St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-18
AN OLD TIMER INTERVIEWED.
The Occur d'Alene Stampede of Nine
teen Years Ago.


A special correspondent Of the GLOBE,
writing from Bozeman, Montana, having
communicated the fact that the Occur
d'Alene country was nineteen years age
the objective Of as great rush of gold-hunt-
ers as it is now, reporter was delegated 10
interview participant in that first stampede
now in the city, but modestly requesting
that his name should be withheld from the
public. The facts are now of renewed inter
| est, from their relationship to present events,
and we will give general standardization of
them.
In 1864 the town of Lewiston, in Idaho, on
the Clear Fork of the Snake river-Lewiston
then, as now, having population of about
one thousand-was passing through
the gloomiest stage of its existence.
1t had been the territorial capital, but
the seat of government had just been re-
moved to Boise City, in the southern part of
the territory-the opposition of the inhabit-
ants to the removal being so fierce that the
governor(the scholarly ''Caleb Lyon of Lyons
dale,n and the designer of California's state
seal,) had to depart with the public records
clandestinely. Still worse for the business
interests of the place, the old northern gold
| camps of Orc Elmo, Miller, Elk, Florence and
Pierce-the bulk of the trade of which had
been controlled by the Lewiston merchants
were approaching exhaustion and fast be-
ing deserted for the later discoveries in the
| Boise section and in Montana.
Three years before these events, so ruinous
to her local interests, Lewiston's population
reached between four and five thousand, and
corner lots were held at extravagant figures :;
| now she is fit subject for another Gold
| smith to immortalize in verse as ''deserted
village" The local paper, though edited by
| one of the brightest journalists of the Col
umbia, was eking out sickly existence, and
| everything and everybody were involved in
the general gloom. A new camp had to be
| discovered; lit was grounding case"
at this juncture the French gold miners
came into Lewiston from the north, and
! awakened new hopes and raised blaze of
excitement by exhibiting about $4,000 in
gold dust, dust that every business man
knew had not been taken from any of the
camps. THE dust of every district has pc
| culiarities by which those accustomed to
handling it can unfailingly recognize it. !
This is a justifying fact on the side of the
| people of Lewiston and their best journalist
| that they were denied the benefit of at the
| time The Frenchmen, ambitious to be re-
| corded as the discoveries of new mines, pos
itively declared that they got the gold ''up
near Ceur d'Alene lake, not more than $50
miles north from lewiston The gold was
there to show for itself, and no motive could
be conceived for the Frenchmen telling a
talsehood ''Mack,'' of the Lewiston Radiator
himself having the fullest confidence in the
Frenchmen's story, as did all others in the
town, turned himself loose in the most SEN
sational style in writing up the s'new gold
discovery of fabulous richness within three
DAYS horseback ride of lewiston the head
lines of his exciting articles bristling with ex-
clamation points and exhausting the stock OF
display type at hand.
Once start a gold excitement-no differ
ence whether there is any gold or not-and
men will not fail TO come to the front who
shave been there" and ''know all about it''
So it was in this case. One of the all-know-
ing class, who pretended to have explored
the "new Ell Dorado,' carried his audacity so
far as to draft map for the editor of The
Radicator, very infinitely giving Indian trails,
water courses, mountain ranges, ETC., the