John Day to Deer creek, or at least I think I can get us that far in this post. Or maybe not. We’ll see.Somewhere between the Kam Wah Chung museum and Deer creek it’s starting to dawn on me that our state park system is running a big jobs creation system in Eastern Oregon. My next clue was the Bates campground.
From this point on we are getting closer and closer to 2023 as we go along. Along the way we got a little off the main highway to collect worm rock from a road cut and various other stones from old mine tailings a little further down the road.
https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=109time. The state parks system restored the old dredge and added a small interpretive center, with more jobs.
This is a pretty little campground with well watered and manicured lawns. It looked like you could get a spot there just about anytime you wanted one. There is also another nice state campground near Sumpter.
https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=7
The Forest Service also has a couple of regular campgrounds in the area. We passed on all of those for something nicer, but first we rode the train and looked at the old gold dredge. This is another historic site that sat alone and unloved for a long
On the west side of the mountains the various government campgrounds can’t keep up with the demand for campsites during the summer. One the east side it looks like you could get a camping spot just about anywhere, anytime you wanted one. The busyseason is probably in the Fall during hunting season.
“Three dredges worked the valley from 1913 to 1954. Sumpter No. 3 was built substantially from parts of the first dredge, which had been idle for 10 years. Between them, the dredges traveled more than 8 miles (13 km),[4] extracting $10 to 12 millionworth of gold. Still, it cost more to run than the gold could pay for. The last dredge closed in 1954, more than $100,000 in debt. In its lifetime this dredge made $4.5 million at $35 per troy ounce. That is 128,570 troy ounces which, at the recent value
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has preserved this historic area as the Sumpter Valley Dredge State Heritage Area.[6] The park includes the Gold Dredge Gift Store and Museum, with a video featuring interviews with dredge workers, historicphotos and artifacts. Tours of the dredge are provided. The dredge was part of a paranormal investigation on the 2013 television series Ghost Mine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumpter_Valley_Gold_Dredgevariation is that the Sumpter end of the line has more trees. It takes 45 minutes to go that 8 miles and there is an hour layover at each end. So their trip back in time takes 2.5 hours. In Sumpter time pretty much stood still after the last dredge shut
They figure that the dredges only captured about 40% of the gold there. No one has found a profitable way to dig up the rest of it.
The train runs through the 8 miles of the Powder river valley that had been plowed up by the gold dredges. The dredges created a pool to float in so the dredges could easily be moved. They left behind regular rows of tailings. The only significant
http://www.sumptervalleyrailroad.org/index.htmlabout 20 minutes further into the hills on a logging road to the Deer creek campground. The campground is just a spur off of a logging road with some gravel on more or less flat spots. It’s first come, first served, and free. We were the only people
By the time we had finished with the train the interpretive center was closed, but we were able to look around the old dredge.
On the west side of the mountains the bean counters for the federal government figured out it was cheaper in the long run if they paved the logging roads. The math appears to be different on the east side. The logging roads are still gravel. We drove
The next day we drove back to Sumpter to see the interpretive center at the gold dredge. Sumpter is even stranger than John Day. The population is 245 people and over 97% white. The median age is 70.5. The park ranger we spoke with said just abouteveryone there is from somewhere else. It’s rare to meet someone who has lived there for more than 2 or 3 years. He lives in Baker City for his son, because there aren’t many kids living in Sumpter.
The interpretive center has free gold panning lessons. They have added small flakes of mined gold to natural sand. For $5 you can keep three small flakes of gold and a couple of small garnets. The little bottle they put them in is probably worth morethan the gold and garnets.
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