and then the creditors stepped in, seizing all the partnership assets for debts. West found himself out of a job and relates that this situation found him with only fifty cents in his pocket from his months of labor.
    The men who filled the mining camps were good and bad as might be expected. Some were lazy, some were complainers, some were thieves, some were gamblers and some were idlers. There were ambitious young men like George West and Jim Sutton, who were both unlucky in their mining experiences. There were also ambitious young men like "Tod" Cameron who stayed on to become quite well to do.
    Nor did the closeness of the partners in working a claim always result in lasting friendships. It might as easily end in lasting enmity. Many times it resulted in an in-between state where the men involved had nothing more to do with each other.
    One example of the results of partnership is a classic story of the mining West that comes from Sterling Creek. Whether "Unlucky Bob" and "Old Bill Slicat" were real inhabitants of early Sterling or were just frontier types, we don't know. Probably every camp had its "Old Bill Slicat" though he might not always be recognized from his ownership of an appaloosa. Certainly "Unlucky Bob" is a type that abounds everywhere. Here is the story as Jim Sutton told it in the Ashland Tidings of June 17, 1876.

    Old Bill Slicat. Well I should say I did! Didn't I sink the hole on Walla Walla Flat right where he took out his pile? Didn't he go right into the hole after he'd got me out'n it, and get an ounce to the pan: Didn't you never hear what a mean trick he played me, about that claim, Tom? Well, you see, him an' I'd been prospectin' round Sterlin' a month or so, in the spring of '55, and neither of us struck anythin' worth while, an' things begun to look purty blue. Old Evans, who kept up on the corner, you know, refused to let us have a sack of flour, an' take it off the bedrock, so you see, somethin' had to be done. So I concluded to take my pick an' pan, an' go down torge the Rhinehart gulch an' sink a hole on the flat. I went down about ten feet, an' got to be rather hard pitchin'. I went and hunted up Old Bill and we rigged up a windless, and next day I went in and put the hole down about eighteen feet to bedrock. I tell you, Tom, that it was as purty dirt as you ever seed. But Old Bill, after washin' out a few pans, declared he couldn't get the color, an' begin to cuss the Sterlin' diggin's, and everybody about 'em. He wanted me to go back with him to the right-hand fork. As I felt a little cuss-like torge the diggin's, I concluded to go. He went and caught that old spotted red-ear'd cayuse of his, and we packed our "traps" and put out for Jackson Creek. We hadn't got further'n Old Dav. Hopkins' ranch, when he'd commenced pickin' a quarrel with me. When we got to Jacksonville, he unpacked my blankets, and told me to "git." I took my "duds" and went up to old Squire Hayden's camp, that night, and never heard any more of Old Bill till I heard of him strikin' it big in that very hole of ourn.
    You see, he'd got a big prospect, while I was down in the hole, an' then "played" me. If you don't b'lieve me, just ask "Cap" Saltmarsh, Tom Gilson, Tom Wright, or any of them old fellows; they all know "Unlucky Bob."
    Thus ends the tale. He probably got little sympathy from the men he called on to witness the truth of his yarn, for each of them stayed on Sterling Creek to earn a comfortable living from mining and farming.

    It was apparent almost immediately that the strike on Sterling Creek was a rich one. The first comers were taking out large quantities of the distinctive pale gold and early reports stated that $50 per day was nothing uncommon. Within a week reports were circulating that many of the Sterling miners were making from $100 to $500 a day. Newspaper headlines all over Northern California heralded the rich, new discovery and magnified the early reports of the richness of the new field.
    Tension and excitement held through the summer as a shortage of water prevented the miners from working many of the claims The summer of 1854 was a dry one and Sterling Creek runs only a small head of water under the best circumstances. The claims that were working gave such promise that the coming of the winter rains was eagerly awaited.
    This obvious richness of the ground ensured that a town would spring up to serve the strike. By the first of October, the diggings boasted a population of some 1,500 and the town included what one newspaper referred to as "several substantial houses." Various references to Sterlingtown, Sterlingville and Sterling City indicate that the name had not been agreed upon as yet but this was an incidental point to the men who had come to reap fortunes from the bedrock.
    The pattern of the development of a town at a new diggings was pretty well standardized by this time. What information there is concerning the early development of Sterlingville indicates that it was typical in this respect. Early businesses nearly always included a bakery and there were, of course, saloons and stores. A boarding house was also a good business if a camp showed any signs of permanence.
    One of the first businesses, and probably one of the substantial buildings referred to, was the El Dorado Saloon. The deed records of Jackson County record that in December, 1854 "a certain house and lot in the Town of Sterlingville … known as the El Dorado Saloon" was sold by Mr. James W. Buck and his wife to Orlo Cheever for the sum of $1200.
    Other references to the deeds records give further indications of early buildings and business establishments. Early 1855 brought the sale of the "Alexander and Knox Drinking Saloon … on Water Street … between Alexander Stuart's Boarding House and a Small Board House on the upper sides." A few pages further on we find the record of the sale of a boarding house on February 17, 1855.
    The summer of 1855 brought the sale of a house and lot in Sterling that has some interesting information on other buildings. This property is described as located on the corner opposite Karewski's store and the Adams Bakery. A later notation in the volume, dated June 27, 1855, records the sale of the Braman and Rood warehouse.
    This sample gives some idea of the early businesses and buildings that made up the town of Sterlingville. The loss of the plat of the town site (if, indeed, there ever were one) prevents identification of Water Street or the location of the properties but the pattern is reasonably clear.
    One of the most profitable of these early businesses was Gustav Karewski's store. Karewski had been one of the first on the ground with merchandise after the strike and had quickly acquired a string of pack animals to freight goods in from Jacksonville. Later he began to freight from Yreka, which was better stocked and had goods at slightly lower prices.
    Karewski's ownership of the pack train made for added profits in the business both from the savings in freight charges and his ability to get his goods in when he wanted them. He later claimed to have made $20,000 clear profit on the operation in that first year of operation.
    The money was soon lost however. When a strike was announced at Willow Creek, Karewski attempted to duplicate his Sterling operation. He packed his train and rushed into the new area. Willow Creek, discovered in 1855, proved to be a humbug and Karewski lost his entire profit as a result. He'd sold goods on "bedrock" and the failure of the diggings to produce any noticeable amount of gold left him holding a lot of worthless paper that was, largely, uncollectable.
    When young George West arrived at Sterling in the fall of 1854 he found a lively community which included hotels, saloons, stores, bakers and butchers as well as a gambling house. The town was on the west side of the creek, while most of the mines were on the east side in the flats in the area now occupied by the Sterling Mining Company reservoir, the Duncan place, the mining company headquarters and extending up toward the old Graupner place.
    Sterling Creek suffered from no such shortage of food as plagued many of the other mining camps. The farms of the Rogue Valley were producing plentifully by this time and the miners were able to buy plenty of fresh food that fall from the farmers who packed it in across the hills. Flouring mills were in operation, too. The mill at Ashland was able to supply a large quantity of that valuable commodity ground from locally raised wheat.
    The fall and early winter were quite dry, however. Many of the early claimants had given up and abandoned their claims as early as the end of September and others were to do so in the next few months. There were only two companies operating at this time. One was that owned by Reuben S. Armstrong, a native of Canada, who was to be an important figure on the creek for many years. The other was that owned by Helm and Halleck in partnership.
    West and his partners took some unclaimed ground near the mouth of Sterling Creek and dug a ditch in from the Little Applegate in order to get water to work their ground. Like other subsequent ventures in the area (later named Buncom), it paid little and the partners felt the returns were not worth continuing the venture. This was the first attempt to solve the basic problem of Sterling Creek, a water shortage, by ditching. It was by no means the last.
    The coming of the winter rains after the first of the year improved the situation. Other companies began operating and the individuals with claims in the flats and on the hillsides were able to begin working their ground.
    For those who had waited for the rains, the rewards were great. Twenty dollars a day was reported as the average take while some fortunate individuals took out more. Young George West reported that the gold on the claim he was supervising for the company was coarse, frequently running to four- and five-dollar nuggets. At the price of Sterling gold, this meant nearly half-ounce chunks.
    Sterling Creek gold is distinctive. It has a high silver content which makes it very pale in color. The nuggets are not only coarse but look as though they had been pounded between rocks. Many of them are quite thin though of large size. One nugget reported from this time was as large as a man's hand but it was so thin that it weighed only two ounces.
    The rains that permitted the miners to begin working the ground brought prosperity to the settlement. A number of businesses changed hands and some new and more permanent buildings were built as it began to appear that the creek would support a large population of miners.
    The Jackson County court added its recognition to the permanence of the camp. U. S. Hayden had been appointed Justice of the Peace in July, 1854. In April, 1855, George W. Anderson was appointed as constable and the court ordered the establishment of an election district to be known as Sterling Precinct. The polling place designated was the house of Helms and Davis and the judges of election were to be Jason Braman, Benjamin Armstrong and L. J. C. Duncan.
    Sterling Creek was to play a small part in the buildup of hostilities between the miners and the Indians that was to erupt late in 1855 as the Rogue River Indian war. One of the permanent Indian camps, known locally as rancherias, was located at the mouth of Sterling Creek. Like most of the camps, it was a small one though it had been large enough to discourage prospecting until Jim Sterling made his strike.
    In early 1855, a miner named Sickman had gone out deer hunting. Like present-day followers of the sport, he had a tendency to shoot at sound rather than at sight of an animal. On this occasion he killed an Indian woman from the rancheria at the mouth of the creek. The Indians were highly incensed by the proceeding and appeared at the cabin of Sickman and his partners demanding blood money, in this case Sickman's horse. Sickman refused to comply.
    The persistence of the Indians led the men to move up the creek to the outskirts of the town. The Indians followed them and, one evening, five warriors appeared and demanded compensation now. Sickman's friends stalled the Indians while that mighty hunter got his horse and fled over the hill to Phoenix and thence into Yreka. Some few presents were given to the Indians but the incident added fuel to the steadily worsening relations between the whites and the Indians throughout the Rogue Indians' country.
    This event was followed in the spring by the "Humbug War." The name derives from the mining camp involved. It is not, however, an inappropriate name for the "war" itself which was only slightly more comic and less bloody than most of the Indian-white fracases in the area.
    The war began in a drunken row on Humbug Creek which involved a white man and two Indians. Apparently the Indians were drunk and were staggering along the trail when they met the white man. Had this been all, the incident would not have been recorded, but the white man provoked the Indians. A fight ensued in which the white man was killed and one of the Indians was wounded.
    The discovery of the body of the white man along the trail by some miners brought the affair to light and caused panic in the area. Here was a miner killed by Indians. It might signal the beginning of another Indian outbreak. Soon the story was to grow until circumstantial detail (all fabricated, of course) proved that it did mark the beginning of a war of extermination.
    Had the event not occurred in July, it might soon have been forgotten. July, however, is the low point of the year in the placer country. The last cleanup is usually made in June. The water supply doesn't support further operation. The miners were largely unemployed and engaged in killing time or in desultory improvement work on their claims. Hundreds of miners were available for whatever excitement that might crop up.
    Two companies of militia were formed in Northern California. They set forth in martial array to apprehend the two culprits and bring them to justice. True to the tradition of the frontier, they grabbed the first Indians they found and arrested three of the number as likely-looking culprits. Before a trial could take place, however, two of the Indians managed to make their escape and fled to their camps in the hills to warn their compatriots of the situation that looked ominous to them.
    The militia group immediately assumed that the escape of two of its captives proved the guilt of those two conclusively. When urged to subscribe to the logic of this by releasing the third Indian, now obviously redundant, a large group averred that a bird in the hand was worth two in the brush and, having lost two, they intended to hang on to this one.
    The Indians near Humbug Creek went on a war footing immediately. Hostilities ensued and eleven miners were killed in the course of a few days. This brought the mustering of additional militia companies to join the vigilant heroes of the arrest. It looked as though a full-scale war would develop and apprehension ran high throughout the region both among whites and the Indians.
    A rumor that the guilty Indians had fled to the Rogue River reservation decided the volunteers. Five companies of California militia (about 200 men) set out in pursuit of the hostiles. The pursuit seems to have been conducted according to the principles of the adage that haste makes waste and a motto of slow but sure.
    The companies arrived in martial ferocity at Sterlingville on August 4, 1855. There they received confirmation of the rumor that the hostiles had sought sanctuary on the Rogue River reservation and had placed themselves under the protection of the regular Army garrison at Fort Lane.
    The exertions of the march and the new intelligence both required that the citizen soldiers stop at Sterlingville to rest and take stock of the situation. In the best tradition of frontier democracy, the militiamen held a meeting and passed some resolutions which were posted to the commanding officer at Fort Lane the next morning. From the tenor and the language of the resolution it would appear that the meeting was held in one of the saloons and that much inspiration in its composition was derived from the sale stock of the establishment.
    The militia informed Captain A. J. Smith of Fort Lane that he was hereby ordered to deliver the fugitive Indians and the stolen property and livestock in their possession to them. The captain was generously allowed three days in which to comply with the request. Lest the generosity give the captain a false impression of the inflexible determination of the heroic militia, Captain Smith was assured that failure to comply with their request would force the militia to "go and take them where they may be found, at all and every hazard."
    Captain Andrew Jackson Smith was not a man to be frightened by emphatic language. With a forthrightness that does credit to his namesake, he summarily rejected the manifesto. He agreed to surrender any stolen livestock when proper, legal proof of ownership was presented but he absolutely refused to surrender the Indians.
    With the rejection of its comic opera manifesto, the militia was in a dilemma. It paraded in strength. It postured. It threatened. Most of the men knew Fort Lane and a number of them knew of Captain Andrew Jackson Smith. After lengthy consultation, the heroes took counsel with discretion and returned to their homes, lauding their restraint in refusing to attack the fort.
    An investigation of the Humbug incident disclosed the real nature of the drunken brawl which had precipitated it and the tension began to ease. It looked as though peace had been preserved.
    Peace was not so easily attained, however. A group of Jacksonville men organized in a local saloon and decided to teach some Indians a lesson. They armed themselves, saddled up and rode out along the military road to an Indian camp a few miles from town. Carefully timing their arrival so that the Indian men were already off hunting in the mountains, the raiders burst on the camp and killed the women, children and the two old men who were there. Scalping their victims, the group rode back to Jacksonville to celebrate the triumph in suitable fashion.
    The Indians retaliated on a group of white settlers living in Josephine County and the war was on. It was to last for ten months marked by desultory fighting until the last of the Indians surrendered. The only notable feature of the war was that the damage claims and bills for supply submitted were so outrageously high that Congress refused to appropriate money to pay them.
    The men of Sterling played their part in the war. Though the town did not contribute a militia company, many men enlisted in the militia for the campaign. Washington Bailey made an arrangement with his partners whereby they served consecutive terms in the militia. Others refused to desert their claims with the winter rains coming on.
    For the most part the war was fought far from Sterling Creek. The nearest approach of hostilities came in December, 1855. Two Indians forted up in a cabin at the junction of the Applegate and Little Applegate a few miles from the mouth of Sterling Creek. A group of some sixty miners from Sterlingville turned out to help besiege the beleaguered savages until a unit of the regular Army arrived. The Army detachment brought a howitzer but discovered, when the piece was set up, that the ammunition had been left behind.
    A detachment was sent to Fort Lane for the ammunition and arrived with it near dusk. The howitzer was unlimbered and the hut rather badly battered. Unfortunately, the Indians evaded the vigilance of the besieging army and escaped from their perilous plight.
    The year was not otherwise notable at the camp that crouched on the tongue of land between Valley Flat Creek and Sterling Creek. The miners continued to wash out large quantities of the pale, flaky gold and to spend much of it in the business establishments of the thriving community.
    Although unnoticed at the time, one of the new arrivals was to play an important part in the history of the community. Edward Graupner wandered in from California and took up a claim on Sterling. A native of Saxe-Coburg where he was born in 1820, Graupner was to remain for more than forty years, farming and mining on Sterling Creek. The remains of his cabin can still be found, nearly covered by grass. The earth around the site is pockmarked with holes left by those seeking the fortune in gold that is said to have been buried there in four large, iron dutch ovens.
    The beginning of 1856 found the camp apparently thriving. A population variously estimated from six to eight hundred was scattered through the town and the small valley. A bustling business district boasted stores, two gambling saloons, a tenpin alley, four boarding houses, a blacksmith shop and a livery stable. Another report gave the town a total of thirty some buildings of all kinds.
    The claims continued to yield a rich harvest in gold as the winter rains provided the long-awaited water. One team of three miners was reported to have taken out $1360 in gold from their claim in one day in March. This was a noteworthy take, but the average yield seems to have been not too far below this.
    The winter which had begun well soon turned against the miners. January was a very dry month and February found the mines again suffering from the lack of water, more exasperating for being unseasonal. The richness of the claims coupled with the drought stimulated a group of miners to attempt a new venture in February, 1856. They organized to survey a route for bringing water by ditch from the west fork of the Applegate to the Sterling diggings.
    The survey proved to be a disappointment. The length of the proposed. ditch was enough to scuttle the project. It required a capital outlay beyond the means of the organizers. In addition to the length, the construction gave promise of being rather more complicated and expensive than had been first envisioned. The group disbanded and the ditch necessary to provide ample water for the upper creek had to await a later occasion for its construction.
    The failure of the ditch project marked the beginning of the decline of Sterlingville as a mining town. Evidence of this decline is to be found in the county records. As early as March, 1856 a store and its stock of merchandise had been sold for debts. The succeeding months saw an increasing number of property transfers within the town itself.
    The price of the businesses began to decline, too. The Alexander and Knox Drinking Saloon on Water Street was sold in late 1855 for a mere $689. The first months of 1856 saw a continuation of this trend in the property transfers recorded.
    The real harbinger of the decline came in May, 1856. A newspaper report of May 24 stated that the miners had begun to run shafts in the flats near the town and that some of the shafts were actually undermining the town. The newspaper predicted that the entire town would soon be undermined. This was always a sign that a mining camp was declining in prosperity.
    Although drifting under the town itself frequently marked the final stage in the life of a mining town before it became a ghost town, Sterlingville was not to suffer this fate yet. The mining operations at Sterling were entering a new phase, and the continued high returns from the mines assured the town of a continuing prosperity even though the basis of the community was changed.
    The easily worked ground at Sterling had been exhausted by the first miners. The nature of the gold deposits remaining required a new technique but ensured the profitability of the new technique.
    A principal problem of mining on Sterling Creek was getting to the bedrock. In the old channel, a prehistoric river bed, the river bed was a mass of conglomerate that defied any of the tools of the miners of the 1850s and was to resist even the efforts of "giant powder" in a later period.
    The sharply slanted hills also covered the gold-bearing bedrock with a huge quantity of overburden. In both instances, the only possible way of reaching the bedrock was by drifting. The miners began to drive their shafts back from the creek banks and from the bottoms of the gullies.
    The shift from surface placering to this type of mining brought a significant change in the character of the community. The miners who stayed on were of a different ilk from their migratory brethren who stuck to surface mining. These men had to invest capital in order to acquire gold. A shaft is an expensive piece of construction that takes time to build and more time to exploit fully.
    The men who stayed on Sterling Creek were permanent settlers. They brought in their families or began raising families. This brought a permanence to the settlement that boded well for its continued existence.
    The boom at Sterlingville was over and the community began to enter on a new phase of its existence as 1856 came to a close. It was a period that was to be less spectacular but not without a color and character of its own.

