Mining in southwest Oregon—nothing to be proud of

There's more than a little irony in a Jefferson Mining District letter to the Josephine County Commissioners opposing Peter DeFazio's Wild Rogue Wilderness legislation. The District brags about the vast mineral wealth extracted from the Galice Creek area.

Then like Wall Street bankers they bemoan excessive government regulation. In reality, miners extract more wealth and have more privileges, with fewer constraints and greater impacts, than any other users of land that's supposed to be held in trust for all Americans in perpetuity.

Mining in the Rogue Basin in the 1890s.

The closed Leopold Mine on Galice Creek - 2000.

The 1872 Mining Law makes mining the dominant use on most federal lands, with the minerals given away for free.  Unlike oil companies, hardrock miners pay no royalties on the minerals they extract. In Oregon, no property taxes are paid on unpatented mining claims. Claim holders often live rent free on their claims.[1] The law allows them to purchase National Forest and BLM lands for no more than $5.00 per acre.

On the other hand, like the excesses of Wall Street, the impacts of the mining are socialized. Thousands of abandoned mines litter National Forest and BLM lands. Often the impacts are irreversible. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the headwaters of 40 percent of western streams are polluted from mining, and cleanup costs are estimated at $32 billion to $72 billion.

But the saddest irony of the newly organized mining district's indignant letter is found in this statement:

"Gold was first discovered on Galice Creek in February of 1852 ... For the next five years, hostilities between Euro-American settlers and Native Americans prevented the mineral resources of Galice Creek and tributaries from being extracted and it wasn't until early 1857 that mining in Galice got off the ground."

The District's narrow version of history, ignores the tragedy and genocide that occurred in the blackest period in Southwest Oregon's past—the five years between the discovery of gold and the total extirpation of the indigenous people. The Oregon Blue Book, the official state directory and fact book, tells the history of the so-called hostilities.

"Within weeks a reckless population, most of them hardened miners from California, surged over the Siskiyous or stepped off the gangplanks of ships putting in at Crescent City, Port Orford, Umpqua City, or Scottsburg. The rush was on. It meant quick riches for those who found the right pothole in bedrock filled with nuggets or the fortunate miners whose riffle boxes captured the fine particles of gold that glistened in the black sand. For the Indians of the Rogue River country it meant that all they had known and their very lives were at stake..."

"The miners drove the Takelma, Shasta, Chetco, Shasta Costa, Mikonotunne, Tututni, Galice Creeks and Cow Creeks from their villages. Located on old stream terraces, the Indian homes were prime locations for placer deposits..."

"Mining debris poured down the Illinois, Rogue, South Coquille and South Umpqua Rivers. The salmon runs diminished; the eels died. Crayfish, fresh water mussels and trout choked on the flood of mud. Starvation threatened..."

"The mining districts--whether in the Rogue River country or the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon--caused major ecological disruption. The rush for quick wealth through mineral exploitation unraveled nature's ways and long-established human subsistence activities. Then came the "exterminators"--unprincipled men who believed only dead Indians were good Indians. They formed volunteer companies and perpetrated massacres against the Chetco Indians in 1853, the Lower Coquille Indians in 1854, and in wanton aggression against Takelma Indians camped near the Table Rock Reservation in 1855."

"Frederick M. Smith, sub-Indian agent at Port Orford, in 1854 addressed the attacks on the Indians in his district. They were ravaged by hunger, dispossession of their villages, onset of new and fatal diseases, and overt murders. Reporting the massacre of the Lower Coquille Indians, he wrote:

"Bold, brave, courageous men! to attack a friendly and defenceless tribe of Indians; to burn, roast, and shoot sixteen of their number, and all on suspicion that they were about to rise and drive from their country three hundred white men!"

Within five years after gold was discovered in southwest Oregon, the indigenous peoples of the coast and Rogue Valley had been totally extirpated, leaving the miners to have their way with the land—and they did.

The discovery of gold in SW Oregon lead to the destruction of indigenous cultures and the land.

Note

[1] Mining claimants pay a one time recordation fee and an annual maintenance fee that covers the federal government's cost of maintaining claim records. However, a small miner exemption waives the annual fees for claimants holding 10 or less claims.   Claimant's with more than 10 claims also get around paying the annual fee by putting some claims in the names of relatives. Others locate what are called "association placer claims," which can cover up to 160 acres. While the federal government retains ownership of the surface of a mining claim, miners in Southwest Oregon often put up "no trespassing" signs.  On the Wild and Scenic Illinois River this year one miner threatened recreational users of the river with a gun.