1
Early Snake River Boom
From its origins on the Continental Divide in the Teton Range in western Wyoming, the Snake River flows southward in a large arc across southern Idaho, then forms that stateâs western border as far north as Lewiston before it meanders westward to its eventual confluence with the Columbia in southern Washington. Since as early as the 1850s, when soldiers at the old Fort Boise made limited discoveries, gold has been found along most of the 800-mile course through the Gem State. Optimistic bands of prospectors moved south to expand operations in the 1960s, without much success, but in the 1970s many of them located workable placer ground in scattered sites, among them the Shoshone Falls region, the area near J. Matt Taylorâs bridge (which became Idaho Falls), the Hagerman Valley, below the Raft River, and west of American Falls. But these were scattered small-scale, labor-intensive operations that spawned no serious influx of capital or miners as long as a major obstacle existed. It was the nature of Snake River gold itself that provided the real challenge to profitable mining.1
By 1880 Snake River gold had been recognized as constituting extremely fine particlesâsome so small that it took 1,000 to make up the value of a penny. Others were even more minute, and the 3,000 or 4,000 particles required to make up a pennyâs worth of gold could not be recognized at all: invisible gold was the minersâ description and micron gold was a more modern term.2 Early scientists believed the fine gold came from the waters of a Miocene lake, but modern geologists have determined that it came from Rocky Mountain deposits and that it originated as minute particles.3 Scattered the length of the stream, this âflourâ or âfloatâ gold appeared in river bar deposits, as well as in âskim barsâ and âbench gravelsâ on the bank. A skim bar was an ancient river bar, in which the gold was found near its top, while bench gravels were higher up and gold was found in streaks anywhere between bedrock and the surface.4
To many observers, the Snake River placers seemed a promising field for the gold dredge, a relatively new technology that had proved successful in New Zealand and which, after years of experimentation, was beginning to catch on in California, Montana, and other western states. The streamâs current ran at a moderate rate of three miles an hour, severe flooding was rare, and the climate permitted operation for nine or ten months of the year. Best of all, according to optimistic reports, there were âoceans of gravel,â which showed values of from thirty cents up to five dollars with a pan or a rocker. The belief that there was a wealth of gold in and along a great portion of the riverâs length was common, although few of the numerous miners since the 1860s were taking out more than day wages.5 In 1899 Don Maguire, a self-taught Utah mining man, estimated that the gravels contained at least $2 billion in gold.6 A popular Oregon writer noted a year later that âmen, to-day, dredging the sandy bed and banks of the river Snake say there is fine gold enough in the drifts and bars alone to pay the national debt over and over againââwords Boise businessmen echoed enthusiastically.7 Since paydirt was usually on or close to the top of the bars, deep dredging seemed unnecessary. At least that was what mining analysts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed, thus setting the stage for a brief era of gold-dredging activity along the Snake. No wonder there were so many repeated efforts to apply a more advanced technology. Unfortunately, on the Snake it was a high-interest, low-success industry.
The period prior to about 1910 was largely a time of trial-and-error experimentation, often by self-styled experts testing their own inventive machines and processes. Some mining men welcomed attempts to apply modern technology; others dragged their feet, holding fast to the old ways of doing things. The new dredging ideas on the Snake extended from around Huntington in Oregon to east of Idaho Falls and were especially prominent in the region from Weiser to perhaps Caldwell, with lesser applications in the stretch from Grand View, Bruneau, and Glenns Ferry. Momentum on the river picked up again from Minidoka through American Falls, Blackfoot, and Idaho Falls. Only a single company organized for dredging on the Snake in the Jackson Hole region of Wyoming has been noted.8
One of the first efforts to utilize yet unproven dredge equipment on the river was first announced to the public at the end of 1881, with the arrival in Boise of four Detroit businessmen en route to Starrhâs Ferry on the Snake. This quartetâGeorge C. Fletcher, T. H. Champion, E. M. Hough, and John Shiriâhad obtained ground near the mouth of Goose Creek and intended to apply the new technology there.9 According to the Salt Lake Tribune that December, John F. Sanders of Ogden had investigated the Snake River placers beginning in 1870 and experimented with saving the fine gold and processing the black sands previously cast aside. He was convinced that machinery could be applied, and subsequently he patented the Sanders Ore Concentrator and the Sanders Patent Vacuum Dredge.10 In addition, he held Letters of Patent on âComposition for Dissolving the Coating of Gold Ore,â in essence a simple chemical formula for breaking down the black sands. The secret was sixteen parts of potassium cyanide to one part of glacial phosphoric acid, with the solution mixed in an iron barrel (or one made of some âother proper materialâ) with enough water to form a pulp with the sand and gravel, then agitated in the container for fifteen minutes to an hour. The result would be gold pure enough to amalgamate with mercury.11 (Was this a forerunner of the cyanide process?) Four companies were formed to operate between American Falls and Salmon Falls: one by investors from Detroit, another by Boston capitalists, a third with money from Detroit and Buffalo combined, and a fourth by men from Salt Lake City. It was contemplated that all machinery would be afloat and that some rigs would handle 100 tons of gravel in a ten-hour workday and others would handle twice that amount.12
Finally, in the spring of 1882, according to a correspondent for the Chicago Mining Review, two dredges built under Sandersâs patents conducted initial trials near the Goose Creek ferryâa mile west of the modern town of Burley. They were owned by two Detroit companies, the presidents of...