    The year 1857 marks the beginning of the period of decline of the town of Sterlingville. By the beginning of the year the population was estimated at approximately 500 people, a sharp falling off from the boom years. The drop was to continue at an accelerating rate through 1860, for the federal census taken found only 123 residents of the mining community in that year.
    The decline in population was to be accompanied by changes in the character of the population, too. The booming camps of the mining areas were predominantly male and largely composed of younger men. Sterlingville changed from such a camp to a community of families in the years following 1857. This was a transition that was necessary if the community was to achieve permanence, for the all-male community faded nearly as rapidly as it was built.
    The factors that brought the change were simple. The wealth of Sterling Creek was sufficient attraction in itself. The changing character of the mining operations described in the last chapter required capital investment. The men who made the investments stayed with their capital and brought their families to live with them.
    The dominant figure of this period at Sterlingville was the farmer-miner. The fact that they themselves gave the farmer title first place is significant. These men relied upon agriculture for their basic livelihood and turned to mining for profits. It was an ideal situation for this, for the seasons of work in the two industries were almost perfectly complementary. Mining required the water of the winter rains. Agriculture filled in the period when the mines were closed from lack of water. It was an ideal situation for developing a stable and relatively prosperous community.
    A significant token of the arrival of the new period in Sterlingville life was the marriage of Martin Hurst and Mary Simpson that took place in the summer of 1857. It is the first wedding known to have taken place in the town and the fact that it was not considered extraordinary in the life of the community indicates that the character of the population had already undergone a significant change.
    As a footnote to the event, it might be well to relate that the Hursts lived in the community for a number of years. Martin Hurst was typical of the farmer-miners, working diligently at his claims through the winter and raising some livestock on his place.
    Many of the men who were to be associated with Sterling Creek through the remaining years of the century arrived in the community about this time. A few were established by 1857 but many of them settled here in the period from 1857 to 1860.
    One of the most noted of these men was Theodric "Tod" Cameron, who purchased the bakery in 1858. He operated the bakery for several years but it is likely that the advent of the family as the dominant unit resulted in a reduction of patronage.
    Tod Cameron soon began to acquire mining property along the creek and was able to join his claims so that he could operate them as a mine. At the same time he acquired land on the Little Applegate just below the mouth of Sterling Creek which he developed into a prosperous and extensive cattle ranch. He was later to serve several terms in the Oregon legislature as senator from Jackson County.
    Another Sterling resident who began to become prominent at this period was one of the few early comers to the creek who remained on it. George Yaudes had been one of the early gold seekers at Sterling but had soon gone into partnership with his brother Mathias in one of the early stores in the town. He continued to hold mining properties and operated one of the richest mines of this period in partnership with his brother-in-law, Joseph Saltmarsh. In succeeding years George Yaudes was Sterlingville's first and only postmaster and served many years as clerk of the school district.
    The real backbone of the Sterlingville settlement in this period was the Saltmarsh family. The old patriarch of the family was A. B. Saltmarsh, known to all as "Cap." One of the family (there is some question as to which one) came with the early rush and others arrived within a year. The most prominent of the family was Joseph Saltmarsh who was an important civic figure in the community and represented it at the county level in most things. His cousin Reuben was active in the period we are discussing now but was to migrate to the Willamette Valley later. The remaining member of the family was Sylvester "Ves" Saltmarsh, who operated the stage from Sterling to Jacksonville for a number of years. With George Yaudes, a member of the family by marriage, the Saltmarshes dominated the district and were a formidable family unit.
    Rounding out the group of important permanent residents were the Pearces, the Gilsons, Riley Phillips and his brother Sam and the Armstrongs. A colorful figure who cannot be overlooked was Edward Graupner who arrived in Sterlingville sometime in 1855. He was a native of Germany which gave rise to his nickname "Dutch" and devoted his life to a variety of enterprises including running cattle--wild, California stock with long horns. At roundup times fence rails were tied to the horns to keep them from disappearing back into the brush. "Dutch" also mined and farmed just above Sterlingville.
    Drifting into the hillsides and sinking shafts in the flats made it possible to tap the Sterling gold deposits but both were expensive and tedious methods. A good head of water from a dependable supply would make it possible to work the ground more easily and cheaply. A ditch was the obvious answer to this problem and to those concerned with keeping miners from leaving the community.
    The beginning of 1858 brought a proposal to bring water from the Little Applegate into the upper creek with a continuation of the ditch on into Jacksonville, which had similar problems of lack of water in the hills back of town. A company was formed to get on with the project and it made some preliminary surveys.
    It was soon apparent that the project was beyond the financial resources of the proposed company. In order to get a sufficient flow of water at a proper height, the ditch would have to reach back nearly to the Squaw Lakes and would be more than thirty miles long, with extensive flume work being necessary in many places. For Jacksonville, the water would cost more than it was worth and Sterlingville did not have the capital for anything nearly that extensive.
    While politics had undoubtedly come to Sterling with the election of 1856, the party of Democracy (as it preferred to be known) did not arrive on the scene until 1858. On February 13 a meeting was called of the Democrats in Sterling precinct. With Reuben Armstrong in the chair and James Wood as Secretary, Sterling Democracy elected B. Bozarth, D. Crowley, Perry Bowen and James A. Van Nest to represent it at the county convention.
    The delegation did a good job for the community. Though none of the Sterling men received even a nomination at the county convention, its work bore fruit. In the fall of 1858 a new county road was voted for Sterling which was to begin in Jackass Gulch (now Forest Creek) and run from thence to Buncom at the mouth of Sterling Creek. From Buncom it was to run to the head of Sterling Creek and cross the divide to Griffin Creek.
    The new route was a valuable asset to the community for it provided a much better road to the farms along Bear Creek which were a chief source of food, especially wheat, for the community.
    The spring of 1858 was moderately wet. With this aid from nature, the miners made good returns on their claims. As late as April the water supply was reported as good and the ground productive. It was the best season to date and June found some 83 residents casting their ballots in the general election. Optimism returned to the camp, though miners are a notoriously optimistic lot and quickly restored to that joyous state.
    The return of the mining season in the late fall duplicated the prosperity of spring. These glad tidings induced the editor of the Oregon Sentinel to revive the ditch project in a series of fulsome editorials. The editor seems to have been nearly alone in his enthusiasm, however, for nothing came of his call to action. The miners were busy taking advantage of the good mining weather. Even the long-delayed news of Oregon's admission as a state failed to halt the work. There was time enough to celebrate when the dry season came.
    The optimistic editor of the Oregon Sentinel was unabashed. He continued to beat the drums for the high ditch project. The proposal was, apparently, greeted with overwhelming apathy, for his portrayal of the manifold benefits of the project became more fulsome. Undaunted, the editor brought forth a proposal to dig artesian wells to supply the mines. This was too much. The editor appears to have been abashed at this wild scheme himself for we hear no more of it.
    The remainder of 1859 seems to have passed rather quietly. The mining season came to an end in April and the summer was a typically hot, dry period. Times were neither good nor bad and, like most of the rest of the nation, Sterlingville appeared to be drifting along, almost as though anticipating the stirring events that were to plunge the country into war within two years.
    A token of a revival of business might be found in the application of Reuben Saltmarsh to the county commissioners in December, 1859. He respectfully requested the privilege of a license to sell "Spirituous liquors in quantities less than one quart," for the sum of $25. The county court issued a permit good for six months. This kept him in business until the election of 1860. From a perusal of the records of the court, it would appear that Saltmarsh was merely capitalizing on the electioneering season rather than planning a long-term business, for the usual license period was a year.
    In his new role as a prominent local businessman, Reuben received further recognition from the county court. He was appointed as the judge of election for Sterling precinct with Philip Gleave (another long-time resident) and J. C. Corbell as his associates.
    The election of 1860, which was to cause so much difficulty in the rest of the nation, passed very peacefully at Sterlingville. The records of the vote cast have been lost but contemporary reports indicate that there was little conflict within the county. In fact, there is strong reason to suspect that the general reaction to the election was apathy. What political interest there was was completely engrossed in the brand-new state government.
    There is a valley legend that 400 votes were cast for Abraham Lincoln at Sterlingville in 1860. The interesting thing about the story is that it is unadorned with the usual embroidery of incidents about the tremendous national loyalty of the people or the frightful dangers these loyal citizens faced as they saved Oregon from a fiendish southern plot.
    The report must be viewed with a good deal of skepticism. Throughout most of its history Sterling precinct was pretty evenly divided between the two parties. Furthermore, the federal census taker found only 123 residents, men, women, and children when he visited the area at this time.
    The census of 1860 provides some interesting information about the town. There were six females in the community, five of whom were married women and one a two-year-old girl. This meant that one in seven of the dwellings were occupied by families with one other family unit consisting of a widower and two minor sons. This gives a statistical indication of the transition in the character of the community.
    The census also presents a clear picture of the decline of Sterlingville. The census taker found some thirty dwellings which he considered worth noting as unoccupied. There were probably others like Jim Sutton's little cabin that were not considered significant enough to notice.
    A further evidence of the decline of the district as a placer mining camp is to be found in the presence of Chinese and Kanaka mining claims. The presence of the Chinese is an inevitable sign of decline, for the miners would never permit them to mine until the number of vacant claims reached a significant number.
    The Kanakas are a group that seem to have played a large part in placer mining in Jackson County. The first of these Hawaiians had come to the Northwest as fur traders. This later group was brought in by the gold rush. Jacksonville had its Kanaka Flats and there were several Kanaka Gulches in the mining districts. Sterlingville had six of them in 1860 but all of them had moved on by the time the next census taker arrived in 1870.
    The Chinese were to stay longer though it is not possible to say whether they were the same ones who appear in later census reports. Only one of them is named in the return and he was living by himself, an unusual occurrence. The other three are lumped together as three Chinese, male, in one dwelling with ages given. There is a suspicion that the recorded ages represent guesses by the census taker.
    A common practice with the gangs was to install some of the members on a mining claim. When the whole group was unemployed, it would appear and help to work the claim. It is not certain but it appears that the miners still worked for their contract wages and the boss was able to keep everything above his overhead.
    The census is also our source of information on the construction of a ditch to carry water to the lower creek from the Little Applegate. Fifteen miners were banded together under the leadership of the Tennessee-born Gallagher brothers, owning the ditch jointly and living together. It is not known whether the claims were worked jointly or not. The ditch is still in use and is known as the Gallagher ditch, though the water right has now been transferred to agricultural purposes.
    The census also gives a graphic picture of the decline of the business community. The Yaudes brothers, George and Mathias, operated a store which is listed as being worth $5,000 with its inventory. The household also included a packer so it seems reasonable to assume that the Yaudes brothers took care of the community freighting needs. James Corbell operated a blacksmith shop, and the remaining member of the business community was M. D. Eastlick who listed his occupation as gunsmith.
    Reuben Saltmarsh apparently felt that his career as a businessman was over by the time the census taker made his rounds. He chose, at least, to list his occupation as miner rather than as saloonkeeper.
    The loss of the saloon was felt in the community, however. We find Reuben's younger brother, Sylvester, receiving a license to sell spirituous liquors in quantities less than one quart in January, 1861. The fee was again $25 and the terms otherwise the same as Reuben's earlier license. The residents of the creek also received a convenient dispensary of beverages when Mr. J. T. Williams of Buncom received his license. He had to pay only ten dollars, however. There is no explanation for the smaller fee in the records of the court though it is doubtful that it was an attempt to attract new business to the county.
    While the East was rushing headlong into civil war, Sterlingville pursued the placid tenor of its existence as a small farming-mining community. The mining season of 1861 was a fairly successful one according to the Oregon Sentinel though a shortage of water was hampering operations.
    The season was salvaged in late March and April. While the nation plunged into civil war, heavy rains hit Southern Oregon. By April it was reported that more than one hundred miners were at work on Sterling Creek and were averaging three to five dollars a day. The Gallagher ditch was also contributing, for it made mining on the lower creek a year-round operation.
    The burst of prosperity in the spring of 1861 seems to have been responsible for the establishment of a new business. Jenning's Express began operations on the first of June. It provided twice-a-week express and passenger service from Jacksonville to Sterlingville, Buncom and returned to Jacksonville via the Little Applegate and Forest Creek.
    November, 1861 brought the winter rains to Southern Oregon with a vengeance. Heavy rains swelled the streams and brought severe flooding in all areas. Some communities were completely wiped out by the raging waters and none escaped serious damage. Buncom was completely inundated, and all of the flumes and sluices on the Little Applegate and lower Sterling Creek disappeared in the roiling waters.
    Sterlingville was less hard hit than many of the communities. The small drainage area above the community largely accounts for this. There was a good bit of damage but the miners surveying their claims after the floods subsided felt that the gains equaled the losses. The Saltmarshes reported that the floods had scoured their land and removed most of the overburden which saved them a great deal of expensive work.
    Another gain was in the water supply. For the first time the miners of the upper creek had ample water to work their claims. Makeshift reservoirs were constructed and ground sluicing was begun on a large scale. Some of February was lost when an unusually cold spell of weather froze the creeks and reservoirs, but March brought warmer weather. There was plenty of water and the newspapers reported that the miners were so busy working their claims that they did not even have time to make a cleanup.
    The scouring action of the flood waters and the extensive mining operations brought tragedy, too. Joseph A. Seymour was killed by a fall into a deep cut and a number of others were seriously injured or died in similar accidents. The depth of bedrock made it inevitable that deep cuts and shafts dotted the area. Both were dangerous in the sandy loam of the valley and proved to be a special hazard.
    June brought the normal decline in the water supply and the off-year elections. As with the presidential election of two years before, this one passed quietly at Sterlingville. A total of 32 ballots was cast in the precinct and the three-to-one majority for the Unionist ticket indicates that the complexion of the electorate had changed or that the war had united the rivalries to a large extent. On the local level, the voter chose John Wright as Justice of the Peace and selected S. McCallister as constable.
    The unusually good season of the spring of 1862 was balanced in the fall. The usual fall rains did not come and the miners on the upper creek suffered again from lack of water. Five companies were in operation at Buncom where the ditches and sluices had been repaired or rebuilt. The papers reported them as making good wages and well supplied with water.
    The lack of activity in some districts from the water shortage and the prosperity of Buncom may account for the small crime wave that engulfed that lower creek community. Johnson and Company reported that its sluice box was robbed on December 10th with the culprits getting an estimated $300. Several small incidents occurred and were capped by the theft of several horses. The horses were recovered near Jacksonville but the thieves were never identified.
    The advent of 1863 improved the mining situation. The winter and spring rains arrived on schedule with slightly more than normal moisture and brought a return of mining to the upper creek. Though the loss of income from the drought of the fall was not recovered, the returns from spring mining were sufficient to make it a fair year.
    Buncom, supplied with water from the Phillips and Gallagher ditches, was able to operate on a year-round basis so it did not suffer from the seasonal oddities. The lower creek began to displace the upper creek as the center of mining activity. The claims around Sterlingville were nearly all in the hands of the permanent settlers which brought a staid stability that contrasted sharply with the nearly all-male population of the settlement at the mouth of the stream.
    The fall of 1863 brought a revival of interest in the ditch project. The Southern Oregon Water Ditch and Mining Company was organized to undertake the project and a survey was made of the projected route. This was a much more ambitious undertaking than the previously constructed ditches. Realizing that considerable flume work would be necessary, the company ordered a saw mill with the intention of providing its own lumber for the new venture.
    The mill had arrived in Crescent City, California by the beginning of February. Winter snows made the mountain road into the valley impassable to such a load, so the concern marked time. The foundations for the mill had been laid and the winter had been used to advantage in acquiring a deck of logs.
    The ditch project was not to materialize. The company set up its steam mill in the early spring and found so much profit in the product that the ditch project went into discard. Sterlingville had a new industry but the middle and upper creek areas were still without a reliable water supply. This lack was particularly felt in the spring of 1864, for the first three months of the year brought drought and the rains which finally arrived in April saved the farm crops but failed to help the miner.
    The election of 1864 proved to be the most exciting to that point in Sterling's history. Here as elsewhere, there was much excitement and the campaign waxed hot and heavy. Invective flowed freely on both sides as the partisans of "Honest Abe" and "Little Mac" both laid claim to the only genuine patriotism and asserted that they monopolized truth and virtue.
    Though the campaign at Sterlingville did not attract outside attention, it must have been an exciting one. The tally of the ballots following the June election showed that the Democrats had a majority of one in the twenty-nine ballots cast in the precinct. The town followed the country, for the Democrats carried the county by the scant margin of 50 votes.
    The fall of 1864 brought floods to the area again. They were not as devastating as the big flood of the spring of 1861, however. Buncom emerged virtually unscathed by the high water, and Sterlingville experienced a mild prosperity as the extra water supply enabled the miners to work much ground that was normally untouched.
    Mining in Jackson County in general was slowing down. The best of the placer deposits had been cleaned out or, at least, skimmed off. The gold rushes to north and south Idaho drained off many of the miners. These were followed by the fabulous strikes at Virginia City and Bannock City in Montana which drew off another delegation of Southern Oregon miners. Sterlingville seems to have lost few, if any, people at this time for its floating population had drifted off before 1860 for the most part.
    Even at Sterlingville, mining was slowing down. The community was drifting into the semi-limbo of so many other gold camps. Excitement was generated in May, 1865 when James Sutton, the genial reporter of early days on the creek, was robbed of some $1,600 in gold as he crossed the Applegate. A quick search soon apprehended his assailants and brought recovery of more than half the loot. It was, however, a two-day wonder. It served only to accent the doldrums into which the community was drifting. A new ingredient was needed if Sterlingville were to be revivified.

