The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-12-12
SUMPTER IS A HUMMER
The New Mining Camp in East
ern Oregon Is Great.
BUTTE PEOPLE THERE
Something of It's Early History-Why 1t
Jagged So Long-How 1t Was
Developed~Oregonia and
Chinamen-Its Mines.

| If you take Butte of carriers days
OF those halcyon days of the middle
eighties--When the camp was new and
lusty and just tritie more wicked
than 1t is to-day and compare it close
ly with this golden dot on the eastern
Oregon map, neither will lose by the
comparison. Sumpter is new-glaring-
ly, painfully new. Being new, it is
also wicked. Being wicked. it is also
interesting, and because it is new and
wicked and Interesting, and because
also the gold mines of the surrounding
country are rich enough to satisfy the
dreams of an opium eater and because
also more rich mines at the rate of
dozen year are being added to the list
OF dividend-payers in the district, and
because also enough Butte people and
Spokane people with push and snap
and go have come to the camp to make
1t success, Sumpter is a Butte.
For 80 years Sumpter, from the So
cial standpoint has been In the gentle
hands of two separate and distinct
| species of slow pokers, each superior to
the other in some particular regard
Oregonians and Cinnamon. The form
er, during all the intervening time since
1876, have stood by and watched the
Cinnamon work. The latter during
these 80 years. have taken out of the
placer diggings sum in gold variously
estimated at from 10 to rs million dol
lars. The Oregonians herded cattle in
the foothills, grazad sheep on the noun
tain slopes, and never made further IN
Vestigation into the richness of the dis
trict than to occasionally inquire of
the Cinnamon if they didn't want to
buy some beef.
I got it straight from an old Cali
fornia prospector that the way the
Oregonians discovered gold in this dis
trict was through a cowboy down on
Camas prairie who loaded up on red
eye and held up q Chinaman bound for
the Wells Fargo express office at Pen
dleton. This was sometime in sc.
Sumpter-the Sumptar of to-day
was born last year. This vouches for
the youthfulness of the camp. After it
became known that syndicate COM
posed of Standard Oil company people,
who, in 1897, paid three-quarters of a
| million dollars for the Bonanza mine.
16 miles from Sumpter, were producing
monthly average of $4,000 in gold;
and after the Red Boy mine began
pounding out half that figure, and after
the North Pole joined the list, and with
dinky stamp mill began to make mil
lionaires of it's owners, and after Cen
eral Charles F. Warren came to town
and began systematic dissemination
of facts regarding the camp, and after
the English brothers took hold CT the
Golconda mine and began digging out
ore at the 259 level, which, in the Ian
guage of the Alaska miner was gold,
| carrying some uartz"-Sumpter be-
gan to live. For six months she wore
| swaddling clothes; at the end of that
time the camp assumed swagger airs,
blossomed out as city of some metro
politan pretentions and began to hum.
To the Butte people in Sumpter who
have taken the bull by the horns and
incidentally taken filer in real estate
and mines, the sound of this hum is
pleasant music. All the Montana men
in this camp stand to win big money.
Some of them have already cleaned
UP snug sums: General Warren, IF
course, is the king bee around here
G. F. Booth, ex-Mayor Dugan, w. r.
Cobban and some of the others have
irons in the fire which will pan out
heavily when the time is ripe. They
are all quite happy and not the least
lonesome or homesick, for in the Ian
guage of the Hon. Charles F. Booth,
"Sumpter is a Butte"