Striking Gold in the Black Sand of the Beach
A Tacoma visitor reports a machine at Ocosta that pulls a dollar of gold from every ton of beach sand — and a local banker has already bought it.
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.
TACOMA, May 30. — [Special.] — Pe-Conway arrived here today from Ocosta and reports the town carried away over the operations of a new machine which separates the gold in the black sand of the beach and averages $1 worth of gold saved from every ton of sand handled. Three sluice boxes clean sixty tons of sand daily and have been at work fifteen days and have cleaned up about $1,500 worth of gold. The gold-saving machine was brought to Ocosta by a man named Day, and was soon purchased by Mr. Deckebeck, banker. The machine has two cylinders, one inside the other, the outer one revolving rapidly. This cylinder contains quicksilver, which amalgamates with the gold.
“The machine separates the gold in the black sand of the beach and averages $1 worth of gold saved from every ton of sand handled.”
Beach-sand gold mining on the Washington coast was one of the stranger resource rushes of the 1890s, and the black sands of Grays Harbor drew hopeful investors eager for a windfall. The pattern — a clever machine, a quick sale to a banker, a promise of easy riches — is the same speculative fever that runs through Pacific Northwest resource schemes today.
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