    There were several directions that might be taken to revive the fortunes of Sterlingville. The success of the saw mill seemed promising despite the small area that could feasibly be logged to supply it. Hard rock mining also seemed to offer some possibilities.
    A quartz outcropping that appeared to have real potential was discovered in 1865. Named the Ives ledge, possibly for its discoverer, the claim was purchased and development work undertaken. January, 1866 saw the installation of a new arrastra at the mine and it looked as though mining on the creek might take on a new life.
    The longed for potentialities of the new mines were never realized. Little more is heard of the mine though a report in May, 1868 stated that Mr. Ives of Sterlingville had brought three tons of quartz to the Occidental Mill in Jacksonville. The ore was reported as producing fifty dollars a ton which is sufficient to explain the quick demise of the hard rock mining boom. The newspaper went on to relate that Ives was further hampered by the difficulties of draining the mine.
    Quartz outcroppings with traces of gold were found in the area in later times and several mines were developed. None were successful, however. Like most quartz mines in Jackson County, "far more gold went into the ground than ever came out." Sterlingville's future as a mining community was going to have to depend upon placer mining.
    The year 1867 brought a revival of placer mining on Sterling Creek and laid the foundation for the new development. The first major step toward the reorganization was taken on January 15 when a new set of mining laws for Lower Sterling Creek were drawn up to supersede the laws of October, 1859 [1854?] which had been in effect to that time. Inasmuch as these are the only known set of mining laws for the creek, it might be interesting to examine them.
    Sect. 1--The title of the mining district shall be known as The Lower Sterling Creek District and lying from the mouth of Deming Creek to the Mouth of Sterling Creek.
    Sect. 2--Each miner is entitled to hold by preemption one creek claim 100 yards long including the flats or bars of said creek on each side of the creek.
    Sect. 3--Flat or hill claims to be 100 square yards.
    Sect. 4--Each miner is entitled to hold by preemption in addition to the said creek claims one flat, hill or gulch claim. The gulch claim to be 100 yards long and 60 yards wide.
    Sect. 5--Any man holding claims in this district is required to put up notices describing the same and if he does not work them he is required to renew the notices once a month.
    Sect. 6--Any man can hold a claim or claims by purchase by renewing the notice once a month in addition to his preemption claims.
    Sect. 7--Any changes made in the laws of the District must be given ten days notice.
    The Jackson County volume of mining laws records that these laws were filed and received on April 15, 1867. The delay is not surprising, for the laws were made up just before the beginning of the spring mining season which proved to be a most profitable one.
    An interesting feature of these laws is the list of names of the signers of them. In order of signing they are: Lyman Chappell, R. J. Cameron, William Cameron, Newton Haskins, William Haskins, Theodric Cameron, S. Phillips, R. Phillips. The shortness of the list indicates that the lower creek was losing population as the more regular water supply had enabled the miners to work it more intensively. The group is composed entirely of what might be termed the "hard core" of Sterling settlers.
    Such a reorganization was rather common in the mining districts which continued as mining districts. The decline of the district brought an exodus which left a number of claims unoccupied. The remaining miners usually made the requirements for holding a claim more liberal and increased the size of the claims.
    Sterlingville was in the process of such a change-over. A newspaper report of August 3, 1867 stressed the fact that there were no longer any Chinese there. This would mean that the white miners had determined to stay and had begun to push out the orientals from the claims. At the same time, there had not been enough amalgamation to employ the Chinese as a labor force.
    The fact that this spring was bringing good cleanups to the miners probably influenced the actions. Saltmarsh and Co. were reported as picking up $154 in nuggets in one day while shoveling dirt into the ground sluice and $66 another day. The cleanup brought in $2,200 for two months of spring with three of them working the claim. Other claims reported good cleanups as well, though not so spectacular.
    One of the first results of the reorganization was some amalgamation of claims. On April 15, 1867 "Tod" Cameron, William Cameron and Lyman Chappell posted notices claiming six hundred yards of Sterling Creek on both banks. They cited pre-emption and purchase under the authority of the revised mining laws of Lower Sterling Creek. This was the beginning of the Sterling Mining Company which was to dominate the creek in later times.
    This first large-scale amalgamation of holdings attracted little attention. Community interest was aroused by the tunnel being driven by Spaulding and Johnson into the old channel. Unable to penetrate the conglomerate of the channel, the new company attempted to run a drift to the bedrock. By March the Oregon Sentinel was reporting that the company was making an average of one ounce per day per hand on the site.
    Quartz mining also came in for some attention. On January 5, 1867 the Sentinel had reported the sale of the Ives ledge to a San Francisco concern. The mine was described as consisting of a lead with several veins from two to seven inches in thickness. In spite of the fact that these veins pinched out frequently, it was felt that they could be followed and would yet prove productive.
    Neither of these was to be more than a "seven days wonder." The quartz mine, as we mentioned above, was returned to Mr. Ives and failed to produce to expectations. The tunneling into the bedrock beneath the old channel was, in that soil, too expensive in view of the return.
    The productive mining at Sterlingville continued to be in the claims of the Saltmarshes, George Yaudes, "Dutch" Graupner and the others who worked the middle creek area. They were still plagued by the lack of dependable water supply and danger from slides of the excavations which were necessary in order to reach bedrock. Real productivity in the mines of Sterling Creek required more extensive development than the individual claim holders were able to afford.
    The year 1870 finds the next recorded step in the move toward creating a large company. A notice filed with the County Clerk on March 2 states that R. S. Armstrong, S. Burrell, Theodric Cameron and U. S. Hayden claimed, by right of purchase, 1800 yards of Sterling Creek commencing on the lower line of the Yaudes and Saltmarsh claim and running downstream to the Harkness claim.
    The amalgamation represents the largest scale move in this direction that had yet been attempted on the creek. It was a necessary move toward the establishment of a mining company that would be financially capable of solving the water problem that had afflicted Sterling Creek mining since Jim Sterling's discovery in 1854.
    The next step in the movement toward a large company was the narrowing of the ownership. Reuben S. Armstrong left Sterling with his family shortly after the notice was filed, probably within a year. S. Burrell soon disappeared from the partnership, too, though the method is uncertain. It may well have been through inability to pay his share of the assessment costs.
    This same year, 1870, saw the formation of the Sterling school district. District 33 of Jackson County was created and Reuben S. Armstrong was designated the clerk. He reported a total of 36 youngsters of school age in the new district. The number of youngsters indicates the completeness of the transition from a predominantly male population of the mining camp days to a permanent settlement of families.
    Though the school district was organized in 1870, the first school session of the new district was not held until 1871. A school building was acquired in the old town of Sterlingville. It is not known whether a new building was erected or one of the old buildings of the town reconditioned for educational purposes. George Yaudes, who succeeded Armstrong as the clerk of the district, reported a total of 35 pupils in the first session of school, of whom 19 were male and 16 female. The district paid its first teacher the princely salary of $105 for the three-month session and received $75.38 from the county as aid to education.
    The succeeding years saw a fluctuation in the enrollment from a low of 29 in 1872 to a high of 35 in 1874. The annual session of instruction was three months. There was no graded instruction, of course. Nor were there any standard textbooks for county schools. Students were limited to what books the family might provide and to those provided by the teacher. Each teacher was expected to provide books for instructional purposes as a part of his teaching responsibility.
    The student, arriving at school, was assigned to a book. He worked at that book until the session ended or he completed it. Then he moved on to another book. General instruction was provided in spelling and penmanship and whatever else the teacher felt capable of teaching or wanted to teach.
    Old timers who attended Sterling school in this period recall that the board hired male teachers and that they were unsatisfactory. Two of them were unable to keep discipline and a third, satisfactory in this respect, drank heavily and was too brutal in maintaining order. The solution to the teacher procurement problem was the hiring of older daughters of local residents. Though they may not have had any schooling beyond that received in the local school, they seemed to be much more satisfactory in all respects.
    This was a quiet time at Sterling. Rainfall was normal and the mining activities continued unspectacularly. The panic of 1873 struck the nation a devastating blow but the only effect this may have had on the community was to prevent Cameron and Hayden from acquiring capital for further development of their mine. Sterling was ideally situated for riding out the panic. The residents had been devoting more time to farming for self-support while the principal export product was placer gold, which found a ready market regardless of general economic conditions.
    The only notable event in these years was the origin of the tale of the lost mine of Sterling. The story broke with the death of one of the early settlers, Jacob "Jake" Roudebush, in 1874 and has continued to find believers to the present day.
    Jake had been one of the early settlers of Sterlingville. He was married sometime before 1860 to the widow of one Mulligan, who had accompanied her husband to the area in the early days of the gold rush.
    The two had lived on at Sterling where Jake continued as a miner until he became ill in 1870. A doctor was called in and the illness was diagnosed as consumption and the particular variety known then as "long consumption." The treatment advised was to take long walks for exercise and get lots of rest as the only possible cure for the disease.
    Day after day Jake walked the valley and hills surrounding it. The illness did not, however, respond to this treatment and Jake finally found himself bedridden. Old "Cap" Saltmarsh proved a real friend at this time as he supplied the family with food and helped in the nursing of Jake.
    In gratitude for this assistance, according to the story, Jake one day asked "Cap" to drag out a box that was beneath the bed. In it were a number of exceptionally rich quartz specimens. Jake showed these samples to his friend and said that he had found them in the course of his walks in the hills.
    Jake went on to say that he had taken pains to hide the discovery. He had picked up all of the float from the ledge and had worked assiduously to hide the outcroppings so that no one would stumble on it accidentally, a real possibility, for the hills near Sterling were a favorite resort of local deer hunters. Jake was sure that he had made the richest quartz strike in the history of the area.
    As Jake grew worse, he was taken to Jacksonville and placed in a nursing home at county expense. He lingered on for three months before succumbing to his "long consumption." He died without revealing the secret of the location of his strike to anyone.
    A strike had been made. "Cap" Saltmarsh had seen the ore samples. But where was the ledge? Many men have searched for the lost Sterling mine but it has never been found. A few small strikes have been made in the hills surrounding Sterling Creek but none of them have been of really high-quality ore. The secret of the location lies buried with its discoverer in the old cemetery in Jacksonville.
    It is possible that what Jake found was only a small pocket.
    Being too ill to explore and develop the claim, he did not know that it was merely a pocket. The Siskiyous are strange mountains. Small pockets of rich quartz have been found in a number of locations with no trace of any similar rock formation in the vicinity. A recent find not too far from the head of Sterling Creek was a few hundred pounds of float shot through and through with heavy wire gold. It would assay at several thousand dollars a ton. Extensive searching, however, has revealed no source. Perhaps what Jake Roudebush found was a similar field of float.
    There is always the possibility that he made a real strike. The best paying quartz mine in the county lies only a short distance in the same chain of hills. Jake's discovery might well have been as rich as the famous Opp mine.
    One prospector has searched off and on for the lost mine for nearly fifty years. He still believes that the lost mine of Jake Roudebush exists and awaits discovery somewhere near the old town of Sterlingville. Perhaps it does.
    1876 was the centennial year for the United States. The nation felt that it marked our coming of age as a power. A great celebration was held in Philadelphia to commemorate the occasion when, a century before, the new nation had been launched in that same city with the Declaration of Independence. Across the country other celebrations were held and all of them looked toward the future and confidently foretold the great advance of the coming century of independence.
    Sterlingville in this centennial year was a sleepy, rural community. The old town had largely disappeared. The little plot below the cemetery was now reduced to the store of George Yaudes and the neighboring school house which served District 33. Joe Saltmarsh drove a three-seat hack to Jacksonville every Saturday and this served to tie the community to the world outside the little valley.
    The local residents mined in the winter and farmed in the summer. On the upper creek farming was predominantly unrestricted grazing of livestock. On the lower creek the old mining ditches provided water for raising hay and extensive gardening.
    A new era was coming to Sterlingville with the centennial year. The firm of Cameron and Hayden had reluctantly come to the conclusion that a high ditch was the only way that its holdings could develop their potentiality. Water was needed in large quantities in order to strip the ground so that it could be effectively worked. A rig had been developed in California that solved the problem, the hydraulic. It was a high pressure jet of water. It required a high ditch in order to develop sufficient head to do the job. The ditch would, of course, also provide the dependable water supply needed. [Hydraulic mines had been operated in Southern Oregon as early as 1857.]
    Once the decision was made, the partners acted at once. J. S. Howard, a prominent local surveyor, was employed to survey the line of the high ditch for the mine. The party returned in mid-April to report that a route had been surveyed which would meet the requirements of the company. The ditch would tap the waters of the Little Applegate, thus guaranteeing the dependability of the water supply.
    Howard's proposed route required a ditch 23 miles long. Although longer ditches had been constructed, it was a huge project for such a small district as Sterling, and the 2,500 inches of water it would deliver on a year-round basis was not generally believed to be sufficient volume to repay the cost of the construction. This latter was a principal feature of the plan, for a good deal of flume and trestle work was required on this line.
    The magnitude of the undertaking amazed the Southern Oregon area. Even the ebullient Jacksonville Democratic Times, which had not yet found any project too fantastic for its editor's imagination, was doubtful about the proposition presented by Cameron and Hayden. The extreme length of the ditch and the added costs arising from the flume work seemed, in the view of the editor, factors which would prevent completion of the project.
    The editor was correct in one respect. Cameron and Hayden were not prepared to begin construction of the ditch. They had been investing heavily in the mine and were prepared to dig a 600-foot tunnel to drain the workings. Although both men had property holdings that were fairly extensive by Southern Oregon standards, neither wished to liquidate these in order to finance improvements in the mine. The only thing that could make it possible for them to build the ditch would be to make a spectacularly heavy cleanup in the coming mining season. It is possible, in fact, that the partners had no intention of building the ditch but had engaged in the preliminary work merely in order to help them in making an attractive sale.
    The winter of 1876-77 was a profitable one for the mines on Sterling Creek. Cameron and Hayden made a heavy cleanup from the mine which was now operating on a larger scale than anything yet seen in the county. The tunnel had been completed and had more than paid for itself. An experienced observer, Jim Sutton, reported that pay dirt at a depth of forty feet below the surface was proving to be extremely profitable. Unfortunately no figures are available to sharpen the picture.
    The Cameron and Hayden operation had virtually monopolized mining on Sterling Creek. George Yaudes and the Saltmarshes did very well, as usual, from their jointly held lands just above the company holdings, and "Dutch" Graupner was more than making wages from the labor of himself and his hired hand on his land above the old town.
    Jim Sutton reported that mining had virtually ceased on the creek below the company claims. He found a few Chinese working old claims there but said that Buncom was deserted and the area around the mouth of Sterling Creek was entirely free of mining. Riley Phillips had taken over the land, using the old mining ditches for irrigation, and had put most of the land into vegetable garden.
    The spring of 1877 continued with little out of the ordinary. "Cap" Saltmarsh reported that an unseasonable cold spell in early April killed most of the fruit at Sterling, and a miner reported that his cabin had been robbed of his watch and a small sum of money during his absence. A rumor was reported to the effect that the English company which was operating an extensive placer on Galice Creek was interested in the Cameron and Hayden holdings. Things seemed quite normal. The biggest news was a report that the Saltmarshes had found a $35 nugget on their claim.
    On June 2, 1877 a stupendous piece of news broke. Cameron and Hayden had sold their mine to a Portland concern for a reputed price of $25,000 cash, a figure that may not be far from the truth. The new company incorporated as the Sterling Mining Company and prepared to undertake intensive development work on the claims.
    This ended the long association of U. S. Hayden with Sterling Creek. He concentrated his attention on his mercantile interests in Jacksonville which had been thriving since the days when he had been appointed first Justice of the Peace for Sterlingville.
    "Tod" Cameron retired to his stock ranch in the valley of the Little Applegate just below the mouth of Sterling Creek. As the years passed, he developed it into a highly profitable enterprise through sound management and constant improvement of his stock. He continued to speculate in mining claims from time to time. He later served as State Senator from Jackson County with the same unspectacular competence which distinguished all of his activities.
    Sterling Creek was about to embark on a new phase of its mining history.

