The Gold in Swauk Creek — and the Railroad That Wanted the Ground Under It

The finest placer mines in Washington are those from which most of the precious metal has been taken — the Swauk district in Kittitas county. From 75 to 100 miners have been actively engaged in taking out placer gold. They have shown a disposition to keep from the public all knowledge of the amount, and they have worked in a crude way with pick and shovel, but more definite figures are now available which may prove surprising to many.

The miners are protesting against the Northern Pacific Railroad Company's efforts to patent lands in the district, and last week L. H. Jansen, of Tacoma, manager of the Swauk Placer Gold Mining Co., in making out protests and affidavits of some of the miners as to the quantity of gold they have taken out of their claims, gathered figures that will be a revelation to many. The paper printed a table of individual yields — men like John Black (12 years), Thomas Meagher (13 years), C. E. H. Burney (two years), T. Tweet Johnson and D. W. Johnson (three years each), and C. A. Fuller (one year) — adding up to a total for the six men that ran well into the tens of thousands of dollars. Others have taken out quantities graduating down to $1,500 each.

In talking of these figures, Mr. Jansen said: "During the three years I have been with the camp, I believe large sums in gold have been taken out by both white and Chinese miners of which I took no account and had no knowledge.

"The Swauk creek camp is reached by a six hours' trip from Seattle to Ellensburg with a journey of four hours by stage from that town. The creek and its tributaries are being worked for some nine or ten miles, but only in a crude way. We have the same kind of gravel as has been taken from the blue gravel diggings in California, and have the old blue gravel channel. I have myself brought out several thousand dollars of gold nuggets from the camp, among them some very large ones. All the work is sluicing except one hydraulic plant, but the flume company is preparing to work it systematically on a large scale.

"The company has secured six miles of the land along the line of the creek and has contracts on two miles more. It will build a flume four feet wide and thirty inches deep from the mouth of the creek up, and will hydraulic the gravel with water from reservoirs and lateral streams with 250 to 300 feet pressure, and gradually extend the flume up the stream as the ground is washed out. There is no danger of damage to farms along the Yakima river at the mouth of the creek, as the river runs through canyons giving abundance of dump, and the mines can be worked nine months of the year.

"Other streams parallel with Swauk creek are also being worked, and all its tributaries have been well prospected. Williams creek has some of the finest mines in the state, and an old river channel runs up it. Boulder creek has some fine prospects, but has not been worked much. There are good quartz ledges in the vicinity — in fact you can see the quartz sticking to the gold — and prospecting is going on all through the neighboring mountains, but the men are too much in the slides, where the ledges have been broken up. Very little development has been done, for the parties in there have not the means. Still several quartz mines are being worked with arrastras, and one owned by Tweet Johnson has paid $1,600 in a sixty-foot tunnel in the last three years."