Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/186

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Magruder for $20. In 1866, Magruder donated the entire property to his three sons. Throughout the sixties and earlier, there were a great many sales to Chinese companies as well as to single Chinamen; for example:

Wolf Creek, August 20th, 1859.

Know all men by these presents that I the undersigned have this day sold one mining claim 150 yards together with 8 sluices, 2 picks, 2 shovels, 2 hatchets, 1 root ax, and one cabin to one Chinaman by the name of Chick, for the sum of thirty dollars.

EPHRAIM ALLEN. Paid by cash $4. The other $26 to be paid in five days.

The expansion of the mines, that is to say, the rush to a new field, can be traced in the sudden increase of notices recorded to hold claims by discovery, attended by a flock of notices claiming holdings adjacent. Into the formal legal phases one can read something of the fever of rivalry in which the golden grounds were sought and held in that frontier time. It is apparent from the records that the main interest in the sixties, particularly at the beginning, was in quartz. 5 Some claims were held both for "mining and building purposes." Also others were taken for "mining and agricultural purposes." Along many of the creeks still linger the hillside farms and cabins of those whose grandfathers seized upon the land for mining.

Gold was not the only mineral which interested the pioneers. In volume 3, which covers 1860 from June


."> Vol.?>, Mining Records (original), p. 1. Notice to holil one quartz mining claim by discovery. "Notice is hereby given that the undersigned claims one quartz mining claim of 100 yards by right of discovery situated on a quartz lead known as the ISpiing lead on the right hand side of the road leading from the Dardanelles, about 2.10 \ards north of the cabin belonging to Michael Moran in the Blackwell diggings coi'unencing on the eastern side of my prospect hole on said lead and running from thence in a westerly direction with said lead 100 yards including all the dins, angles and outcropping^ belonging to the same, taken under the provisions of the act of the Legislature regulating quartz mining." June IS, 1SOO PATRICK LYNCH.

Filed and recorded June 18, 1860.

WM. HOFFMAN, Recorder, Jackson County.