    The Sterling Mining Company was incorporated on June 7, 1877. The moving spirit in the group seems to have been David P. Thompson who became general manager of the property and supervised its operations.
    The Ohio-born Thompson was a colorful figure. He had just completed a term as the Territorial Governor of Idaho when he came to this enterprise. This stint granted the title Governor which he retained for the remainder of his life and, as Governor Thompson, he became an important and respected figure in Oregon.
    He was typical of his day and his time. He came west with little in the way of assets other than ambition. Like most of the Idaho territorial governors, he retired from that office with quite a respectable accumulation of capital assets. It must be remembered that this was the era of the presidency of U. S. Grant which proved to be a most profitable period in which to hold political office.
    At the time that Thompson began his participation in the Sterling venture, his capital had reached the size of a small fortune by Oregon standards. His activities and this capital had made him one of the prominent, wealthy figures of financial circles within the state.
    Thompson went to work almost immediately. The company began some preliminary work on the ditch shortly after taking over the property. The plans called for a ditch along the route of the Howard survey with a capacity of 2,000 inches of water. By the end of June the company was calling for bids for the construction, offering to let contracts for lengths varying from one to five miles.
    Within one week, contracts had been let for nine miles of the proposed twenty-three-mile venture and construction began on these sections under the general direction of Thompson. By the end of July more than 300 men were employed on the ditch and Thompson was driving toward completion. He hoped to have the work completed in time to use the ditch during the coming winter mining season.
    August found the work progressing and Thompson let the contract for the lumber needed in the construction. Mr. Irwin of Sams Valley got this contract and moved his mill to Sterling Creek to save on costs. The mill soon developed a capacity of 13,000 feet per day which was a nearly unheard-of figure for Southern Oregon at this time.
    The whole area looked on in amazement as the dynamic Thompson pressed forward with his project. By September he had 400 men working on the ditch and was giving the valley the first view of large-scale construction work. He planned for a ditch that was to be seven feet wide at the top, tapering to four feet at the bottom and to be three feet deep. Some sections were carried by flumes. For twenty-three twisting miles it followed the hillsides and crossed the gullies. It is no wonder that the valley folk were impressed with the enterprise and its dynamic leader.
    The burning of part of the sawmill in early October slowed construction somewhat but Thompson achieved his goal of opening the ditches for use for the winter mining season. Mid-November brought the project to completion. Water was turned into the ditch and, for the first time in the 23-year history of the diggings, the mine had an ample quantity of water and a dependable source.
    The company installed two hydraulics to work its ground. They operated with a head of 761 feet which made stripping the ground a much easier process. The water pressure was enough to move boulders the size of an automobile, and a skilled operator could push one of these huge rocks up a bank and out of the way. A new era had come to Sterling Creek.
    Shortly after the first of January, 1878, the mine was operating at full capacity. Governor Thompson returned to Portland and his family, leaving Frank Ennis in charge of the operations as superintendent of the mine. It was a position that Ennis was to hold for several years.
    Newspaper reports state that the two hydraulics were stripping the overburden at the rate of 800 cubic yards per day. The amount of bedrock being exposed to intensive mining was far larger than at any previous time in the history of Sterling, even surpassing the work done by the great flood. This boded well for the new ownership, and local observers looked forward expectantly to the cleanup which would measure the success of the project.
    The cleanup lived up to expectation. The company reported a total of $27,987.24 in gold taken out of its claims against an operating expense of $7,408.23. The amount far exceeded anything that Cameron and Hayden had taken out of the mine  in a single year. The profit picture changes somewhat when one realizes that the capital improvements were not charged against the operating budget.
    Governor Thompson and his associates apparently had gone into the mine as promoters rather than to operate it as a long-term investment. The Governor wished to retire from active business life for a time and take his wife on an extensive tour of Europe. There is the possibility, of course, that this decision was reached as the result of his close contact with the mine which tended to make it less desirable than he had first thought.
    It did not require the knowledge of Thompson's desire for retirement to produce rumors of possible sales. One report in circulation in the Southern Oregon area was that the company had refused an offer of $450,000 for the property. This seems to be merely one of the usual visions of immense, outside capital being interested that always developed whenever a mining property showed a good profit.
    The property was sold in 1879. The purchaser was Captain A. P. Ankeny of Portland. The sale price is difficult to assess, as the actual deal was a trade. Ankeny acquired the mining company in exchange for the block of land in downtown Portland on which the New Market Theater stood. The theater, the most lavish in the Northwest, had opened in 1875 and the block included business buildings as well as the theater itself.
    It was valuable property by any standards and gives an idea of the value placed on the mine. The Portland Oregonian was flabbergasted by the transaction and there were many in the northern part of the state who felt that Cap Ankeny had been taken on the deal. In Southern Oregon, of course, it was a vindication of the local mining industry and hailed as being an astute move.
    Cap Ankeny had come to Oregon in 1850 with his son, Henry, and his adopted son, Levi. The title Captain, by which he was known throughout his career in the Pacific Northwest, had been gained when he was captaining steamboats out of his native city, Wheeling, West Virginia.
    He became a merchant in Portland and prospered as a small businessman until the discovery of gold in northern Idaho. Hearing the news of this discovery, Cap joined the rush to the mines and was one of the first on the ground at Lewiston, which was a sort of rallying point for miners en route to the gold fields. He was one of the first to realize the potentialities of the site and was instrumental in organizing the town which was beginning to develop.
    The land was part of the Nez Perce reservation so it could not be filed upon. Cap Ankeny persuaded the owners of property in Lewiston to try for a patent. A complicated arrangement was arrived at whereby he applied for a patent on the land as a town site and gave quitclaim deeds to the property holders so that, if the government ever conveyed the land to Ankeny, they would be in full possession of it.
    Cap opened a store in Lewiston and placed Levi in charge of it with Henry as an assistant. He then returned to Portland where he took charge of that end of the operation. He purchased the goods and saw that they were safely transported to Lewiston where the boys sold them. The business grew rapidly as a succession of rich strikes in north Idaho all depended upon Lewiston as their supply center. Levi Ankeny became quite wealthy from the operation and invested his money in the Walla Walla area where he became the leading banker, one of the wealthiest men in the state of Washington and later served in a distinguished fashion as Senator from Washington. Henry stayed on with his father.
    Cap had continued to speculate in business and mining after making his fortune from the Lewiston operation. His Southern Oregon placer holdings and the New Market Theater and block were just two facets of a colorful career. Now an old man with only one eye, Cap Ankeny was still a vigorous and aggressive business man.
    The first five years of Ankeny ownership is the period for which we have the only complete record of the operation of the Sterling mine. Frank Ennis was kept on as superintendent of the mine and he kept a detailed ledger which has found its way into the museum in Jacksonville. It runs through until Ennis had to retire from the mine because of illness in 1884.
    The first year of operation was not a financial success. A flume had been constructed to extend the long ditch up the valley so that some of the higher ground might be worked. The cost of this construction, which the company carried as operating cost rather than under a separate heading on capital investment, raised the operating expense for the year to $10,500. The flume enabled the company to strip much new ground, but water gave out before the company was able to start cleaning the gravel uncovered by the stripping. The total sale of gold dust that year, according to the record of mint certificates, amounted to $4,200. This small total gives support to the idea that the first year of the Ankeny ownership was largely devoted to development work rather than mining.
    The following year saw a concentration on mining. The operating costs went up to a total of $13,918.83 for the year. The increase was largely spent in wages. Frank Ennis received a salary of $200 per month as manager. The labor force also included blacksmiths, hydraulic operators, ditch walkers and a force employed in maintenance work on the ditch. The Chinese returned to Sterling Creek this year, too. The basic, unskilled labor of the mine was performed by a gang of Chinese hired under contract and housed in an area long known as "Chinatown."
    The size of the cleanup for the year indicates the increased concentration on mining, though some of it must be laid to the stripping done the year before which cleared a large area for work, the returns of which showed on this season's profit sheet. The sale of gold to the mint in San Francisco brought in a tidy $17,781.79 which helped to balance the deficit of the previous year.
    The company's profit was augmented by subsidiary operations. A store was maintained which sold goods to the labor force and showed a small profit at the end of the year. The company also maintained a boarding house which brought in additional profits. Farming activities were a further source of income. Some cattle and pigs were raised on the company land. Some of these were sold to the boarding house but others were sold in the open market.
    The year of 1881 saw mining activities increase sharply as Ankeny worked for a big cleanup. Operating costs, chiefly in the form of additional labor, rose to a new high of $16,574.14 for the year. The hydraulics slashed away at the new ground opened up by the flume extension while a busy force of Chinese cleaned up the bedrock, probing the irregularities of the rock with camel hair brushes and putty knives.
    The cleanup justified the added costs. Mint receipts for the year reached a new high of $28,841 and the subsidiary operations prospered as well. Cap Ankeny was delighted with the returns and presented gold watches to two of his employees, Lawrence Paulsen and Anton Rose. Rose, a Portuguese, was a long-time Sterling resident who worked as a ditch walker. He was later to acquire a small farm, marry a local school teacher and live out a pleasant life not far from Sterlingville.
    The spectacular returns brought the usual train of rumors concerning the sale of the mine. One report stated that Cap Ankeny had refused an offer of $400,000 for the property from a group conveniently identified by the vague appellation "eastern capitalists." Other rumors, less circumstantial than this, were reported but they seem to have been figments of the editors' imagination, for they served as opening statements in editorials that dilated on the immense wealth to be made in local mining by those who would provide the capital.
    Whether or not any offer had been made, Cap Ankeny put some of the money from the big cleanup into capital investment. He purchased the Kleinhammer claim which adjoined the mine on the upstream side. This left only two parcels of important mining ground outside of the company holdings, the Saltmarsh-Yaudes holdings and Ed Graupner's claims. This latter was of less interest as much of it lay so high that the ditch would reach only a portion of it and that only for ground sluicing.
    Another improvement that was made at this time was the widening and deepening of the ditch. Ankeny had decided to add a third hydraulic to the battery that was slashing away at the hillsides. With these improvements, the Sterling mine became the largest hydraulic mine in Oregon and one of the largest anywhere, so much larger that it became something of a tourist attraction for the area.
    Unfortunately the new investment produced no immediate return. The fall of 1881 was a dry one and early November brought an end to work with the hydraulics due to lack of water. The situation in December improved enough that Ennis reported that he could operate one hydraulic. To take advantage of the limited run, the company bought a large size locomotive headlight to provide illumination for night work.
    The troubles of Ennis were not at an end. In late January a cold spell froze the ditch and brought operations to a complete halt. It was not until early March that the weather improved to the point where the mine could begin a full scale operation. From this time through early July the mine was able to operate at full capacity due to generous spring rains.
    The mining season was quite successful on Sterling Creek that spring. Several large nuggets were reported, Cap Ankeny finding one that weighed out at $80. Saltmarsh and Yaudes did so well that they had taken one hundred ounces of gold even before starting the cleanup, most of this in nuggets. The heavy rains in the spring aided the work and an unseasonal deluge in late June, though it temporarily blocked the Sterling Mining Company ditch, provided an additional week of full-scale operation for all.
    The operating costs for the mine in 1882 reached their highest point under the Ennis management. The total came to $17,905.57 and included the cost of ditch improvement and the third hydraulic as well as the locomotive headlight. The part of the labor force engaged in actual mining remained about the same as that for the year before.
    In spite of the additional expenditure, the cleanup in this year did not produce quite as much as that for the previous year. Mint receipts totaled only $25,688.23, a drop of just over three thousand dollars. The balance was swelled, however, by a profit of $1,084.20 on the auxiliary operations. The mine was not producing as well as Ankeny had hoped and certainly far less than local reports indicated, the wild guesses ranging as high as $100,000 for this year alone.
    There is a partial explanation for the drop in receipts. The ditch was closed during the enlarging process and this shut down the mine for a time. When the ditch was reopened, the company was able to strip and work a considerable amount of new ground by employing the third hydraulic.
    The season of 1883 began auspiciously. The company was able to operate with a full head of water through the fall of 1882. In February winter came with a vengeance. Snow accumulated to over a foot in depth at Sterlingville and mining operations came to a complete standstill. News from Sterlingville mentioned that Frank Ennis, the mine manager, was employing the time in working on a farm that he had taken up while Ed Graupner sold out most of his cattle at $18 a head to a speculator making up a drive for the California market. The Parks' sawmill was the only activity on the creek that was still operating and the snow helped in skidding the logs.
    By the end of March mining operations were resumed again and the Sterling Mining Company was reported to be in full operation with the ditch running a full head of water. It was a good season and the water supply held out through April with the company running two of the hydraulics on a 24-hour basis in spite of not having a full head of water in the ditch. The water supply held out nicely until the usual cleanup that was begun at the end of June.
    The profit figures for the year were not, however, auspicious. The operating costs were reduced to $9,306.50 for the year. Unfortunately the returns from the mint receipts totaled only $13,306.99 for the period. The auxiliary profit climbed to $1,342.50, which helped to improve the position but it was a comparatively small return on the investment that Cap Ankeny had in the mine by this time.
    To add to the costs, the county assessor raised the assessed valuation of the mine from $14,500 to $15,300 in recognition of the improvements made. This, of course, raised the tax bill. The assessment figure was to remain at this level for a number of years rather due to rarity of reassessment than to any calculations on the fluctuating value of the mine.
    The ledger comes to an end at the conclusion of 1884, for this was the last year of the superintendency of Frank Ennis. This year saw a further drop in the operating costs of the mine to $8,881.50 but the savings in operating costs were more than offset by a drop in the amount of gold sold to the mint. The total of the receipts for that year was a mere $9,613.29, for the smallest return that Ankeny had received since his first year of ownership. There was a corresponding drop in the profit from the auxiliary operations which amounted to only $627.20 for the year.
    It is apparent that the first few years of the Ankeny operation of the Sterling mine were not exceptionally profitable. In relation to his capital investment and the improvements in the property the returns were rather insignificant. Cap Ankeny's faith in the property was unshaken, however. In an interview published in Portland in the Daily News in December, 1886 Cap reaffirmed this. Asked to comment on rumors that Governor Thompson had "taken him," he replied, "I want nothing better as a legacy for the Ankeny family than the Sterling mine."
    An unexplained action of this period was the incorporation, in February, 1884, of the Buncombe Mining Company. The Captain, his son-in-law Vincent Cook and D. P. Kennedy were the incorporators. This may have been a move to begin exploitation of the lower creek and some of the Little Applegate itself. The new company soon disappeared without trace, and Kennedy's connection with the project is a mystery.
    The year 1885 found little change in company operations. Operating costs dropped again, in part due to an economic slump in the area which lowered wages and food costs. A part of the explanation seems to lie in an increasing use of Chinese labor and the employment of skilled white labor on a short-term basis rather than on yearly contracts. The returns were somewhat better than for the preceding year with half the mint receipts figuring as net profit which reached $7,000.
    This more encouraging return, plus the capital it made available, may have been responsible for additional capital improvements made in 1886. The lack of water in the summer months was to be remedied by a reservoir, construction of which had begun in 1885. The reservoir was to be built up fifty feet "high" according to the Oregonian and the water entrapped used for ground sluicing the higher ground.
    Another improvement development came with the purchase, in November, of the Saltmarsh claims. Including some of the richest ground on Sterling Creek, these claims were a real asset to the company and were acquired for $10,000 in cash. The sale had its origins in a cloudburst in August that devastated Sterling Creek. The Saltmarsh claims were buried under a mass of debris brought down from Sterling Mining Co. lands that lay above their claim. The farm was wiped out and even continuation of mining required an immense amount of stripping. The Saltmarshes were happy to sell out and move into town.
    The Ankenys figured that the storm had not been especially costly. The cloudburst closed down the ditch for several months. Sections of flume were carried away and sections of the ditch were washed out while other sections were buried in debris carried by the flood waters. To balance this damage much of the high ground, which would have had to have been stripped by ground sluicing, a time-consuming and expensive method, was now cleared by the floods from the cloudburst. Cap Ankeny reported that the stripping more than balanced the costs of ditch repair but one is inclined to suspect him of optimism. Returns for the year fell by 18% while operating costs remained stabilized in the $7,200 to $8,000 range for the year.
    This year brought an end to the middle period of the Sterling mining era. When Cap Saltmarsh and his family sold out, ending an association of more than thirty years with the creek, the company was virtually unchallenged in possession from Buncom to the old town site. Only German-born Ed Graupner remained of the old timers operating his own lands. The Sterling Mining Company was to dominate the next period in the history of the creek and most of the activity was to be centered around it.
    The mine was now being publicized as the largest hydraulic mine in the West and touted as a tourist attraction even in Portland, which usually disdains to notice the southern part of the state. Visitors were taken on special tours of the mine and marveled at the tearing away of the hillsides and the juggling of huge boulders by the hydraulics. Once again it appeared that a "real payoff" was about to be wrested from the reluctant earth of Sterling Creek's small valley.

