Mining in the Naches River Wilderness
Prospectors venture into the rugged Naches mining district, battling difficult terrain and unbridged crossings in search of silver.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Owing to the fact that travel is somewhat impeded by the lack of bridges and roads, the upper Naches is to a certain extent a terra incognita. In reaching the Naches mining district, there are twenty-one crossings to make and all of them difficult fords. Last fall, a wagon road was projected and viewed, but the sudden rising of the stream put an end to the work. It is to be hoped that the well-known rustle of the people of North Yakima will make this road a matter of fact and not mere prospective. Crossing the Naches for the last time about two miles above McDaniel’s, we now ascend the trail. We wind on up and up, ever toward the top of the mountain. Here, at an altitude of some 1,000 feet, we look down into the water-worn bed of the stream and see the ravages made by the restless torrent during ages of unceasing cutting and undermining. From a point a few hundred yards above Rock Creek, as far as the mouth of the Bumping River, the country is one solid mass of porphyry rock, all more or less streaked with silver. From the camp as a radial point, we can follow the dykes of mineral way up into the higher hills. On all sides is the newly thrown dirt where the busy prospector has burrowed into the hillsides. From holes on the south side of the creek we brought back a number of specimens, and not trusting to the reports given us at camp of the assays, we had an assayer from Mullen come over and make the assays with us, and from one set of specimens he took out a button representing $1,000 to the ton.
“It is of such a character that pen can hardly do it justice. Away to the south the hills roll into mountains and mountains into peaks; Pelion on Ossa piled.”
The Naches Valley remains a rugged and vital corridor for Yakima residents, though the 'twenty-one crossings' have long since been tamed by modern bridges and the Naches Highway (SR 410). While the era of hard-rock silver mining has faded, the area remains an object of intense public interest regarding access and preservation.
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