Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1912 — RICH DIGGING ON SITE OF OLD MININO CAMP [ARTICLE]

RICH DIGGING ON SITE OF OLD MININO CAMP

Installation of New Pump Makes Possible Present Operations. SPOKANE, Wash. (Spl.)—Placer miners working at the old Florence camp, in northern Idaho, are daily taking gold coins of $2.5C and $5 denominations, minted in 1832, American and French silver pieces and lead bullets, such as were used in the days wheq the muzzle-loading horse pistol was the popular side arm, from the clean-up of the sluice boxes on the Hainkson-Champlain ground. W. A. Patterson, a mining engineer, and F. P. Lint, owner of a group of claims on Marshall lake, who has jus l returned from the camp, reports thai most of the ground is returning as high as $lO in gold dust to the cubiyard. Virgin gold was the pritcipa' medium of exchange in the day whet Florence had the reputation of being the richest and toughest mining, cam? in the Northwest, and it is thought that the rich fiqds are the result of the dust falling from the scales and sifting through the cracks in the floors of the saloons, gambling houses and dance halls in the early ’6os. While Patterson and Lint were in camp the miners were working or ground formerlv occupied- bv a gambling house and dance hall, which figured in some of the most tragic events in the history of northern Idaho, before the advent of a railroad in the western country. Gun fights were of daily occurrences and few nights passed without one or more being slashed in bowie knife duels. Veteran prospectors and placer mint ers now living at Lewiston and othei parts of that district, who flocked tc Florence when the first gold was found, declared years ago that the richest diggings were Where the cam; town was located; but, as no watei was available until a steam pump wa< installed recently for conveying watei to the sluices no attempt was made to mine the ground.