    The formation of the Sterling Mining Company meant the end of the old town of Sterlingville. The large-scale hydraulic operation was not conducive to the development of a community while the continued expansion of the holdings of the Company effectively reduced the population of the small valley.
    Life on Sterling Creek in the last quarter of the nineteenth century became a bucolic existence. The isolation of the valley served to protect it from the violence and crime that afflicted the communities along the line of the Southern Pacific or within easy reach of the railroad. This same isolation served to give the community a cohesion that represents the best in the life of a small town of that period. The presence of gold served to prevent the poverty that was such an evil in many American communities of the era and also freed the town from the effects of the panics that struck American economic life at this time.
    Despite the attractions of its situation and the pleasant friendliness of the inhabitants, life at Sterlingville was not easy. The tragic accidents that were common to the period gave an undertone of violence, and the ravages of disease, especially diphtheria, took a heavy toll. These were the tarnish on the golden surface of the quiet life.
    The center of the community was still the old town in 1876. Here was the school and the cemetery, the two public institutions, and the store of George Yaudes. The location of the mining company's headquarters just down the creek from the town and the junction of the road from Jacksonville with the road from Griffin Creek also helped to continue the site as the center of the community.
    The decline in population at Sterling is indicated by the election of 1876. Only fifteen votes were cast in the Sterling precinct. When John B. Farley met the school in October, there were thirty pupils in attendance for the three-month session. The nucleus of this group was provided by the Saltmarshes and George Yaudes.
    The construction of the big ditch followed by the sale of the Sterling Mining Company to A. P. Ankeny tended to turn attention away from the lesser events of community life. The influx of ditch laborers helped to swell the population for a while, and the sawmill that was set up remained to add population and to diversify the economy of Sterling Creek.
    Normal activities of the community continued. School met for its short sessions, community dances lasting till dawn were social highlights and the livestock running the brush provided thrills and excitement. There is a story that Ed Graupner used to tie fence rails to the horns of his cattle at roundup so that they couldn't duck back into the brush. The cattle could be dangerous, too. One of these wild ones got into a family vegetable garden. The lady of the house dashed out to chase it out of the patch and got hooked seriously by the belligerent cow.
    There was a brief housing boom in 1879. Both were ranch houses and not in the town. Newton Haskins built a new house on his farm, and Phipps had what was described as "an elegant home" built for him on his Sterling Creek property.
    This was succeeded by a brief period of fires. The Wisdom and Snider sawmill was destroyed in early September, a fate that frequently leveled the steam sawmills of the period. It was quickly rebuilt and back in operation within a month. The mill of this period was not an elaborate structure. When Ed Graupner's barn went up in flames in the following week, more than a suspicion of arson attached but nothing was ever proved. The year ended with the closing of the Sterling school in late November for a recess until the warmer weather of spring.
    The spring of 1880 brings our first mention of a feature of Sterling under the Ankeny ownership of the mine. A party of ladies of Jacksonville drove out to the mine and spent the day looking at the mine and enjoying a fine lunch. The extensive improvements made under the Ankeny ownership made the mine one of the largest in the West, and the drive from Jacksonville is a most pleasant one. It became a favorite outing for the young couples of the town, too. After a tour of the mine, the ladies would be instructed in the art of panning gold and permitted to try their hands. Whatever gold they managed to wash out was theirs to keep. This feature of the trip was eliminated in the early 1890s when two young ladies took the proffered pans and went to the head of the sluice. They did very well from the little expedition, of course. Henry Ankeny, however, did not feel that such a practice was in keeping with the spirit of the invitation and dropped panning gold from the program of entertainment for visitors.
    Sterlingville got a post office in 1879 when George Yaudes was appointed to the office of postmaster. He maintained the office in his store building. The venture was to prove short lived. There was no profit in the post office and the store never proved to be a great success. The post office was closed in 1883 and never reopened.
    A post office was later opened at Buncom. A long-time Sterling resident, J. Parker, was appointed the postmaster and the official opening date was December 5, 1876. A small store building with a false front served as the post office. It remained open until December 15, 1917. These were the only post offices on Sterling Creek. There was little demand for the services of a post office. The Sterling Mining Company probably made the greatest use of the postal service but it tended to use the Jacksonville office, as frequent trips to town on company business made it convenient.
    An interesting development of the period was the invention of a sheep-shearing machine by Thomas Gilson of Sterlingville. Gilson was one of the old timers of Sterling Creek and was operating a sawmill at this time. He applied for a patent on his invention but nothing more is known of it. It was not, apparently, a great success.
    Life drifted along at this even tenor until 1888. The school enrollment remained near thirty pupils and the elections found some 28 to 30 voters turning out. The community had found a brief period of economic stability. Hunting, which had always been a popular pastime at Sterling, hit the news in 1885 when John B. Griffin claimed a kill of seven deer and three bears in a half day on Sterling Creek.
    The Chinese provided an interesting contrast to the life of the settlers. The Sterling Mining Company under Cap Ankeny employed a number of Chinese in the mines and they lived together in the middle creek area. It was a miniature China town with a small store which supplied them with goods from their homeland. The store, of course, was operated by the "boss" of the miners.
    The Chinese New Year celebration was always a highlight to the children of Sterling Creek and they eagerly looked forward to it each year. The firecrackers were a prime attraction, of course, but the rest of the celebration was equally exciting to the small fry. The Ankeny children particularly enjoyed the festival for, as children of the mine owner, they were the recipients of presents from the Chinese labor force. The gifts included a wide variety of Chinese foods but Mrs. Ankeny would let them eat only the candy, the ginger and the lichi nuts. The rest of the food items were quietly disposed of after the donors had left. The girls were also delighted with the silk handkerchiefs that inevitably formed a portion of the gift.
    There was another large group of Chinese not far from Sterling Creek. Just below the mouth of the creek on the Little Applegate was the large placer mine of Gin Lin and Company. Gin Lin had come to the region quite early as a gang boss with a crew of laborers. He had then acquired a group of claims on the Little Applegate and had developed an extensive mining operation there. He became quite  a noted figure in the Rogue Valley and the sight of Gin Lin driving his buggy behind a smart stepping horse was a familiar one to valley residents. He was a frequent visitor at the Sterling mine and always visited with Henry Ankeny at the house whenever he came up to Sterling.
    Gin Lin also acquired a local reputation for his wives. He made occasional trips to China and returned with a new wife each time. Prior to setting out on one of these trips to his homeland, he sold the old model to one of his men. Although he amassed a fortune from his operations in the United States, Gin Lin was not to enjoy it. He sold out his American interests and returned to China but he was murdered and robbed on the docks almost as soon as he left the ship in China.
    The political complexion of Sterling remained much the same through this era. There was a fairly even split between Democrats and Republicans. When prohibition appeared on the ballot in the fall of 1887, Sterling precinct united. It was unanimous in rejecting the measure with a tally of eighteen votes to none. In the presidential election of the following year, the usual split occurred with Harrison edging Cleveland by a fifteen to fourteen margin.
    Religion on Sterling Creek was a sporadic thing. No church was ever established in the community. For special events, a funeral in the old cemetery or a wedding, a minister would come out from Jacksonville to officiate. For a time during the 1890s the Methodist pastor from Jacksonville held services at the school house in Sterling once a month except during the winter months when travel was too difficult. This, of course, varied with the incumbent. The Reverend W. B. Moore was most conscientious in attending to the spiritual needs of the community. Others who held the Jacksonville pastorate were not as enthusiastic and one of the ministers only appeared two or three times a year.
    During the ministry of W. B. Moore, the Jacksonville congregation held several picnic socials on Sterling Creek near the site of Sterlingville. In 1895, enthusiasm ran so high at the meeting that it was reported that a congregation was to be organized on Sterling Creek and steps taken to acquire land for a church building. The flesh proved weaker than the spirit. The church was never started.
    Itinerant preachers occasionally found their way to the isolated community. The usual stay of these wandering gospel merchants was overnight. They did not ever stay more than two nights. These men could always count upon the hospitality of Henry Ankeny during their stay in the community and Ankeny sponsored them. It would appear that no religious fervor developed along the creek. Whether this was due in part to the influence of the atheistic arguments presented with such overwhelming logic by Welborn Beeson in the newspapers of the valley or whether it was the apathy not unknown in our own day, we cannot say.
    In 1889, the enrollment in Sterlingville school climbed to fifty pupils. The arrival of Henry Ankeny's family from Salem accounts for a part of this increase, as his children attended the school. In the following year Miss Cora Ankeny was appointed as teacher of the Sterlingville school. The new incumbent was not enthusiastically hailed by her younger sister in this role. Her tenure in the position was short and she was succeeded by another daughter of a local resident. This was a practice much in favor in rural communities at this time and not a local peculiarity. Those who have read The Hoosier School-Master will realize the practice had several points to recommend it.
    One of these girls attained some prominence in county educational circles. Miss Mayette Gilson, daughter of Thomas Gilson, had started her teaching career at Sterling school and had, after some experience, transferred to the Jacksonville schools. In the election of 1892, she had received the Democratic nomination for County Superintendent of Schools, the first woman so honored in the state. She lost the election though she ran ahead of the average on the ticket and soon retired from school teaching to marry another long-time resident of Sterling Creek, Anton Rose.
    The organization of the Populist Party on the national scene found receptive ears in Oregon. Jackson County had long had internal strife in the Democratic Party and the dissenting element quickly embraced the new political faith. A newspaper was organized and wildly enthusiastic rallies were held throughout the county, much to the dismay of the regulars of the two major parties.
    Sterlingville again showed its isolation from the rest of the county in the election of 1892. Largely dependent upon gold production, Sterling electors were satisfied with Harrison's fiscal regularity and the Democrats seemed to be quite happy with "Gold Bug" Cleveland. The election returns showed only one vote cast for the Populists and Harrison carried the precinct, a testimonial to the leadership of Henry Ankeny who was becoming prominent in county Republican circles in these years.
    A newcomer to Sterlingville in 1894 was to prove of more than passing interest to the community. Mr. M. J. Donaldson-Selby of Seattle, Washington purchased the Graupner place in partnership with his brother. The Donaldson-Selbys were Englishmen who had been residing temporarily in Seattle while they scouted investment possibilities.
    Ed Graupner had decided to retire from Sterlingville and had sold his land to a Seattle promoter, Charles Stewart. He, in turn, had sold an undivided quarter interest in the 880-acre property to the two Englishmen. The price paid was $6,000, a goodly sum for Sterling Creek property in those days. Later the brothers apparently bought the remainder of the property, for Stewart quickly disappears from the scene.
    Local newspapers, of course, went into rhapsodies over this new development. They immediately assumed that the two men were representatives of London capital (a magic word in those days) and that this was the first step in a campaign to acquire the Sterling mine, itself. The Ashland Tidings went so far as to report that Ankeny and Cook had been offered one hundred thousand dollars for their property.
    The property itself was described as consisting of valuable timber lands and immensely rich agricultural land as well as being a valuable mining property. The paper promised a sawmill as the first step in development and predicted that untold wealth would flow from the soil in which "the rootlets of the tree and vine are embedded (with) the golden ingots of boundless mineral wealth."
    The newspaper's glowing vision was never realized. There was little water for mining purposes and Ed Graupner and his hired man had taken out most of the easily mined gold. The young Englishman was not a miner and made no attempt to learn the techniques and practices. He developed the gardens and orchards on the place and raised pigs as his chief market crop, once driving some two hundred of them across the mountains to the vicinity of Weed, California where he sold them. M. J. Donaldson-Selby remained on Sterling Creek for a number of years. He was a very shy man and became a figure of mystery to many of the inhabitants. His only friend was Henry Ankeny and the two spent many an evening together talking of politics, literature and other subjects which interested them. He stayed only a short time after Henry Ankeny and Vincent Cook sold the mine. Then he, too, sold out and disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.
    There was another side to life at Sterling. Sickness took a heavy toll on the creek. The absence of a resident doctor made little difference in this. The most tragic event was the death, within twenty-four hours, of three children of George Yaudes in May, 1884. The killer was diphtheria which was a regular visitor to the creek. At this time the doctors were helpless in dealing with this dread disease. In the 1890s, a Jacksonville physician was to achieve a great success in treating the disease by swabbing out the mouths and throats of the victims with a solution of hydrogen peroxide.
    Another helpless victim of this period was young Roland Ankeny, age five, who died of tonsillitis, another affliction that was beyond the skill of the local doctors. Tuberculosis, which had claimed Jacob Roudebush, also claimed an occasional victim and treatment of this disease was largely "the Lord's cure."
    Accidents, too, claimed their share of victims. Deer hunting resulted in several fatalities. The crumbling banks of the cuts made by the miners were a source of fatal accidents and claimed the lives of many, including a superintendent of the Sterling mine. The cuts were particularly deadly, for the falling banks inevitably contained a large quantity of large, heavy rocks which did irreparable damage.
    Even so, there were those who lived to a ripe old age. George Yaudes, who died in 1889, was sixty-five at the time, and Ed Graupner's hired man, who died in 1891, was reported to be nearly one hundred years old. He was at least eighty. "Cap" Saltmarsh, the old dean of the Sterling miners, also lived to be eighty-one. Another who lived to an honored old age was one of the organizers of the Sterling mine, "Tod" Cameron, who died at age 85.
    The picture that emerges of this period of Sterlingville's history is, on the whole, a pleasant one. There was virtually no crime and that little was small-scale theft. The violence that erupted in brutal beatings, knifings and murders in other parts of the region were never a part of life in the little valley. Its isolation, the stable character of the population and the solid economic foundation provided by the placers gave Sterlingville quiet and a freedom from the dislocation suffered by other communities in the period.
    Disease and accidents took their toll, certainly. This was a hard fact of life in the 19th-century United States. These tragedies left their marks on the survivors and filled the plots in the cemetery overlooking old town.
    The memory that lingers, however, is a golden one. It is a picture of the barefoot children slowly walking to school in the springtime, reluctant to arrive, then impatiently waiting for the end of the day and a return to the out of doors that claimed so much of their time. It is a picture of the strange Chinese and their exciting celebration of the New Year with the crackling firecrackers and the exotic delights of ginger and lichi nuts. In this sense it is the Indian summer of Sterlingville. It is also the time of the passing away of the old town.

