Horn of Plenty in NE Oregon by Paty Jager

From Baker County Historical Society

The Cornucopia Mine group located 12 miles west of Halfway Oregon in the Wallowa Whitman National Forest was once one of the 6 largest gold mines in the United States. It ran the longest continually of any mine in Oregon. It had 36 miles of tunnels with a depth of 3,000 feet.

It’s believed the mines output was $20 million from gold, silver, lead, and copper.

The mining area began when Lon Simmons one of the first to discover gold in the early 1880’s. It’s said he hadn’t planted the first stake of his section before men were all over the side of the mountain looking for gold.

There were many small mines in the area. The Cornucopia Mine group was made up of Union-Companion Mine(the biggest), Last Chance, Queen of the West and Red Jacket.

Last Chance was a pocket mine. Meaning it was a dense accumulation of ore that was under the surface and down to the bedrock and perhaps in the bedrock. While the other mines were dredged and drilled.

Union-Companion produced the most and was said to be on the mother lode. This means it was located on a vein of the ore it produced.

The mines were so remote they used outdated equipment and methods to extract the ore. Only horses and wagons were used for transportation. The first few years were a slow process of not only getting the ore out of the ground but also delivering it to a railroad station. Baker City was the closest and it was a 3 day trip.

They still used teams of horses to haul the heavy wagons in the 1920’s. In 1922 electricity came to Cornucopia. With it came a twenty-stamp mill.  The heavy stamps were like huge 1,000 to 2,000 pound hammers which could crush 60 tons of ore a day.

It wasn’t until the railroad came to Robinette on the Snake River, electricity and the pneumatic drill that finally had the mines producing to their fullest potential.

1894 the Union -Companion sold for $800.

1895 it sold for $60,000.

1897 it sold for $200,000.

Later the mine sold for $700,000

In the early 1900’s the Cornucopia mines employed 700 men.

During the years the mines operated the price of gold was from $20.67 to $35 a troy ounce.

High graders were men who worked at a mine and somehow or another, nuggets of pure gold found their way into their shirts and boot tops. Many nationalities worked at the Cornucopia mines. Being as remote as it was the miners had to create their own fun. They had Saturday night dances. Anyone who could play an instrument was included in the band ensemble for the dances.

A shift was 10 hours in the mine and 12 in the mill. They worked 7 days a week, so holidays were well-earned. They celebrated Christmas and the Fourth of July. Then when Labor Day was recognized as a holiday in Oregon in 1887 they relished that holiday.  The city ordinance of Cornucopia only allowed saloons to serve beer. But when there was a holiday it brought in ranchers, townspeople, the miners and the millworkers. And someone would bring along some “tangle leg”. A mixture of Pine Creek water and corn squeezins. "It’s said a few drops would turn a squirrel into a screaming panther."

While I didn’t have any dances or holidays in my book, Isaac: Letters of Fate, you will find the mining area of Cornucopia. Isaac is a mine guard at the Union-Companion at the start of the story.

 Historical western filled with steamy romance and the rawness of a growing country.

Alamayda Wagner’s life has left her cynical, but also vigilant, and that’s what propels her to Cornucopia, Oregon to uncover the secrets her father took to his grave. She quickly discovers her only hope includes trusting Isaac Corum. That soon proves to be expensive, and not just financially.

The last thing Isaac Corum needs or wants is a snooty woman telling him he didn’t do enough to save her father, which is what her letter implied. He’d helped the man more than most people would have, and swears he won’t go out of his way like that again. He’ll meet her at the Baker City train station, deliver her father’s belongings, and send her back the way she came.

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Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 32 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. This is what readers have to say about the Letters of Fate series- “...filled with romance, adventure and twists and turns.” “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope!”

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 I used the book Oregon's Golden Years by Miles F. Potter for all the information for this post. 

Change of Theme by Paty Jager

The current WIP has been giving me fits.

I started with the hero and heroine. They have a resemblance in some ways to a young couple I met a few years ago. They were so in love, you could feel the electricity between them. Then when I asked them some questions about their backgrounds, I knew I had to write a book with characters like them.

My heroine was to be a daughter of a preacher. The hero, half American Indian and half French. I wanted an obscure mission in the Pacific Northwest that I could have her father teaching at and have the hero be a part of the tribe they were helping to find God and learn to be civilized.

This is country where I grew up. It resembles the Lemhi area

I thought I found my obscure mission. Fort Limhi on the border of Idaho, almost in Montana. At the time of the story it was considered to be in Oregon Territory. During my first two rounds of research, I didn't dig up much about the fort other than the site was chosen in 1856 by a group of Mormon men sent north to find a place where they were welcomed by the Indians. The area in the Salmon River Valley was one where Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Bannock tribes came to fish for salmon and smelt and to have games and races. One band of the Shoshone the Salmon Eaters lived most of the year in the valley. Chief Tendoy of this band, welcomed the Mormon missionaries.  He gave them permission to put up a mission, and they could use the bounties of the valley for their own consumption.

