good placer diggings began to be discovered, and for a number
of years were worked with profit. They still yield moderately,
but are chiefly abandoned to the Chinese miners, who content
themselves with smaller profits than our own people.
Jackson County was formerly divided into several mining districts, the gold being placer and coarse gold. Formerly nuggets were found not far from Jacksonville worth from ten dollars to forty dollars, one hundred dollars, and even nine hundred dollars; but such discoveries are rare of late. I note, however, the recent discovery of a three-hundred-dollar nugget in Jack- son County. From first to last Jackson County has contributed thirty million dollars to the gold market of the world.
Without going into mining geology, it is sufficient to remark that the rocks of Rogue River Valley, where gold placers were discovered on Jackson Creek in 1852, are of the Cretaceous period mainly, instead of the earlier Jurassic. All the auriferous rocks are metamorphic, and tilted up at high angles. It is not among rocks of this formation that large or continuous veins are to be looked for, while small gold-bearing veins of quartz are numerous and often misleading. The annual production of gold in Jackson County had dwindled in 1870 to two hundred thousand dollars per annum, which was mined by Chinamen.
At Wagner Creek, in Rogue River Valley, are some quartz mines that have yielded fairly well. Gold Hill, discovered in 1860, and located at the extreme western limit of the valley, is regarded by geologists and miners with a curious interest,—by the former because it is in the midst of a tract of eruptive granite unlike anything else in this region, and by the latter on account of its wonderful promise and pitiable failure. A pocket yielded one thousand ounces per week at the first, which was expended in mining machinery, and it was then discovered that the claim was exhausted. The most recent discovery in Rogue River Valley is of a reputed silver-bearing ledge on Evans’s Creek, assaying ninety dollars per ton in silver and two dollars in gold.
There was scarcely a stream in Southern Oregon which would not pay to work, and all were tested. The well paying were Jackson, Althouse, Applegate, and Illinois Rivers; and the best of those were the streams tributary to Applegate, Il