    March, 1888 saw the arrival of Henry E. Ankeny to take over as mine superintendent. Frank Ennis had been forced to resign the position because of ill health. Despite the best medical treatment he could find in the East, Ennis did not recover and returned to Jacksonville, where he died.
    The new manager faced a severe trial almost as soon as he took over. A severe cloudburst in May wreaked havoc with the company holdings. A farm above the mine was washed into the diggings; house, fence and topsoil. This and other debris from the flood created a serious problem for the company. Coming as it did in the middle of the spring run, it was a disaster. The damage alone amounted to some $5,000 while the loss in the cleanup cannot, of course, be estimated. A considerable part of the loss came from the destruction of several miles of the ditch, which was filled by slides.
    Cap Ankeny was undeterred, however. He continued to exude optimism concerning the future of his mine and added to it by purchasing two parcels of land in the middle creek area that helped to round out the company holdings. Neither was particularly valuable ground, for the total purchase price was less than $1,100.
    It is not possible to say how the company operations for the year balanced out. Figures are not available. It is probable that the company wound up with a deficit. The following year proved to be more profitable. An ample amount of rain, well spaced, and a freedom from the damaging facets of nature made it the most profitable year of Ankeny ownership. It looked as though fortune were finally favoring the old man. One thing that may have helped was a stoppage on a loss that must have eaten into the margin of profit.
    The Chinese crew that worked the mine were, as we have mentioned, under the control of a boss who fed and clothed the men and paid them a small sum. He reimbursed himself by collecting the wages of the crew as the contractor for the group. Frequently he would make additional profit from gambling and other activities.
    In this instance, the boss brought out a complete set of new trousers for his gang. By chance, all of these trousers were too long in the leg and the bottoms had to be rolled up. One evening, Henry Ankeny became suspicious of the trousers and ordered the Chinese to roll them down. The mud that was scraped from the cuffs was panned on the spot and averaged out at $1.50 per man. From that time on the Chinese worked in cuffless trousers that were distinctly short in the leg.
    The winter of 1889-1890 was a severe one to Southern Oregon. A series of snow storms in December and January brought an accumulation of 38 inches of snow to Sterling Creek and a suspension of placer operations. Disaster followed in the wake. A heavy rain set in that washed the accumulation of snow away and brought some of the most severe floods ever recorded in the region.
    For the Sterling mine, it was a disaster. The derrick which had been put into operation the year before to lift the huge boulders out of the mine was smashed in the flood waters. The pipe and the giants were buried in a sea of mud and rock and the wall of the reservoir was washed away by the flood waters. The ditch suffered, too. It was choked with mud and debris along its entire length.
    The spring passed in cleaning up the mess and restoring the equipment. The ditch was cleaned out along its twenty-five-mile length and put back into operation. Before the mine could get back to operation, the mining season had nearly passed. Henry Ankeny remained optimistic, however, and issued a report that the mine had derived considerable benefit from the floods, too. Large quantities of tailings had been swept away and quite a bit of land had been stripped to the gold-bearing gravel by the scouring flood waters.
    The Ankeny troubles were not over. In August, old Cap Ankeny became seriously ill and was taken to Portland for treatment. His illness was diagnosed as "softening of the brain." The old man never recovered and died in March, 1891. The mine now passed to his son, Henry, and to his daughter, who was married to Vincent Cook.
    The fall of 1890 was not a prosperous time for the miners. The weather compensated for the spring deluge by bringing a dry spell that lasted out the year. Rain began in January and there was sufficient water at Sterling mine by mid-February to run two six-inch nozzles on a twenty-four-hour basis. This was far below the operation of two years previously when the company had been running three eight-inch nozzles.
    A fall of snow in early March that left some nine inches on the ground at Sterling and good deposits in the mountains guaranteed a good spring season. The year ended profitably as the company ran well into July and hit several good pay streaks.
    The mining season of 1891-92 was a moderately successful one. Winter rainfall was at normal levels and no immoderate weather intervened to ruin the run. The transfer of the property following the death of A. P. Ankeny brought little change, for Henry Ankeny remained as resident manager. Election news tended to focus the attention of the newspapers on other topics so press reports are slight.
    The year of 1893 brought a panic and hard times to the rest of the nation but brought prosperity to Sterling Creek. A good water supply enabled the company to work a lot of ground that year. Furthermore, it was believed that the company had now solved the problem of blasting away the conglomerate of the old channel in order to reach the gold that lay beneath. Vincent Cook moved out to Sterling to help run the mine and it became a period of intense activity.
    The good returns from the cleanup of this summer were followed by a good mining season in the fall and spring. A reasonably mild winter with a good supply of water brought smiles to the faces of the placer miners. Sterling mine also hit a good pocket of rich ground. By February of 1894 the mine had two six-inch nozzles operating on a seven-day-per-week basis and it promised to be one of the most profitable seasons of mining in the Ankeny tenure.
    The favorable reports of the new pay streak may have brought the sluice robber who struck in mid-July. When the men broke off work for lunch, someone sneaked in and rifled the flume at the foot of the work, cleaning out most of the riffles in it. The man was never caught but safety precautions were taken after this to prevent a recurrence of the incident.
    The season of 1894 was ideally suited to the Sterling operation. Ankeny kept the ditch going into mid-August and did not begin the cleanup until the end of that month, a chore which kept him busy breaking down the amalgam well into September. One evidence of the amount of the take is to be found in the sending of 50 ounces of nuggets from the mine to be placed on display at the state fair in Salem in that year.
    Newspaper estimates of the take for the season placed the amount at $50,000. It is possible that this sum is close to the actual amount. It was certainly a good year and the ground worked over was rich ground. It did revive, of course, the rumors of sale and the Ashland Tidings reported that the mine was under contract at a figure of $400,000.
    That fall a tragedy occurred at the mine. There had been some suspicion of sluice robbing since the incident in July and some reports of unauthorized persons wandering about the property. Henry Ankeny and his family had left for a visit in early November and had left Ankeny's son-in-law, Frank Crump, in charge of the mine.
    Worried by the reports, feeling his responsibility and faced with imminent fatherhood, young Crump was more than a bit nervous and violated Henry Ankeny's strict prohibition against guns on the property. One of the crew working the mine at that time was 19-year-old Edward Maultby, a high-spirited youngster. Whether he intended to play a joke on Crump or was just wandering about the claim is not clear. Crump spotted what looked to be a suspicious character and let fly with a barrel full of No. 6 shot which peppered the young man. Identification of the victim and the serious nature of the wound brought prompt action. Maultby's older brother was one of the mine crew. He and Crump brought the wounded lad to Jacksonville immediately, where he was treated by Dr. Robinson.
    The company met the expenses of the convalescence and the young man recovered in a few weeks. He did not return to the mine though his elder brother continued to be one of the most valuable members of the crew.
    Another insight into the company's success at this time is found in an article in the Portland Sun. Vincent Cook placed a display of nuggets weighing 350 ounces in a miner's pan in the window of Eggert, Young and Company. The display did not include any of the state fair exhibit and featured nuggets ranging in value from $1 to $400 each. It was a spectacular proof of success.
    It may have been this extravagant display that attracted the attention of some local sharpshooters. Within a month a group of men around Jacksonville announced that they had checked the records and had discovered that the company did not own all of the ground that it had been claiming along the creek. They threatened to file upon this land and sue the company. The excitement was short lived. The title of the Sterling Mining Company was clear. An emphatic letter from Henry Ankeny on the point brought apologies from the paper for publicizing this irresponsible outburst.
    The spring of 1895 passed without remarkable incidents. The water held up and the ditch kept the company operating well into the summer. A court battle over the water rights of the Gallagher ditch produced a verdict in favor of the mining company and an injunction against Philip Gleaves, who had been using the ditch for agricultural purposes.
    In October, 1895 the Sterling mine again displayed a large sample of its season's cleanup in Portland. This was the largest display to date and was valued at $10,000 in dust and nuggets. The largest nugget on display this year was valued only at $110 but the display was impressive in size.
    The Portland Oregonian, which carried a good story on the display on October 10th, also gave some interesting information on the mine. The largest nugget was said to have come from only one foot below the surface of the ground while the second largest on display came from a layer seventy feet below. The story went on to say that the owners would not divulge the size of the cleanup but that this display was all from the cleanup of that season and it was rumored that 500 ounces of gold had been sent to the mint, too. From what we know of annual production figures, this would appear to be an accurate estimate of the production for this year.
    Times continued good for the mine in the following season. Reports in January, 1896 stated that the mine was in full operation. Henry Ankeny, visiting in San Francisco in March, told a reporter from the Call that the Sterling mine "is conceded to be about the best placer property in Oregon" and added that the mine was currently employing a work force of 22 men.
    Little is known of the operation during the remainder of this year. Again election news dominated the papers of the region as the exciting campaign between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan seized public attention. Politics was all-absorbing to the editor of the 1890s, in large part because the local papers were all tied to the local political parties and depended upon the elections for their prosperity.
    A good winter brought another successful mining season in 1897. A freeze in January shut down things for a while but this was compensated for by a good supply of snow in the higher elevations. The Sterling mine was just beginning its cleanup on the first of September and local estimates placed it as the largest in the history of the Company, though the Tidings estimate of $75,000 seems a bit high.
    The extensive operations of these years made it necessary to revamp the works a bit in order to reach untouched ground. Early in 1898 work began on a number of improvements. New flumes were built and a new and larger reservoir was constructed that would offer more water storage for the hydraulics than the hastily repaired reservoir that had been damaged in the big storm of 1890. Other alterations were also made at this time to enable the company to work the old channel more effectively.
    The repairs to the reservoir resulted in a shorter season than usual. The mine closed down on June 30 to begin the cleanup and the Tidings reported that some three to four acres of bedrock had been cleared during the season and promised good returns. By August 22, the same paper was able to report that the cleanup had been completed and the owners had left for Portland with the proceeds which amounted to "12 gold bricks of the value of $3000 each."
    The alterations and improvements in the mine promised well for the mining season of 1898-99 in view of the excellent returns from the season just concluded. The hydraulics went on around-the-clock operation in mid-February and the weather provided sufficient water for a long run. The cleanup did not commence until late July and bid fair to outdo the fine returns of the previous year.
    The expectations were justified. A sample of the cleanup was placed on display in Portland in late August and was estimated as being worth between eight and ten thousand dollars. The display included nuggets that weighed out as much as $300 and "a lot from $50 to $150 each" according to the Oregonian of August 28. An August report from Medford stated that one shipment to the mint in San Francisco aggregated $15,000 and said that it was only one of several made that year.
    A report from January, 1900 gives an interesting account of the mine's operation. Henry Ankeny was interviewed for the Ashland Tidings and stated that the hydraulics were already operating night and day under a full head of water. There were 26 men working at the mine and eight of them were employed in drifting under the old channel. He went on to state that the operating expenses of the mine averaged $14,000 a year which would indicate that the proprietors were making a return that fully justified Cap Ankeny's faith in the property.
    It was at this time that the company began experimenting with blasting the conglomerate of the old channel in order to work the bedrock. Giant powder was used and the drift referred to above was for the purpose of placing charges. An accident in February, 1900 brought this information to light. There was an explosion of powder that did considerable damage to the mine and was heard in Jacksonville.
    The powder monkey had been attempting to thaw out some giant powder which had been frozen by the cold weather and had, apparently, been attempting to speed up the process which resulted in the explosion. Ankeny told the papers at this time that the mine was using a ton of powder a month in working away at the old channel.
    The experiment with the blasting powder was not a success. The quantities necessary, the problems of handling and the nature of the conglomerate combined to make the venture uneconomic. The experiment was continued in a desultory fashion for some months after the accident but it was apparent that this was not the answer to dealing with the old channel, and this problem was never satisfactorily solved by the owners of the mine despite considerable efforts in later periods.
    The season of 1900 was another spectacularly successful one for Ankeny and Cook. In April the sluice boxes yielded seven gold bricks valued at $17,000 and this was just the beginning. A partial cleanup in July resulted in another 1270 ounces of gold valued at $23,000 while the final cleanup in August was to produce another $14,000 in gold bricks and an additional $10,000 in coarse gold and nuggets. It would seem that this was the largest single season take ever made in the history of the mine.
    After the spate of publicity, Ankeny and Cook became less communicative about the mine. It may be that cleanups in the succeeding years became less spectacular. It is a fact, however, that Cook tended to spend more time in Portland after 1900 and that Henry Ankeny traveled more, too. He began moving in the higher echelons of the state Republican organization, a pursuit that culminated in his being a member of the delegation that called on Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 to bring him the hardly unexpected news that he was the party nominee for President for that year.
    As the owners began spending more time away, the operation of the mine was turned over to Frank Ankeny, Henry's son, who took over the position of superintendent of the company. There was little change in the operations but the new superintendent was not in the position to divulge information of the sort that his father and his uncle had been feeding to the press.
    There was little else of interest in the period. A heavy spring storm in 1903 did considerable damage to the ditch but it was soon repaired. The cleanup that summer produced a display of gold nuggets that impressed the public. The largest nugget was valued at only $140 but the total was estimated at $4,000. This display, however, was held in Medford and not in Portland as in previous years.
    Henry Ankeny was also becoming interested in other ventures. He began looking over the irrigation systems around Klamath Lake in 1901 and became impressed with the possibilities of them. One of the major problems there was that insufficient capital was available. Consequently a number of small companies were operating in the field and none was efficient. This was further complicated by the fact that some of the main ditch lines paralleled each other.
    In 1904 Ankeny and Cook began negotiating the sale of the mine to a Roseburg, Oregon promoter, Fred J. Blakeley. It is not known how much was paid for the mine but it is known that Henry Ankeny was able to invest more than $50,000 from his half share in acquiring Klamath irrigation projects.
    The new owners took over the property in early 1905. It brought the Ankeny ownership to an end after a quarter of a century of vigorous exploitation. It was the end of an era for Sterling Creek.
    Henry Ankeny did not live to complete his work with the irrigation project. The federal government had become interested in the district and moved to acquire all of the water rights of the companies operating there. It was a long and tedious business and was still being negotiated when Henry Ankeny died in Portland on December 22, 1906. His death was widely mourned in Oregon where he had been an active figure for fifty-six years.

    The Sterling mine was now the largest placer mining property in Oregon. There were 1200 acres of ground on Sterling Creek. The company also owned water rights on Sterling Creek, the Little Applegate, Griffin Creek, Grubb Creek, Dutch Creek, Glade Creek, Deming Creek and the Squaw Lakes. Some of these water rights were not useful for working the creek but they were valuable property. Irrigation in the area was on the increase.
    The only important acreage on Sterling Creek not yet owned by the company was Ed Graupner's old ranch. It was still owned by Donaldson-Selby. This ranch comprised some 878 acres of ground and lay above the Sterling mine property. There had been a reasonable quantity of gold found on some of the property but no real survey of it had been made and there had been no extensive exploitation. Graupner and a hired hand had worked some of the ground and some of it had been worked at the time of the rush but most of it was untouched by mining, and approximately two hundred acres of it were under cultivation at this time.
    An essential feature of the Sterling mine was the long ditch. It still wound some twenty-six and a half miles around the hillsides before emptying into the reservoir. The other ditches owned by the company were of little value for mining purposes as they served the land around the mouth of the creek and this had long since been mined out.
    The chief area yet unworked was the ground of the old channel. The portions of the channel that had been worked were of high quality. There was also some land lying at the base of the hills along the creek which had not been worked and it appeared to be productive. In earlier years some of this ground had been worked by drifting and had paid well.
    There was another side to the picture. Operations were reaching the limit of profitable working with the mine as it then stood. The main workings were then operating with a head of only 65 feet of water. This was far from sufficient for working the old channel.
    In order to reach the high quality ground that lay immediately above the ground worked in 1905 and to follow the old channel, something had to be done to increase the water pressure. In fact, it would not be long before the old ditch was providing a head of water sufficient only for ground sluicing.
    The new owners were primarily promoters. Little is known of T. N. Barnsdall, and his connection with the mine seems to have been slight. He held a share in the mine through this period and was a partner of S. S. Bullis, the next owner of the mine.
    The other owner was Fred J. Blakeley of Roseburg, Oregon. His name was to be connected with the property off and on for a number of years in ways that seem impossible to untangle at this date.
    Blakeley had been the promoter of the Umpqua Water, Light and Power Company, a firm which served Roseburg. He appears on the letterhead as the president of the firm. The capital he used in purchasing his share of the mine seems to have come from selling out the Umpqua Water, Power and Light to the City of Roseburg. He retained a debatable interest in the property which later resulted in a threat of litigation. He filed suit against the city but the case was never tried.
    Connected with the new firm were T. R. Sheridan, who served as treasurer, and Jefferson D. Heard. Sheridan had served the Umpqua Water, Power and Light in a similar capacity and was the president of the First National Bank of Roseburg. His share of the Sterling mine was probably sufficient only to qualify him to hold an office in the company.
    J. D. Heard was listed on the letterhead and in other sources as the manager of the mine. He seems to have been an investor-promoter of the sort that was common at this time. He had held an extensive interest in the Shasta County Mining Company of California and owned, for brief periods, mining and agricultural property in Josephine and Klamath counties in Oregon. His first known connection with the mine is a letter of authorization from Henry E. Ankeny under the date of November 30, 1897. He is named sole agent for the sale of the Sterling Mining Company for the sum of $250,000.
    It is not clear whether Heard actually owned a share of the mine or not. Papers exist which grant him a 10% commission on the sale of the mine, one dated February 6, 1911. His own account book for 1905 indicates that he had a quarter interest in the fee paid for the sale of the mine at that time.
    The new owners began mining in May, 1905 with the operations directed by Mr. J. D. Heard, the foreman. There was little change from the last years of the Ankeny ownership. Giant powder had been given up in favor of dynamite for working the old channel and this seems to have been the major change.
    Initially the holes for the dynamite were hand drilled. The drillers became a permanent part of the mine personnel. To stimulate them, the company began to award a prize to the team which could win a drilling contest held in Jacksonville as part of the Fourth of July celebration.
    We have a description of the dynamiting of the channel from an eyewitness of the largest of the blasts. One of the Sterlingville youngsters, hearing of the event, sneaked out of the house on a summer evening to watch the show.
    The holes had all been drilled and prepared for the loading. Chinese laborers were brought to the powder house in the evening. Dynamite was notoriously unreliable stuff and it was felt that it was safer to handle after sundown. The coolies worked in pairs. Dynamite was brought from the powder house, two sticks at a time, and placed gently in a vertical position in a bucket made of an old, square can, When the bucket was loaded, the Chinese carefully picked up a pole, from which the bucket was suspended, and walked slowly to the holes. The dynamite was packed and fused hole by hole until the whole blast area was completed.
    The area was carefully cleared of all personnel. Then the blasting chief lit the main fuse. The charges were set to explode simultaneously and our observer reports that they seemed to. It was a tremendous blast, the largest in the history of the mine. Newspaper reports state that it was heard as far away as Phoenix and Jacksonville.
    The dynamite did the trick. The old boulder channel was broken up enough that the hydraulics could operate, though many of the masses of conglomerate had to be derricked out. The tailings were washed down onto previously worked sections of the mine.
    In this first season, a bobtailed one that ended in early August, the mine lived up to its reputation. The owners reported gold to the value of $9,481.19 for the period but showed no figures for operating expenses. It is probable that these did not run to more than half the sum from the cleanup.
    The following year was a more profitable one. The first cleanup was weighed out on March 14 and brought 101.56 ounces of gold. Successive cleanups followed with the final one coming on August 20, 1906. The total for this full season came to $19,450.71 from 42,000 yards of dirt and at a reported operating cost of approximately $9,000 for the year.
    The effectiveness of the ditch was already starting to be strained and the limitations were to become apparent in the following year. The cleanups began on March 6 and ended on July 30, in 1907. The ground worked for the season amounted to some 60,000 yards but the returns from this dropped to $16,828.90 for the year. In the lack of evidence to the contrary, one must assume that the reported average operating costs of nine thousand per year were held for this year, too. The profit margin was a little higher than this indicates for the owners reported a later sale of a gold brick and some nuggets of an estimated value of $4,301.80 which brings the total to the excellent figure of $21,130.70 for the season. (The confusion in this report as given here is a reproduction of the confusing original.)
    There is some suspicion attaching to the report for 1907. A letter of that summer, written apparently by the office manager of the firm, states that all of the work on the mine, including improvements (not specified), had been done with no capital expenditure. It may have been that the promoters needed all of the profit from the year to keep their financial empire intact. It may be that they were milking the property. There seems little to choose between the two.
    The mine continued to operate in succeeding years under the ownership of Blakeley but detailed figures are not available. These given above are from a report prepared as a sales prospectus for the mine. There is a suspicion that later figures were not so impressive and an examination of the ground that was worked bears this out, for the hydraulic was of little use after the 1907 season in working the old channel.
    A report published by the U.S. Geological Survey as Bulletin 380, Contributions to Economic Geology, 1908, gives an interesting picture of the mine in that year. The property is now reported as exceeding 2,000 acres (reflecting the purchase of the Donaldson-Selby ranch). It extended from a point below the mouth of Sterling Creek the entire length of that creek and across the divide to Griffin Creek.
    The report indicates that nothing more had been done to improve the ditch. The proposed Squaw Lakes project is mentioned and the statement made that an additional 17 miles of ditch would be required to tap this source.
    The description is worth quoting for the light it casts on the workings at that time and some of the subsequent difficulties encountered by the later owners.
    "The gravel bank on the west side of the present workings is 40 feet in thickness, but on the east side it is only about 20 feet thick. The section consists of gravel and boulders, the latter being rather uniformly distributed throughout the section. Many of the boulders are small, but some are more than 2 feet in diameter and a few exceed 8 feet. They are mainly of greenstone.
    "… [to the east of the present stream bed] … Here a channel, which is named Boulder Channel, was struck, and this has been followed for about a quarter of a mile to the present workings The bedrock of these workings is a little higher than the present stream bed and is about 100 yards east of it. The values are found across a width of 200 feet. The gold is of medium coarseness and is usually well rounded, although angular nuggets are also present. The average thickness of the gravel in the Boulder Channel is about 40 feet. The bedrock at the mine is greenstone, in which are patches of slaty tuffs. These rocks have been considerably sheared and veinlets of quartz are present.
    "… In the present workings is a dike running N, 20° E., containing cross-veins which do not extend beyond the dike.
    "… In 1908 mining was in progress from March until August, during which time about 1 acre was mined. The value of the gravels was about 40¢ to the cubic yard."
    The above report would indicate that the cleanup for the year's operation returned about $24,000 gross, which would be in line with preceding years. The mine was still paying well but the time was approaching when the Ankeny improvements would be insufficient to keep the mine going on this scale of operation for much longer.
    Something needed to be done in order to get water to the higher ground. Blakeley had had a survey made by J. S. Howard, a noted engineer in the Medford area, with a view to tapping the water of the Squaw Lakes with a new ditch. The project stopped at that point. The company did nothing toward constructing the new ditch and showed no sign of going ahead with it.
    In the absence of evidence it is impossible to say why this development was not carried through. There is a strong suspicion that Blakeley did not have sufficient capital to contemplate such a project. On the other hand he was primarily a promoter rather than a developer. The Squaw Lakes project which had begun as an attempt to solve the problem of hydraulic pressure at the mine soon burgeoned into an immense irrigation scheme whereby the waters of the lakes would be carried by a high ditch across the Griffin Creek divide and used to irrigate some four thousand acres of valley land.
    This project was obviously beyond the financial capabilities of the owners of the mine. Some publicity was given the venture and some abortive efforts were made to attract attention to it but little was done toward attracting capital for the venture. It was a time when great projects were talked of all over the West and many areas had their multi-million dollar schemes that would, according to the drum beaters, convert their own districts into veritable Ophirs.
    There was little change in the operation of the mine in 1909 and 1910 from the pattern described in the geological report of 1908. A series of suits were brought against the company by interested parties who objected to the company running "slickens" from its placer operations into the Little Applegate.
    Oregon law was beginning to follow the pattern of other western states in legislating against the placer operators. The law was not as firm at this time as it was to become later, when settling basins were required and restrictions placed upon the amount of sediment permitted in water discharged into streams.
    In 1910 the mine hit the pages of the local newspapers for a while and attracted letters to the editor. Blakeley brought in a nugget valued at $134 and reported it as one of the largest nuggets ever taken out of the mine. Silas Reynolds wrote in to claim that he had found a nugget in 1867 that weighed out at $200 which he claimed as the largest ever found, and various other writers told of large nuggets they had found. The largest nugget reported from the mine seems to have been the one valued at $300 which Henry Ankeny placed on display in Portland in 1899.
    This was the last season of operation under the Blakeley ownership. The "run" had been much smaller than the previous years and the difficulties with water had slowed down operations, too. The lawsuits had added to the expenses. It would appear that the season was not a profitable one and the irrigation venture was showing no signs of attracting financial support.
    Mining was no longer an exciting occupation in Southern Oregon in 1910. The great Medford pear boom was attracting all of the attention and whatever local capital that was available, while other irrigation projects were building. Whatever hopes Blakeley had had for the property, it had become obvious that he was not going to be able to realize them.
    In 1911, the mine changed hands. A number of bonds had been sold, probably to pay off Ankeny and Cook. These were acquired by Spencer S. Bullis and Mr. T. N. Barnsdall of the Barnsdall Oil Company as a speculative venture.
    Mr. Bullis made the journey to Southern Oregon to look over the property in company with his eldest son, Raymond S. Bullis. A survey of the property was made and a close investigation of the operation was conducted. There was little doubt as to the value of the ground yet to be mined but it remained to be seen if the engineering problems involved could be met cheaply enough to put the property on a paying basis.
    This event brought a man into the Rogue River Valley who was to play an active and important role in its development over the next fifteen years. For the Sterling mine it was to be a period of improvements and developments and the final chapter in its history as an important mining property.
    Spencer S. Bullis was born in East Aurora, New York in 1848. His business career began in southwestern New York where he became interested in hardwood lumbering. He became primarily concerned with marketing the lumber and developed an organization that became quite extensive. In the course of his business he also became interested in railroads and invested in several short lines in western New York and northern Pennsylvania and engaged in some construction. It was here that he became interested in trolley lines.
    In the 1890s, Bullis decided to embark on a major development project in partnership with a Captain Jones of Buffalo, New York. The two acquired property in Gulfport, Mississippi. Bullis immediately began a large-scale development of the port. Piers were built on the waterfront and a maritime trade built up revolving principally around the export of the wood of the longleaf yellow pine of this heavily forested area. It was only natural then to construct a railroad from Gulfport to Jackson, Mississippi to augment the operation.
    With the Gulfport development in this stage, Bullis began to look for another field of operations. Primarily a builder, he lost some of his zest for a project when it had been completed. He sold out to his partner and used the proceeds to purchase electric power plants and distribution systems in Natchez and Vicksburg, Mississippi and in Lake Charles, Louisiana. With this as a nucleus, he began developing an electric interurban system and also invested heavily in the developing street railway system in Beaumont, Texas.
    By 1911 he had achieved his purposes and the development of these various interests. He cashed in on his work and sold the various interests to a Chicago firm that was acquiring such properties. It left him with a considerable capital and looking for opportunities for investment and development.
    It was at this juncture that the opportunity came to acquire the Sterling mine. By this time the Rogue Valley of Oregon was becoming well known nationally as the result of the fabulous pear boom. It was a region that exhibited quite a potential for the prospective investor.
    This was the man who appeared in early 1912 to survey the property and investigate its possibilities. For the first time, the mine had passed into the hands of an owner who had capital for real development and who could visualize it as a part of a regional development scheme.
    One of the first steps taken by S. S. Bullis in his broader development scheme was the acquisition of the Southern Oregon Traction Company, which had a franchise for constructing a street railroad in Medford. The trolley line was actually constructed by Bullis.
    In 1915 he purchased the Rogue River Valley Railroad, which ran from Medford to Jacksonville and electrified the line to Jacksonville. To the valley newspapers, always anxious to boom new schemes, these moves provided a field day for speculation. Inasmuch as Bullis owned the Sterling mine, it was confidently predicted that an extension would soon be built to the mine.
    Mr. Bullis did plan an extension of the line but certainly had no thought of building on to the Sterling mine. The Bullis Logging Company was formed and a modern mill was erected near the line of the railroad in Medford. The railroad was then extended beyond Jacksonville by the logging company to tap the timber on the hills.
    Further development was considered, and the passage of a measure authorizing a bond issue by the City of Medford to subsidize construction of a railroad to the coast via Smith River caused Mr. Bullis to survey the proposed route. Nothing came of the scheme, however, for a survey of the area indicated that the route was not practicable. The final blow to the project was administered by the Oregon Supreme Court which held that such bond issues were unconstitutional.
    The Sterling mine was merely a part of a larger development scheme for the region developed by Bullis. As events developed it proved to be the most profitable of the many projects, though some arguments could be made for awarding this honor to the logging and mill operation. All of the projects were to become casualities of the first World War. Labor costs and materials priorities were to strike crippling blows that eventually destroyed them.