This is the hero, Henrí Baudin

This was all good information. But I had trouble finding information specific to the mission that they built in a log stockade. How many people lived there? Men and women? What did they all do? I thought great! I'll have an Indian school, the teacher, the heroine's father would be mean to the Indian boys and the hero's uncle would ask him to come help the children. I was 100 pages into the story when I came across half a book on the life of someone who lived and worked at the Limhi Mission (now called Lemhi) in Salmon River Valley.

That skidded my story to a halt. I read all this information, and discovered the school I had outside the stockade would have been a very small school held inside the stockade in the meeting house. And that very few Shoshone attended the school. AND there were bigger political issues taking place that my hero, who was at Yale studying law could help his people with.

With this new information, the story no longer dealt with ill treatment of the Shoshone children. Instead, it now deals with the Shoshone seeing the missionaries friending their enemies, taking natural resources from the valley to Salt Lake, Brigham Young deciding in February 1857 they should build a community rather than help the Shoshone, the army trying to get the Indians on their side to roust out the Mormons, and the final straw, the mission taking in another tribe that had stolen Shoshone horses.

The mission that started in 1856 was abandoned in March 1858 when the Shoshone stole the fort's livestock and horses and killed some of the Mormons when they took over the fort.

As with all my books what started out as a moral theme turned into a theme of justice. I can't seem to get away from that theme in my books, but that makes them grittier and more fulfilling for me to write.

This research and digging is for the fourth book in the Letters of Fate series. Henrí will release in April. 
If you haven't read this series yet you can find, Davis, Isaac, and Brody on my website and peruse their stories. 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 30+ novels, dozen novellas, and short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. She has a RomCon Reader’s Choice Award, EPPIE, Lorie, and RONE Award. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. This is what readers have to say about the Letters of Fate series- “...filled with romance, adventure and twists and turns.” “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope!”

Circuit Preachers by Paty Jager

photo: http://rootsfromthebayou.blogspot.com

After reading an article in a local paper about circuit preachers in Oregon history, I had a light bulb blink on over my head. I would use a circuit preacher in one of my Letters of Fate books.

That is what started my research on the profession. This is what I found in Wikipedia for an explanation: A circuit preacher is a Christian minister who, in response to a shortage of ministers, officiates at multiple churches in an area, thus covering a "circuit". They were officially called Traveling Clergy.

As small communities sprang up across the American frontier they weren’t large enough to support a church or a minister. They would ask for a circuit rider. A minister who rode from community to community providing services whenever and wherever he came across someone who would listen to him preach. They were also known as “saddlebag preachers,” because they traveled by horseback with everything they owned in their saddlebags.

They would preach anywhere. Cabins, courthouses, fields, meetinghouses, some towns would even close down the saloon  when the preacher arrived and they would hold services in the establishment. These orators of the good book would preach wherever they were welcome. Their areas usually ranged from 200-500 miles. They traveled through mud, rain, snow, and scorching heat to keep on their rounds. It could take them from five to six weeks to make a circuit.

It took a preacher with a good sense of humor to travel as they did, most times alone, just their horse or mule, Bible, and few belongings.  Along the way they would spread the word and help those in need.

There are tall tales of how circuit preachers saved a lost soul from a lynch mob or a landslide and have the saved person immediately open his heart to the Lord. 

In the eastern United States it’s noted that after the Civil War circuit riders were fewer, however, they were still needed in the western territories and states. They continued there until early1900. 

All of this information has brought a unique character and circumstance to mind for a book. I have another Letters of Fate book in the works, so this one will come after that, but that just gives me more time to “stew and brew” this character and plot. 

Have you heard any Circuit Preacher stories?  

My newest Letters of Fate release:

Brody: Letters of Fate 

 

Historical western filled with steamy romance and the rawness of a growing country.

A letter from a grandfather he’s never met has Brody Yates escorted across the country to work on a ranch rather than entering prison. But his arrival in Oregon proves prison may have been the lesser of two evils. A revenge driven criminal, the high desert, and his grandfather’s beautiful ward may prove more dangerous than anything he’s faced on the New York docks. 

Lilah Wells is committed to helping others: the judge who’d taken her in years ago, the neighboring children, and the ranch residents, which now includes the judge’s handsome wayward grandson. And it all gets more complicated when her heart starts ruling her actions. 

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Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 25+ novels and over a dozen novellas and short stories of murder mystery, western historical romance, and action adventure. She has a RomCon Reader’s Choice Award for her Action Adventure and received the EPPIE Award for Best Contemporary Romance.  This is what reviewers says about her Letters of Fate Series: “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope! Very well written but sometimes sizzling love scenes!”

All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.
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