Blue Bucket Mine

The Lost Blue Bucket Mine is a well known lost mine located near John Day in Oregon.

However, there are also reports of a Blue Bucket Mine in the Black Rock Desert.

Harry Sinclair Drago - 1966

Drago tells a story about how in October 1845 40 wagons were led by Captain Elisha Sowers who got lost in the Black Rock area while looking for the Applegate Cutoff As they went along, children threw rocks into the blue buckets attached to the wagons. After the wagon party arrived in Yreka, the rocks were found to be gold. Drago mentions a prospector named Peter Organ who said he knew where the gold was. Organ was associated with Hardin City.

There are a number of problems with Drago's story.

• The Applegates started their journey to develop the trail on June 25, 1846. So, the October 1845 date is implausible.

• No references were found for Captain Elisha Sowers, though there was an Elisha Sowers who was born in Kentucky in about 1816 and who was registered to vote in Guinda, California in the 1890s.

• No references were found for Dr. Henry Dane of Yreka.

• Drago's story states that the wagons split up at "Garvelly Ford" (typo for Gravelly Ford, located near Beowawe) and that more than half went down the Humboldt to California and the others went northwest through the Black Rock region, "Granite Springs" and on to Oregon. Why would a wagon train split up so far east when both would need to continue down the Humboldt to what was later known as Lassen Meadows at present day Rye Patch? Drago points out this inconsistency.

• Where is "Granite Springs?" An 1865 map of the stage road from Chico to Boise City shows Granite Wells at the site of present-day Granite Creek Station.

• Dane and 14 others returned to the area and east of "Granite Creek" they were attacked and only two survived. No mention of this attack has been found.

• Drago discusses the slaughter of Chinese men at Humboldt House after being deported from Unionville around the time of the completion of the railroad. No references have been found for this, though that does not mean it did not happen.

Items that are factual in Drago's story.

• George Rose was a Humboldt County Sheriff and a newspaper publisher. Oddly, Rose tells a different story about the Blue Bucket Mine in 1925 that involves a blue bucket at the bottom of a mine shaft.

• Peter Organ was a prospector associated with Hardin City.

• There was a man by the name of Jim Minor in the area.

1901

Idah Meacham Strobridge tells the tale in a 1901 article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Strobridge's story is similar to Drago's 1966 story above in that the party splits up at Gravelly Ford, near Beowawe. The story states that they were perhaps three or four days after leaving the Black Rock, but still in Nevada (or what would be Nevada). A Dr. Dane from Yreka is mentioned. Dane meets an old prospector who says that he found gold near where "the road comes out by way of High Rock." Dane, the prospector and another person go looking for the gold. At "Wardner hill" near Goose Lake, they saw "'Pueblo' and "Steen" mountains" and the canyon was on the right mountain.

It is unclear where "Wardner Hill" would be, but Pueblo Mountain, Oregon would be the right-hand mountain.

1931

A different version of the story was told in 1931 concerning a 1845 story about a wagon train led by a wagon-master named Tetherow that arrived at Soldier's Meadows. There was a dispute about which way to go so the wagon train split up. One group stuck to open country. Eventually, a child died and was buried under a sand hill beneath a juniper tree and the year 1845 was carved in to the tree. It is not clear how far this location was from Soldier's Meadows.

At least in this story, Solomon Tetherow was a real person.

External links

• The Blue Bucket Mine---Argonauts' Romance," Raleigh Wilkinson, The Anaconda Standard, Anaconda, Montana, June 22, 1919. Mentions Tetherow and describes another story - all set in Oregon.