A Mining Camp Too Rich to Believe at Bumping River
Two prospectors return with specimens from parallel ledges, one fifty feet wide, and assays up to $100 in gold.
The Ellensburgh Localizer reported that William Morton and J. R. Miller returned from Bumping River last Saturday. They were gone from here twelve days. The snow did not bother them to any extent this trip. They traveled with their horses to within eight miles of the mines. They left their horses and took it afoot from there into the mines. They brought back with them specimens of two parallel ledges; two of them are the best specimens we have seen from any of the recent discoveries. We believe that the Bumping River mines are going to prove to be one of the best camps in the Cascade range. They left three men in camp, who were going to prospect on the extension of these ledges north from their discoveries. One of these ledges is at least fifty feet wide in sight. There is a cut on one of the others thirty-three feet wide, and one side of the gulch seems, Miller says, one solid bed of mineral quartz. They will return to the mines with quite a number of others about the 1st of June. Tests have been made on two of these ledges that went from $22 to $47, and one other ledge tested shows $100 in gold. Mr. Morton says that he has mined all through Montana, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California and Mexico, and he has not in all his experience seen such an extensive body of mineral quartz.
“Mr. Morton says that he has mined all through Montana, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California and Mexico, and he has not in all his experience seen such an extensive body of mineral quartz.”
Mining rushes were the boom-and-bust engine of the Cascade Range, drawing seasoned prospectors from Montana to Mexico. The Bumping River camp's promise was typical of the era: rich surface specimens and grand predictions, with the hard work of development still ahead. Such discoveries often faded, but they left roads, claims, and stories in the mountains above Yakima.
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