    There was no mining done in the year of 1912. The new owner had surveyed the property and was making plans for extensive developments, but little could be done until the proposed changes had been put into effect.
    During the mining season of 1912-13 some leases of mine property had been granted on a royalty basis which brought in a little money. A drift was carried into the old boulder channel and some working of ground outside of the channel was carried on but the returns were small. A heavy snowfall in the mountains had produced some optimism but the cleanup failed to justify it. The mint receipts totaled only $1,529.51 for the season.
    Excitement was generated in February, 1913 when Spencer S. Bullis granted an interview to some local newspaper men. It was announced that the tidy sum of $200,000 was to be put into the development work at the mine.
    There was little concrete information on the specific projects which were to accrue from this investment. The major portion of the money was to go for the construction of a high line ditch. This was essentially the Blakeley project which would put the ditch in high enough to develop a good working head of water at the mine and an extension which would tap the waters of Squaw Lakes which would ensure that the mine had an adequate water supply for extensive working of the group. Mr. Harry E. Foster of Medford was retained to survey the new line and to prepare the necessary profiles and cost estimates. It was the first time that anything concrete had been done to improve the mine since Henry Ankeny and Vincent Cook had completed their improvement projects in 1899.
    Mr. Bullis returned to the east following this announcement but the work went forward in his absence. By mid-July a contract had been let to James Garvin and James Briner to rebuild a good bit of the flume work on the old ditch so that it would be available for full-scale operation of the hydraulics in the approaching mining season.
    Apparently it was while he was on this trip to the East that Bullis gave up the idea of the high ditch. He may have received preliminary cost estimates from the surveys and made the decision on these grounds. We cannot be certain. The long ditch was an immensely expensive undertaking under any circumstances and the problematical returns from a mining operation did not make such an investment attractive. Unlike Blakeley, who gave up the mine in the face of the discouragement, Bullis put his ingenuity to work. He came up with an alternative to the high ditch that promised to achieve the same results as far as the mine was concerned.
    Large high-pressure pumps had come into use for carving away at hills. Seattle, Washington had used pumps on leveling some of its hills to improve street gradients. Mr. Bullis looked around for such a pump and found one for sale in Seattle. It had been used for filling Topographer Gulch, east of Seattle, during the construction of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Bullis purchased this great pump for delivery to the Sterling mine. According to the news releases it weighed 13 tons and required a power input of 800 horsepower. The figure on the power was accurate but the weight of the pump was approximately 30 tons.
    The pump arrived in Jacksonville by rail in August, 1913. The problem of transporting this huge piece of machinery to the mine was soon solved. A contract was let to Charles A. Berdan who was locally acknowledged as an expert in moving heavy loads. The pump was loaded on to a huge frame of a type used for house moving. Two large steam tractors were hitched to the load and the ten-mile journey to the site of installation was accomplished without incident. It was a spectacular achievement and attracted much local attention. A picture of the load en route to the mine was taken by Emil Britt, son of the famous pioneer photographer, and was widely distributed in the county. It bears a legend giving the weight and the name of the mover.
    The pump had a number of advantages over the high ditch in addition to its rather large saving in expense. The water pressure generated by it was at least as great as the maximum to be expected from the high ditch. The pump also offered some flexibility in operation. There was the possibility of impounding the runoff from the mine working and using the pump to return this water to a catchment basin for re-use. It was an idea with interesting possibilities but does not seem to have been put into actual operation.
    The pump itself was a five-stage one. To power it, an electric motor was installed to operate the pump. It was rated at 1000 horsepower and was connected to the pump in direct line. It was to prove quite satisfactory.
    A hydroelectric power generating plant was established down the creek below the workings at a point where an eight-hundred-foot head of water could be developed from the ditch. The dynamo had a capacity of 1500 horsepower and was rigged to transmit a 6600-volt current on the lines to the mine, a distance of some three miles to the actual workings.
    Seth M. Bullis was put in charge of the electrical plant and that side of the company operations. The generator proved to be quite effective and the plant was later sold to the community of Joseph, Oregon, where it served for many years.
    The new pump proved to be effective in that it considerably increased the pressure of the water directed through the nozzles and, in fact, gave at least as much pressure as the new high ditch would have done and at considerably less expense.
    It did not solve the problem of breaking up the old boulder channel, however. Water pressure was not sufficient to the task at hand. The company had to revert to blasting in order to break up the channel so that the hydraulics could take over. In the spring of 1914 the blasting operation was reported to have consumed 15,000 kegs of high explosive in loosening up the channel.
    The returns from the mine for this season are not available. The one mint certificate that has survived is for a quantity of amalgam that weighed out at $300.50, and this is certainly far less than the mine produced for the year. The returns did not pay for all of the development cost but did cover the normal operating expenses for the season. There is, however, no way of. estimating these costs in order to arrive at an estimate of the probable return from the season's operation.
    The following season saw the works back in full scale operation with the improvements all functioning. The pump proved to be highly effective and the more efficient powder did a good job with the old channel. There was only one thing to prevent the mine from producing a huge quantity of gold. The ground was not rich.
    The total value of the gold from the cleanups from that season amounted to only $11,489.48, which was a small figure in view of the past history of the mine. It provided a fairly reasonable margin of profit above operating costs but did not represent a good return on the total investment of the company.
    The fall of 1915 was a good one for the miners. The rains came early and the supply of water continued through the winter and enabled the mine to operate well into the summer. The new pump proved to be of benefit in that the hydraulics could function at full pressure much later than they could when the sole reliance was placed on the head from the ditch.
    A series of cleanups through the summer of 1916 produced the fine total of $17,538.29 for the mining season. It looked as though the company might begin to get its investment out of the property and optimism was reflected in the local scene. The Sterling mine began to crop up in the newspapers again as one of the largest placer producers in the state.
    It was destined to be the last good season in the history of the Sterling mine. The United States was becoming more and more involved in the great war in Europe, and the mine was to be one of the casualties of the war.
    The mining season of 1916-17 promised to be a good one. The fall was a bit dry but the coming of winter brought rainfall in abundance. The snow piled up in the mountains and held there, ensuring a long season with plenty of water. Another new improvement was made in the spring of 1917. Electric lights were installed in the mining area so that the operation could be carried on night and day through the mining season.
    In spite of the good water supply and the electric lights, the season was not a prosperous one. The total value of the cleanups came to only $7,613.29, which was a meager return for the extensive operation. To add to the difficulties of the Sterling Mining Company, there had been a continuous rise in operating costs since the outbreak of war in 1914. Wages had more than doubled in this time and the cost of explosives, under the impetus of wartime demand, had risen more than that. The problem was further exacerbated in April, 1917 when the United States declared war. This accelerated the inflationary trend of the previous years.
    These problems were to plague the company during its operations in the 1917-18 mining season. Despite every effort to pare costs and to take full advantage of the improvements that had been made in the operation of the mine, the returns were not good. The total value of gold taken during this season was only $8,138.95, a figure that was insufficient to meet the operating expenses for the year.
    The end of the war with the signing of the Armistice in the fall of 1918 encouraged the company to continue operations for the mining season of 1918-19. Cost had not dropped appreciably but there was hope that a less extensive operation might, at least, pay for itself and might even realize a small margin of profit. The returns for the year were a disappointing $5,266.20 and this brought a firm decision to shut down the mine. The company could not afford to operate on ground that averaged no more than 40¢ a yard when costs remained at or near their wartime levels and the price of gold remained unchanged.
    The company could survive only if some vastly cheaper way of handling the ground could be developed. Without this, the days of the large company and large-scale placer mining on Sterling Creek would end, and mining would revert to the small-scale operation that had prevailed in the days before Cameron and Hayden had begun organization of the district.
    The 1919-20 season found the mine completely shut down. Had Bullis been tempted to reopen the mine, the exceptionally dry summer that brought destruction by fire to much of the Pacific Northwest would have been sufficient to discourage the project. Bullis began to cut his losses in his extensive investments in the local area. He had earlier divested himself of the Southern Oregon Traction Company. It had already passed through one reorganization and had been leased to the Opp mine, a quartz operation near Jacksonville. The burning of the power station in Medford had ended the electrical interurban operation and the railroad soon ceased to operate. Bullis also sold out his lumber mill at this time.
    There was a little work done at the mine in 1920 but it seems to have been a ground sluicing operation and was, apparently, done by a lessor. The return to the mining company was the small sum of $323.60, a pitifully small amount of gold for what had once been the largest placer operation in Oregon.
    The company made no attempt to operate the mine in 1922. Another lease arrangement brought in $706.67 while the sale of timber returned $1,296.12 and a lease of grazing rights on the ranch produced an additional $99 for the firm.
    The property was worked again in the summer of 1923 and cleanups that year brought in $3,188.40 according to the mint certificates. It would appear that this was the total taken by a small operator who paid a 25% royalty, for the company showed a return from the gold for the year that is exactly one fourth of this sum. Additional sources of revenue brought the total receipts for the year to $1,489.96.
    The succeeding season was less successful. The company reported its income from gold as a trifling $83.47 for the year. The total income from the property was only $1,086.28, and taxes and other expenses took $85 of that.
    A doubter still existed, however. Fred J. Blakeley appeared on the scene in 1925 with two partners, Jack Mathews and H. Hutton. Publicity poured forth that intimated that the new proprietors were about to bring in a bonanza. The reporters were given to understand that the mine had changed hands though, in point of fact, Blakeley and his partners were operating it on a lease arrangement with the company.
    The ditch was repaired and Blakeley issued a grandiose statement to the press that four hydraulics would be placed in operation that season. A dam was to be constructed on Sterling Creek itself which would impound sufficient water, according to the news report, to make this large-scale operation possible. The statement to the press went on to say that "Engineers and inspectors have been employed at the mine for several months, testing out the quality of the deposits and constructing new ditches." It was claimed that already $20,000 had been expended in getting the mine back into operating condition and asserted that the "mine remained idle during the past years for lack of anyone with sufficient funds to develop it and put it on a paying basis."
    The actual results of the operation failed to justify all of the advance publicity. The end of the mining season found only $1,641.80 realized from the cleanup. It was slightly more than half as much as the company made from timber sales that year. The operation quietly folded and disappeared from view. The new, imaginative ownership had failed to make a profit from the workings.
    After this failure, interest in working the mine ended. The quality of the ground, which never seems to have exceeded the 40¢ a yard value reported in 1908, and the high costs of operation effectually prevented any working of the mine on a large scale from succeeding. One or two men could work the ground on a lease arrangement and make wages but nothing more elaborate than this would pay. If the mine were to resume operation on a large scale, two factors would have to change. The price of gold would have to rise and costs, especially labor costs, would have to decline.
    Spencer S. Bullis died in December, 1928 and the mine passed to his heirs. During the last years of Mr. Bullis' life, he had operated the Rogue River Canning Company which packed pears for the national market.
    The management of the company devolved upon Seth M. Bullis, who had been in charge of the electrification of the mine. He had later gone to work for the California-Oregon Power Company and was to become district manager of that firm before his retirement. He had little interest in operating the mine and had been convinced by his father's experience that it would not pay a large-scale operation.
    Although no special effort had been made, the mine had been for sale throughout the 1920s. S. M. Bullis was still anxious to dispose of the property but buyers were scarce, even in the boom year of 1928. When the country plunged into depression with the stock market crash of the fall of 1929, prospects for selling the mine became quite dim.
    The depression had brought a widespread revival of interest in placer mining in Southern Oregon but not on a large scale. Many local residents, without employment and with little prospects of obtaining any, bought tools and pans and took to the hills as the forty-niners had done before them.
    There was still a lot of ground in the area that would pay subsistence to a lone miner or family operation in the depths of the depression. Farmers leased rights on their land on a royalty basis to the new gold-seekers and a good many farmers actually turned to working their own ground in order to make expenses and pay taxes as the economy of the country plunged down into the dreadful cataclysm of 1931.
    In Jacksonville, people began sinking shafts in their back yards and drifting under the town. Old shafts were reopened and new ones made. Banks dusted off their gold scales and small stores throughout Jackson County installed scales and sold groceries for gold dust.
    The Jackson County Court came up with a novel idea for easing the pressure on the relief funds available to the county. The Court decided to institute a school to teach mining techniques in the hope that some of the people thus trained could become self-supporting. This would free the scanty relief funds for the support of the most desperate cases.
    The federal government, through the Oregon Office of Vocational Education, made available the sum of $270 for this purpose. The county court provided an additional $150 for the operation of the school. The Medford school system undertook the task of setting up the school and securing the instructors under the capable direction of the superintendent, the late E. H. Hedrick.
    A survey of the local situation showed that there were nearly a thousand people already at work panning gold who had no experience or training and, consequently, were probably losing more than they took through inefficiency. There appeared to be a number of others who would be willing to try mining if they could be instructed in proper techniques.
    The school district hired two experienced miners, Mr. George Barton and Mr. C. C. Clark, as instructors. The course was designed to take three days and instruction was for six hours per day during this time. The first two days of class were devoted to practical matters of vital importance and included:
    On the third day the instructors took the class into the field for practical experience in panning gold.
    The funds available provided three classes with instruction and reached a total of 127 people in registrations for the course. Only ninety-seven of these completed the three-day course, however. An interesting feature of this is that six of the successful students of the course were women. The school also assisted "graduates" to locate if they desired this assistance. Hedrick reported that 18 of them were located on claims by the school personnel.
    In addition to the formal courses of instruction, the school felt it desirable to instruct those miners already in the field who needed help. Mr. J. V. Neff was hired as an instructor and traveled around the country. He reported contacting 225 miners and giving them assistance in improving their techniques, the utilization of their equipment and assisting some to locate on claims, either through informing them of proper procedures or in moving them from poor ground to paying territory.
    For the students of the school, the director also undertook an additional service. He secured laborers with funds provided by the Reconstruction Finance Relief Committee. These men were put to work in stripping the overburden on the claims of the graduates and other necessary development work. This helped to keep the miners on the claims as it allowed them to work pay dirt almost immediately rather than having to go through this long and discouraging process before obtaining any returns. Since these people had been on the relief rolls, they needed immediate returns from their work in order to support themselves.
    The successes of the program did not, however, ensure its continuance. The program was limited to the one session in the spring of 1933. It may be that additional sessions of the school would not have reached a sufficient number of people to justify continuance. Furthermore, placer mining was not a long-range solution to the employment problem. It was merely an excellent stopgap measure. As the New Deal got under way, programs evolved to meet the problems of unemployment, and the philosophy of these programs was not favorable to this type of project.
    Sterling Creek was involved in the program. The Sterling Mining Company granted permission to these miners to use company ground below the working and outside of the areas that were already leased. This ground was available free of charge to the graduates of the school and free of royalty. The county court was also permitted to assign others to the land. At the time that Hedrick made his report in late 1933, he estimated that nearly one hundred men and women had taken advantage of the offer and were located on the deeded ground of the mining company.

