The Mining Chapter

We all know about the Great Gold Rush of 1849 in California, but the same mountain range they found gold in down there runs through Oregon. The Pacific Coast Trail runs along top of the Cascade Mountains. It didn’t take very long for California to get too crowded for miners and many of them turned north. Soon a few made their way up the McKenzie River and established the Lucky Boy Mine in 1887. Just to put this into perspective, this was only a year after the Washington Monument was finished. This was a year after the French gave us the Statue of Liberty. This was two years before Washington became a state. Soon, the Blue River Mining Company was founded.

The mine went from a 2-stamp mill, to a 15-stamp mill, to a 40-stamp mill. This means that there was gold in them thar hills. They dug silver, copper, lead, and many other rare minerals out of Gold Hill. The gold boom created Blue River and because of all the traffic up the mine, the county improved the highway from Eugene to Blue River.

For a look at some of the historic mining reports click here.

The Blue River Mining District includes 734 claims with fourteen of them still active today. At their busiest over two-hundred and fifty men worked on Gold Hill. Blue River had five taverns, a couple hotels, a few stores, and while a bit rowdy at times, it was a full fledged town. Unfortunately, the boom went to bust and by 1912 mining operations ceased, but not before mining over a million dollars out of the mountains above McKenzie River.