A Gold Rush Camp Called Ives Booms at the Mouth of the Methow

A. H. Gammel, one of the owners of the Grey Eagle Milling and Mining Company and a promoter of the new town of Ives at the mouth of the Methow River, sixty miles above Wenatchee, was in Seattle at the Butler Hotel. He said great things were in store for the Squaw Creek and Slate Creek districts. Fully 500 prospectors had gone into the Methow country that spring, with more arriving by steamer via Wenatchee and by road from Coulee City.

"The town of Ives, on the east bank of the Methow at its confluence with the Columbia, is already populated by about 400 people," he said. "The townsite was formerly held by Lee Ives, an old-timer who squatted there about eight years ago; it is now held by Ives, Edward L. Ensell and W. T. Tanner of Everett, E. F. and H. C. Henry of Seattle, and myself. We have a great place there — pilgrims, gamblers, prospectors, merchants, sporting people of both sexes, and in fact everything and everybody to make up a typical mining and agricultural camp. We have two saloons, a brewery, restaurants and no churches yet, but they will come by and by. Once in a while a traveling preacher comes our way. We expect the Great Northern will soon reach us by rail, for it would tap the Big Bend country."

Gammel described the Grey Eagle claim seven miles above Ives on Squaw Creek, with a five-stamp mill running night and day, twenty-two men employed, and about ten tons of ore handled daily. The vein averaged six feet wide. He said the Methow district, in the Eighty-Mile gold belt of Okanogan County, was the coming mining district of the Pacific Northwest, with claims staked from Squaw Creek to Gold Creek and beyond.