A Dog Wallowed in a Spring. Then Northport Struck Gold.
A ranch dog's muddy wallow exposed flake gold, touched off a Black Canyon claim rush, and gave Stevens County one of its strangest mining origin stories.
A recent discovery of free gold quartz in Black Canyon, near Northport, in Stevens County, is creating a good deal of excitement in that locality, and many have gone from Northport to stake claims. The excitement has reached fever heat and some of the business men locked the doors of their stores in order to get in on the ground floor.
The first discovery was made by C. C. Anderson, who believed that a gold ledge existed on his ranch in the neighborhood of a spring because of the small particles of flake gold that clung to a shovel used in cleaning out the spring after a dog had wallowed in it. He searched for the ledge and found it in the canyon.
Assays from the quartz ran from $744 to $10,000. Before making the news public Mr. Anderson filed several claims in the locality and named the original claim "Pointer," in honor of the dog which wallowed in the spring and gave clue to the discovery.
“The excitement has reached fever heat and some of the business men locked the doors of their stores in order to get in on the ground floor.”
Northport and the Black Canyon country still carry the marks of extractive booms, and modern fights over mineral claims, public lands, and who profits from resource discoveries echo this 1909 rush. The story is also a reminder of how quickly a local rumor can become a speculative frenzy.
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