Gold Fever on the Wenatchee: Steilacoom Miners Strike It Rich
A party of miners returns with rich specimens from Rock Creek, touching off a run on provisions, passengers—and town lots.
Mr. Kellogg, with some fifteen accompanying miners, started for Rock Creek last week and returned on Monday, having discovered new and rich diggings on the Wenatchee River. The miners, finding the ground in such paying quantities, decided to go no farther; they discharged their loads and sent the train back for more provisions. The train arrived on Monday, and Mr. Aguirre immediately took all the provisions obtainable in the place.
Mr. Kellogg brought back rich specimens of gold to many friends and advised them to come on immediately. Ex-Sheriff Thomas Russell, who had been urging the expedition to Rock Creek, stopped at the new diggings and tells his friends that he has as good a “lay out” as he wants; he advises all his friends to leave for the mines. Letters from other reliable persons confirm the reports, and the news was received with rejoicing. Two lots that could have been bought the day before for $100 immediately rose to an unreasonable price. A schooner left with two or three passengers, all bound for the Wenatchee.
“Mr. Kellogg brought over to many friends rich specimens of gold, and advised them to come on immediately.”
Washington has been remade by resource rushes before—gold, timber, fish, software—and the first sign is often the same: samples in a pocket, a run on supplies, and prices that move before the facts do. The Wenatchee excitement of 1860 shows a frontier town pricing tomorrow’s boom into today’s lots, with miners and merchants both betting on a strike they had only just heard about.
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