The Ghost Gold of the Columbia
An amateur inventor claims to have solved the age-old problem of harvesting microscopic gold dust from the banks of the Columbia River.
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.
A. H. Murdock of Waterville has invented a machine which he claims will save the flour gold and pin-head nuggets that may be washed from the bars along the Columbia. One of the machines has been operated on one of the bars near Orondo, and the men in charge claim to have made wages. If Mr. Murdock has a machine that will do the work, he has a good thing. There have been scores of all kinds of contraptions made in a vain effort to garner the gold of the Columbia, which is so fine, it is claimed that five dollars worth will cover half an acre. The gold is there, however, and is free to the man who can make some device to gather it.
“There have been scores of all kinds of contraptions made in a vain effort to garner the gold of the Columbia.”
Prospecting in the Columbia River has always been a cycle of high hopes and low returns, with the 'flour gold' remaining notoriously difficult to capture. Today, the massive dams of the Columbia have altered the river’s sediment flow, turning the dream of the individual river-bank miner into a largely historical pursuit.
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