Heading: (Oregon gold miner from Angels Camp)
Author: Francis Gordon Jackson
Title: 1896 letter from an Oregon gold miner who came from Angels Camp, California
Place Published: Baker City, Oregon
Publisher:
Date Published: 1896
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed. Virtue Mine, Baker City, Oregon. Aug. 19, 1896. 2pp. To George Stickel [Stickle] Angels Camp, California.

"...I landed here all right after a long and tiresome trip and have been at work now 15 days. I have got a pretty good job though the Mine is very hot and wet but it is a rich mine, it is situated in a very lonesome place, there is nothing in sight but sand and sagebrush, you cant see a tree nor a blade of grass as far as the eye can see, but there is lots of prospecting going on in this section of the country and what is worse than all there is not a drop of beer nor wisky nearer than 9 miles, so you can guess by that that it is a long time between drinks. I will be a Prohibitionist when I come back to Angels..."

Angels Camp, long famous for its Mark Twain "Jumping Frog" literary association, was well into its "Second Gold Rush", which, in the 1880s, brought prospectors from all over the world streaming into Calaveras County. Jackson probably thought there were greater opportunities to be found in rural eastern Oregon, where the Virtue and nearby quartz gold mines began producing rich ore in the mid 1890s, valued as much as $4 million per ton.