For example see the post: Gold, greed and discovery of gold in Southwest Oregon
It includes links to the Oregon Blue Book and Bureau of Land Management's account of the tragic effects that the discovery of gold had on the native peoples of the area.
A report prepared for the Medford District BLM and the Rogue River National Forest, which mining rights groups cite to, has this account of the end of Waldo, a mining town and the former county seat of Josephine County:
The few buildings and the foundations that remained in Waldo were "mined away" in the 1930s, as large-scale hydraulic operations scoured the original townsite. "The water cut to the very base of the old brick and stone building that stood as Waldo's central structure since 1863" (Rogue River Courier, 1937). Today cemeteries at both Allen Gulch and Waldo are the chief remnant of these former town sites.From - Mining in Southwest Oregon: A historic context If an area had known gold deposits it was mined without regard for anything but getting the gold as fast as possible. When the gold ran out, the miners just walked off, leaving their devastation.
Photo of the results of hydraulic mining in southwest Oregon.
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| Historical mining in Southwest Oregon was devastating to the environment as well as to the native people. |
However, the brutal legacy of mining on the land is not all in the distant past as this mine tailings pile on the banks of the National Wild and Scenic Illinois River demonstrates.
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| Mine tailings from on the National Wild and Scenic Illinois River (1997 photo). |
