Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A correspondent in Wenatchee reported that eager gold prospectors were once again “working the old bars” on the Columbia River.

They were swarming over the Entiat-Orondo area and working the mouth of Stranger Creek near Inchelium. Yet The Spokesman-Review was skeptical, predicting (correctly) that this gold fever would be short-lived. It noted the Columbia had been worked over for 60 years, and even at the beginning the gold deposits were never extensive.

The first Columbia River gold rush occurred in 1855, and the influx of prospectors on tribal lands provoked the Indian wars of the 1850s. After the wars, miners returned and “stripped the cream of the deposits” along the Columbia and its tributaries.

After they left, Chinese miners arrived and took over some of the abandoned sites. They were able to make a go of it for a while because of what the paper said was their “greater patience and ability to live on returns” considered inadequate by the white miners. They continued to work the river bars from the 1860s well into the 1880s.

However, “between them they have left little that is worth taking.”

“In hard times, an experienced placer miner can make small wages, but the cleanups are pitifully small,” concluded the paper.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1945: During World War II, Allied forces took control of the German cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart.