Oregon’s history is rich with gold. Whole towns were born, lived, and died in the search for the precious metal. The first gold nuggets were discovered in the 1850s on the Illinois River and creeks near Jacksonville. Those finds drew American miners not only from California and the Willamette Valley, but fortune seekers from around the world. Many claims were staked in the southern mountains and east of the Cascades. These mining camps grew into tent cities, and the richest among them turned into true brick and timber towns.

These communities scoured the earth for wealth. Wherever gold was extracted, environmental devastation followed. Hard rock mines honeycombed mountains while hydraulic pumps and dredges carved up hillsides, streams, and riverbeds, rendering them unusable by people or animals.

Gold strikes often followed a pattern in Oregon. First the placer miners and the panners arrived, taking the most easily reached metals from streams. Rich claims were taken up by white Americans, while poor ones were sold to Chinese mining operations. Nearly half of Southwest Oregon miners were Chinese in the 1860s. Many were pushed out of the industry by Americans as gold became harder to find. Later in the century, corporations replaced small, independent mine operations as mining company towns sprang up all over the state. The period of richest mining in Oregon was between the 1850s and 1880s. In the hundred-year period between the 1860s and 1960s, Oregon mines produced somewhere between $130 million and $215 million.

A mine entrance at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center on Flagstaff Hill near Baker City. (Oregon ​Scenic Images collection​)

Eastern Oregon miners in 1906. (Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society)