    There had been an influx of miners at Sterling Creek even before the establishment of the group as the result of the mining school. A number of men had leased ground from the Sterling Mining Company and some men had moved onto the old tailings to rework them. By the middle of 1933 gold mining was more attractive as the result of the devaluation of the dollar by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With the new price of gold the forty-cent dirt was now seventy-cent dirt and worth enough to work.
    The late model gold rush brought a revival of life along the creek. A store was opened in Sterlingville that became the center of the community. It was a rough shed but it served the needs of the local residents. It was run as a cooperative by the men in the district and supplied them with basic necessities of life and with tools. On Saturday nights the building was opened for a community dance which was always a lively affair. For those who wanted some real old-time gold rush spirit, local bootleggers appeared. A quick passing of money in the dark near the hall and a surreptitious trip to the cache back in the bushes put the miner in possession of the pale product of the distiller.
    The store building also served as a meeting place for the community. It was here that the miners gathered to organize the district and to settle any problems that came up that needed community action.
    The mining laws of the district were few in number and quite simple. Sluices, rockers and other equipment were to be left strictly alone. It was a simple and eminently practical regulation. Claims were limited to a 24-foot creek frontage but had no depth restrictions except that they must not interfere with right of way or with the living quarters of anyone. No one was to interfere with the claim of another or to dam the stream.
    The mining council was the organization of the miners and was charged with the enforcement of the laws. It hired two guards who walked the creek and were armed to enforce the laws of the community. Each of the claim holders on the creek was required to contribute to the pay of these two guards and they were paid about $5 a day each. The figure was taken as the average of what they could have made by working a claim.
    Persons who were charged with violations of the mining laws were to be brought before a miner's court. Evidence was presented in the court and a decision was reached by it which was to be enforced by the community. If the court decided that the action was a violation of state or local laws, the accused was to be taken to the county sheriff and the men who accompanied him were to prefer charges against the accused.
    The two armed guards seemed to have no official status as law enforcement officers. There is no hint that they were recognized by the county authorities. In any event, the problem did not arise as it would appear that few cases, if any, arose that required any action by this grass roots government.
    Many of the miners wore guns in belts and all of them were armed with some weapon. The reasons for this are uncertain. The guns may have been worn purely for local color. The community took this method of expressing its relationship with the earlier gold seekers. If this were the reason, the miners of '33 were more amply provided in this regard than their predecessors of 1854. There may have been a feeling, too, that this display of armed might was a sensible precaution that tended to discourage anyone who had theft in mind.
    The heavy armament certainly did not lead to violence. The community functioned largely on general agreement and operated for the benefit of all. The presence of women and children on the creek probably helped to tone down the community. There was less danger of irresponsible violence in a settlement of families than in an all-male community. In this respect the community was a true descendant of the gold rush town of Sterlingville, for it was a very law-abiding settlement.
    While the miners were busily working on Sterling Creek in the new model gold rush, events behind the scenes were taking place that were to bring the boom to an end. The Bullis and Barnsdall interest was sold to E. Ford McCormick, who was acting for the Yarra Engineering Company of Jersey City, N.J.
    McCormick had an idea that he felt would solve the problem of working some of the ground owned by the company. He brought in J. B. Garrand and built a concentrator. The idea was that dirt would be placed in the concentrator and, using the principle of the centrifuge, the gold would be concentrated for easy recovery.
    The concentrator was operated by a 75-horsepower electric motor with a Reeves variable speed drive. Power for the project was obtained from California-Oregon Power Company, as the generating plant of the mining company had been long since dismantled and sold. The machine was put into operation in the mining season of 1933-34.
    It was an ingenious idea but it did not work well. The ground that was worked had a clay content that prevented the gold from concentrating according to the theory. After several attempts, the machine was given up. Using normal recovery methods, however, the company did reasonably well, as the ground worked that season averaged $1.35 a yard.
    In 1934 a transfer was made of the Sterling mine to the Quercus Corporation, a company incorporated in Delaware. The direction of the mine was left to Ford McCormick, who was to retain this position until his death. There were some problems of title arising from some multiple incorporation by Blakeley, and the history of the legal maneuvers could provide a complex section in themselves. We will make no attempt to trace them here, however.
    In May, 1934, the new owners moved to begin extensive operation of the property. The company went into court and requested an injunction to restrain "squatters" from living on its property or continuing to work the property. On the presentation of proof of title, the injunction was granted and the company moved to clear its land.
    A number of the miners signed agreements with the company which permitted them to continue to operate their claims on a lease-royalty basis. This arrangement was continued through 1939 and some of these men did very well, making up to fifty dollars a day in the mining season. The general average was less, however.
    Having completed all of the necessary maneuvers necessary to clearing its title and having gotten rid of the squatters, the company organized the mine and incorporated it under the laws of Oregon as Sterling Mines, Inc. There are some penalties for foreign corporations operating in Oregon that were thus evaded. There is no record of the officers of the corporation under this application of May, 1935.
    The new operators of the mine immediately began work to get it back into operating condition. The ditch was repaired and cleaned out and the hydraulics prepared for operation again. Initially the work was very much like the operation under Ankeny. The hydraulics were used to work away at the banks and the ground was washed through sluices where the gold was recovered.
    As the workings moved upstream, it got beyond the reach of the hydraulics and a drag line was installed which carried the dirt down to a point where it could be effectively washed by the water from the ditch. The operation appears to have paid expenses but that is about all. The company ran into a further difficulty, too. The workings reached the dike that ran across the stream.
    This brought a real problem for the operators. The land above the dike was too high to be reached by the ditch, and a careful survey through test borings indicated the return would not pay for a continuation of the drag line method of working the grounds.
    The recent developments in earthmoving machinery, particularly under the impetus of the construction of major dams such as Grand Coulee and Fort Peck, suggested a solution to McCormick. The company placed notices with a number of firms in the field and requested equipment to test in its operations.
    Bulldozers were brought in which were engaged in stripping the ground in the new area. This was an immense task as the overburden was not less than forty feet and was reported, in some places, to be as much as seventy-five feet.
    Earthmovers were employed, too, and the largest that were generally available on the market were put to work at the mine. These, however, had only a three-yard capacity, which was insufficient for the scale of the earthmoving project at hand.
    The ground was moved, either by earthmover or bulldozer, to a tower where it was dumped. Heavy steel plates with large apertures screened out the rock from the gravel and dirt. The latter dropped down to be washed by the hydraulics or moved into position for ground sluicing. It was an attempt to take advantage of the latest earthmoving techniques with comparisons being made between the dozers and the earthmovers as to efficiency and cost. The company worked hard through the summer.
    The results were disappointing. Much of the ground showed only traces of gold, and the whole averaged out at less than 75¢ a yard. Borings taken of the ground above the dike showed even less favorable returns than this. The return that could be expected gave no hope of paying for the cost of the operation, and a profit was inconceivable.
    The cleanups for the season were made in June and July, 1937. The returns appear to be heavy. The gross reported by the company on its sales to the mint totaled $24,046.01, a very respectable showing. The profit margin was quite good, too. On closer examination, the picture is a discouraging one. The company had obtained all of the earthmoving equipment free of charge as demonstrator models. This technique could not, of course, be employed indefinitely. There was also the fact that most of the gold was recovered from ground below the dike and there was little of that left to work now and that little was not well placed for large-scale operation.
    The company suspended its operations on Sterling Creek and the mine lay idle. It was not to be re-opened by the company. The discouraging surveys of the land above the dike and the other factors mentioned, coupled with inflation which ate steadily into the margin of profit to be made from gold mining, were enough to give pause to the most enthusiastic ownership.
    In the fall of 1937, Ford McCormick shut down the mine. Bull Campbell was retained on the company payroll to act as caretaker of the property. McCormick called Paul Pearce, son of one of the early miners of Sterling and the owner of mining property on nearby Forest Creek. The two came to an agreement whereby Pearce would lease the property from the mining company on a royalty basis. A handshake sealed the bargain and served to renew it annually until the death of McCormick in 1957.
    Paul Pearce moved to Sterling Creek and put one of the hydraulics into service. He began washing away at the banks along the foot of the hills on the east side of the creek. The ground was rich and paid out handsomely for him. It could pay well for an operation that used only two men. It was largely pockets of ground that the company had not found it profitable to work in the days of large-scale operation.
    There was another factor here, too. Pearce was the best of the hydraulic operators in the region and was able to make good money, where a less capable operator would have been defeated by the difficulty of the task at hand.
    The last of the miners of the depression days was gone by 1940. A recovering national economy and the peacetime draft combined to improve the employment picture across the nation. With the departure of the last of these men, the need for Campbell as caretaker came to an end and he departed for a better job. Paul Pearce remained to work the mine and handle the job of caretaker for the company as well.
    Pearce continued to work the mine through the mining season of 1957-58 and did well. It became largely a one-man operation as his son went to war and returned to other employment. He made some essays at mining the old boulder channel and got quite a collection of teeth, tusks and bones of the elephants that once roamed the region. Some of the huge tusks are more than six feet in length and well preserved in the bed of the prehistoric river.
    Except for Paul Pearce, mining ceased on Sterling Creek with the advent of World War II. Some "snipers" have showed up from time to time since the war. These men sneak in and make a quick run on a pocket of ground that seems promising. The speed of their operations may account for their failure to make a leasing agreement with the owners of the ground. The marks of these operators can be seen yet along the creek.
    There is a rumor, with no names mentioned, that one of these snipers made a real strike in the mid-fifties. He is said to have found a rich pocket that paid out several thousand dollars for some two weeks work in a quick, surreptitious operation. It is certainly quite possible.
    It wasn't far from Sterling Creek that a county road crew began making a cut for the new road. It struck good dirt in the cut. The men began arriving early and staying late in order to fill their pickup trucks with the rich ground from the cut. They took these loads home nightly and washed them out in their backyards. One of the men claimed to have made three hundred dollars from the job.
    The history of the Sterling mine seems to be done for all time. An investigation was made last summer of the possibility of rebuilding the ditch and putting in some small, earth fill dams on Sterling Creek. The idea was that a water conservation district would be organized and federal funds obtained for part of the cost of rebuilding the old ditch.
    Today the creek winds down through the bottom of the small valley on its easy way to the Little Applegate. Cattle graze on the flats above the company workings and west of the old town. A number of houses are to be found along the creek, most of which are only summer residences. There are few year-round residents of Sterling Creek. These few have nothing to do with mining.
    Willows and other brush are growing up now to cover the scars of a century of placer mining. They only hide the scars, they don't heal them. No land ever recovers from placer mining on a large scale. Even so, when you stand today in the old cemetery above Sterlingville and look out over the small valley, it isn't hard to visualize the scene that greeted Jim Sterling's eyes in 1854.

    The old town of Sterling has long since disappeared. The only building at the Four Corners of Sterlingville is the abandoned log cabin that served as the home of the foreman of the mine in 1937. Across the creek, the headquarters of the mine stand. You can see the old store, the boarding house and the house that Henry Ankeny built for his family.
    Overlooking the town site is the old cemetery. Several of the graves date only to the 1950s. Descendants of the old families of Sterling still live in the Rogue Valley and retain a sentimental attachment to Sterling Creek and the days that were.
    Gold mining is dead. The price of gold and the continuing inflation have killed whatever hopes there might be. There is still gold on Sterling Creek but it would not repay any real investment, and what is there is largely in pockets.
    Old timers still get a far away look in their eyes and talk about the gold that is lying "out there" just to be taken. They will tell you, with the fervor of missionaries, that "there's more gold in them hills than was ever took out. If the government would just raise the price of gold to the world market, say $75 an ounce, all our problems would be solved." They tell you that this would bring full employment, prosperity and sound money.
    A few prospectors still wander the hills and there are farmers who go out in the winter and pan out enough gold to pay the year's taxes. A new breed of gold seeker is swarming the rivers of the gold country. He wears a skin diver's gear and sweeps the riffles with a vacuum apparatus.
    Many of the prospectors now are weekend miners. They hold other jobs and go out weekends hoping to strike it big. Sometimes a valley resident will get carried away and go out prospecting. A couple of young men came to Sterling Creek one spring recently. They thought they had color and asked for water to pan out their dirt. The farmer agreed if they would do their panning in an old galvanized stock watering tub. They worked about six hours and washed out four or five dollars worth of gold. The farmer chuckled as he showed us a bottle of dust worth about fifteen dollars that he panned out of the tub after they left.
    The final word on gold mining on Sterling Creek was spoken by this same man. We were standing there watching the placid movements of the Herefords as they grazed in the upper valley.
    "Sure, there's gold on my land," he said. "No, I won't pan it out. Gold mining isn't a living, it's a disease. It ruins a man and it ruins the land."
    He paused and looked for a moment at the scene. Then he waved his hand at the cattle.
    "Now that's a real way to make a living."



    We heard a good story the other day, connected with the discovery of the mines on Applegate Creek, now Sterlingtown.
    During the past summer an elderly gentleman, coming to this country on a visit to his sons, living in the neighborhood of Jacksonville, thought that before returning to his home in the Atlantiic states he might as well try an experiment in mining.
    Out he went prospecting for several days without success. One day, however, he found a good color, packed as much dirt in a bag as he could carry and brought it to the house of his sons. The dirt was washed and yielded eight dollars.
    The next day was election day and the old gentleman and his sons agreed to keep mum about the matter until after the election. But unfortunately for them two hired men in their employ had seen and heard what had passed. The next day everybody being at Jacksonville to cast his vote, the two men entrusted the secret to their friends, and those to their acquaintances, until before evening the whole town was initiated into the secret.
    The gentleman with his sons returned home late in the evening, while during the day all the miners about Jacksonville emigrated to the new diggings. Next morning the old gentleman and his sons upon their arrival found the place overcrowded with people, the ground staked off in hundreds of claims and nothing left for themselves but to start another prospecting tour.
    We learn that at present over one thousand miners are at those diggings and Sterlingtown numbers already some twenty or thirty houses.
Crescent City Herald, November 29, 1854  Reprinted in the Del Norte Triplicate, Crescent City, May 3, 1924, page 6 After only a few months, the discovery story has already entered the realm of myth.


    Last June new diggings had been discovered on a branch of the left-hand fork of Applegate Creek, a tributary of Rogue River, about 80 miles from Jacksonville. A town has since sprung up at that place, containing already several substantial houses and bearing the name, we understand, of Sterlingtown. Report says there are some 1500 people about those diggings, of whom, however, only about four or five hundred are actually at work, the others waiting for water and preparing for winter work.
Crescent City Herald, October 11, 1854  Reprinted in the Del Norte Triplicate, Crescent City, March 7, 1924, page 7


    Last June new diggings had been discovered on a branch of the left-hand fork of Applegate Creek, a tributary of Rogue River, about eight miles from Jacksonville. A town has already sprung up at that place, named Sterlingtown, containing already several substantial business houses. Report says that there are 1500 people about those diggings, of whom however only four or five hundred are actually at work, the others waiting for water, and preparing for winter.
Del Norte Record, Crescent City, November 26, 1892, page 1


    FROM JACKSONVILLE.--We learn, from a gentleman who has arrived from Jacksonville, that the miners in the vicinity of that place, and at Sterling, have been doing well for some time past. The weather was dry, and the miners apprehended that water would soon be scarce, if rain did not fall again this spring. Business was rather dull.
Umpqua Weekly Gazette, April 14, 1855, page 2