Gold Fever Reaches Steilacoom by Schooner
A Saturday arrival brings word of gold at Fort Yale, a turn-by-turn route up the Fraser River, and a miner's warning that provisions are very high.
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.
By the arrival at this port on Saturday last of the schooner Wild Pigeon, Capt. Jones, we have later and interesting advices from the Fraser River mines.
We have the report that gold has been found at Fort Yale in small quantities, and in the [illegible] on both sides of the river, which has never been properly learned by the [illegible]. From Fort Langley and upward, for many miles over the country, gold has been found in [illegible] quantities.
Through the courtesy of a friend acquainted with the locality, we are enabled to lay before the reader the relative distances from the mouth of Fraser's River to the mines, as follows: To Fort Langley, 40 miles; from Fort Langley to Fort Hope, 60 miles; from Fort Hope to Fort Yale (or the first [illegible] in Fraser's River, and navigable for small boats and canoes), 15 miles. From Fort Yale there is a portage for goods of about 800 yards, or for a canoe about 60 yards. About three miles above this portage it is necessary to discharge the goods for some 800 yards. From this place to Fort Dallas, at the mouth of Thompson's River, the distance is about 50 miles. Thompson's River is navigable only from October to April.
We have been kindly permitted to copy the following extract of a letter received here from Sam McCoy, Esq., dated Fort Loxour, April 20th, 1858:
"We are six days on the [illegible] to the mouth of the river, and 1 day and a half going up. We are going up the river with Charley Adams. Adams says that the mines are good; the lowest that he knows of any one making per day is $10. Provisions are very high."
The schooner Wild Pigeon, Capt. Jones, arrived at Steilacoom on Saturday last with [illegible] from Vancouver's Island.
“Adams says that the mines are good; the lowest that he knows of any one making per day is $10. Provisions are very high.”
In 1858, Steilacoom was a supply port for the Fraser River gold rush, and a single schooner's arrival could turn distant rumors into a local economic event. The mix of route directions and price warnings shows how quickly resource booms reached Puget Sound — and how fast costs rose for the people chasing them. That pattern of boom-driven migration and strained local prices still rhymes with the region today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.