The Gold Rush in the Mountains
A syndicate of titans, including John Rockefeller, is pouring money into a remote mountain region northeast of Seattle.
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.
I refer to the Monte Cristo gold mines. These are owned by a small syndicate of rich capitalists, including such men as John Rockefeller, Colgate Hoyt and Mr. Colby, and a railroad is now being built from here to them at a cost of $750,000. The mines lie about fifty miles northeast of Seattle. The ore is found in large veins, and some of it assays $40 of gold and $75 of silver to the ton and upward. There are a number of mines in this region, but most of them belong to this syndicate. It will take a fortune to get the ore out, but it will probably pay a dozen fortunes as soon as the road is finished. A town is now being built in the mines, and by the middle of summer we will have there one of the liveliest mining camps in the world.
“A town is now being built in the mines, and by the middle of summer we will have there one of the liveliest mining camps in the world.”
The Monte Cristo mining boom was a massive, short-lived effort that epitomized the era's 'get rich quick' spirit, leaving behind a ghost town and significant environmental cleanup issues today. The involvement of Eastern financiers like Rockefeller shows how much of Washington's early industry was owned by outsiders, a theme that echoes in contemporary debates over corporate land ownership.
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