Historic Mining Town by Paty Jager

Mining town of Bourne, OR

I dug up this information to help me better understand the workings of a mining town for my current work in progress.

A booming mining town isn’t a quiet place.  The thud of the stamp mills could be heard for miles long before you rode into town. Mules wore bells, burros brayed, dogs barked. Planning mills worked to keep up with the demand for boards.

Dust in the streets when it’s dry, mud when it’s wet. Animal dung from horses, mules and oxen. Human refuse tossed in the streets.  And the fresh smell of pine from the new buildings constructed.

The thud of the stamp mill was the heartbeat of the town. As long as they heard the thud, thud, thud the mill was running and all was well. The mill only stopped in emergencies.

With the whisper of gold in an area, people and freight arrived daily.  Tents and crude cabins sprang up. There’s no running water. Water was drawn at a town well or pump. Each household had an outhouse

Mine in the side of the mountain

behind it.

Prospectors take up claims up and down the river if it’s placer mining or in the mountains if it’s hard rock mining.

First businesses sell needed items – a mercantile and a saloon. The mercantile provides the every day necessities and the saloon provides a place to visit, have a drink, and see a woman.  Most mining towns have few women and the respectable ones are treated like royalty. 

When wives arrived they would organize gatherings. A weekly dance with the women bringing baked food. There were so many men in a mining town all females as long as they were big enough to dance, danced every song.  On Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July, and Labor Day the whole mine would shut down, even the mills.  Everyone celebrated with food, games, horse races and boxing matches. They had drilling contests with one and two man teams. The winner was the person or team who could hand-drill the deepest hole in a granite block in a named length of time. Betting took place during the drilling. Men practiced for days ahead of a holiday and used their own special drill steels. Music was an essential at the gatherings. If you were a musician you were popular. 

Company boarding houses, housed the mine workers. It was usually two story with the office, dining hall, and kitchen on the bottom floor and the sleeping quarters upstairs. Built-in wooden bunks were shared by two people. Each person worked a different shift.  The miners weren’t clean either. After a shift they’d set wet boots around the wood stove and they didn’t wash often. The smell must have been enough to make nose hairs curl. Tobacco juice mixed with mud on the floors. Pack rats and flies were also part of a company boarding house.

The most important person in a mining camp was the cook. How well the men ate determined if they stayed on.  This was a typical day’s meals if the company was a good one:

Oatmeal or some other hot grain cereal

Two slabs of bacon or ham

Huge pans of fried potatoes

Large pans of biscuits, refilled again and again

Condensed milk in cans on the tbles, some diluted in pitchers

Stewed fruit(stewed dried fruit when fresh was unavailable)

Syrup

Preserves

Cookies

Coffee cake or doughnuts

Dozens and dozens of eggs, fried and boiled

Huge pots of coffee

Sugar and butter on each table

Lunch (or dinner as it was called back then) was the biggest meal of the day. The preparation started as soon as the men finished breakfast and that was cleaned up.

Soup

Meat and gravy

Potatoes

Vegetables

Hot homemade rolls

Twenty pies (more than a quarter pie per person)

Butter and preserves

Coffee

Supper was nearly the same as lunch but without soups and as big a meal as dinner.

Meat and gravy

Potatoes

Vegetables

Pan after pan of cornbread

Cakes, iced and decorated on special occasions

Butter and preserves

Coffee

Source: The Mining Camps Speak by Beth and Bill Sagstetter

Photos: Paty Jager

www.patyjager.net

Writing into the Sunset