Gulch, above Jacksonville, inside of eighteen months had taken out over $50,000, and since that time, from the best statistics obtainable, the mines of southern Oregon have yielded about $35,000,000 in gold.
During the winter of 1852 flour was sold at $1 per pound, tobacco at $1 an ounce, and salt was priceless. Jacksonville was laid out as a town in the summer of 1852 by Henry Klippel and John R. Poole.
I will now speak of the Indian wars in which the people of southern Oregon were engaged. The first recorded fight between the Indians and whites in any portion of southern Oregon occurred in 1828, when Jedediah S. Smith and seven other trappers were attacked by the Indians on the Umpqua River, and fifteen of the whites were slain, only Smith and three of his companions escaping. The next fight of which we have any account was in June, 1836, at a point just below the Rock Point bridge, where the barn on the W. L. Colvig estate stands. In this fight there were Dan Miller, Edward Barnes, Doctor Bailey, George Gay, Saunders, Woodworth, Irish Tom, and J. Turners and squaw. Two trappers were killed, and nearly all were wounded. Within my recollection, Doctor Bailey visited the scene of this fight, and pointed out to my father its location. In September, 1837, at the mouth of Foots Creek, in Jackson County, a party of men who had been sent to California by the Methodist mission to procure cattle, while on their return were attacked by the Rogue River Indians and had a short, severe fight, in which several of the whites were badly wounded and some twelve or fourteen of the Indians killed. In May, 1845, J. C. Fremont had a fight with the Indians in the Klamath country; it may have been a little over the line in California. Four of Fremont's men were killed and quite a large number of the Indians. Kit Carson was a prominent figure in this battle.
