Golden Dreams Floodwaters Dredge Up Rumors Of Gold In Tiny Town Of Murray

The tiny North Idaho town of Murray is host of an epidemic that has spread across state lines.

The disorder: gold fever, an old affliction this mountain community had kept in remission since its days as a 5,000-man mining camp.

But last spring, receding floodwaters opened new creek beds and brought hobbyists with gold pans back to the Shoshone County hamlet 25 miles north of Interstate 90.

Enthusiasm waned until a few weeks ago when, rumor has it, someone uncovered a monster nugget - “a 10-ouncer.”

Overnight, Murray was awash in would-be miners from as far away as Washington.

“Before long, we were shoulder to shoulder with people with metal detectors,” said Dave Miller, who owns a shop that sells mining tools and chunks of gold. “People were driving through the night to get here.”

How many people? Nobody knows. But it doesn’t take lots of them to be noticed in a town of only 63 people and four businesses.

“Oh, yeah, it’s been busy,” said Betty Chemodurow, a bartender at the Spragpole bar. “I had three carloads from Spokane come in just last weekend.”

The instigator of this rush appears to be the long-running reconstruction of state Highway 9, the road stretching west to Thompson Falls, Mont.

At the turn of the century, miners here sprayed rock walls with hoses and dredged nearby Prichard Creek in search of gold. To date, the giant piles of mud remain.

Highway crews plan to lay new asphalt where the tailings are stored.

“They had been digging a lot of holes and a nugget was found by somebody who was fixing a culvert,” Miller said.

Or so the story goes.

Murray folks disagree whether the find is fact or fiction. Certainly no one seems to have viewed the mythical nugget.

“Me? No, I haven’t seen it but I talked to people who have,” Miller said.

Richard Babin, at Babin’s Grocery in Prichard, also claims to know someone who has seen it. But he’s not saying.

“Gold miners are funny people,” he said. “They don’t want publicity.”

Regardless, residents differ on the prospectors’ prospects.

“We’ve got people here talking about trying to pick up nuggets on Main Street,” Chemodurow said. “It’s crazy.”

Cynics even suggest the whole thing was a ruse. With the highway closed and tourist traffic down, business owners may just be digging for treasure of another sort: cash.

“They just started the rumor to get publicity so they could get people in here,” resident Leila Grebil said. “I’ve lived here all my life. I know Murray. It will never change.”

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