Boundaries
by Jack Nisbet

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage and Visible Bones. His newest, The Collector, won a 2010 PNBA Award.

The Duke of First Thought Mine
March 2010

It takes a world of time and many twists and turns to form a body of ore. During the Eocene period, around 50 million years ago, islands of terrain docking onto the edge of the North American continent pushed up what we call the Okanogan Highlands. As the deep subduction of these plates opened volcanic vents within the Sanpoil drainage, surges of heat and magma shot through veins to reach the surface, altering the chemistry of ancient rock. It was a tumultuous process interrupted by long periods of relative stability, when a warmer, wetter climate created rich habitats. The list of Eocene flora of Ferry and Stevens County mimics modern hardwood forests of the American South and coniferous stands in China: maple, beech, witch hazel, mulberry, and sassafras; dawn redwood, umbrella pine, and Asian larch. The fossil treasures that school kids crack out of Republic's Stone Rose quarry serve as hard evidence of those leafy green stands.

The Sanpoil Volcanics also gave rise to veins of mineralization that included quartz, calcite, pyrite, chalcedony, fluorite, and adularia, mellifluous names that rock hounds can love. Measurable amounts of gold and silver came along with them, and the operating gold mine close to Republic exposes the Eocene underground just as surely as Stone Rose does the surface.

It takes serendipity and human touch to make a mine, each one a different story played out in the relative blink of an eye. The late 19th and early 20th century history of the North Columbia country revolves around dozens of such mines, fueled by the lure of attractive rocks and the astonishing amount of work that an entertaining cast of characters spent trying to realize their dreams.

As soon as the shrinking boundaries of the Colville Indian Reservation opened this corner of Washington up for mineral exploitation, it didn't take early prospectors long to realize that the geology of the Sanpoil Volcanics extended east toward the confluence of the Kettle and Columbia rivers. As soon as positive assays came in on samples from the Napoleon and First Thought claims near Orient, swarms of hopeful diggers stickered claims around those properties. Soon the Great Northern Railway was surveying a new line north to Grand Forks, and secondary camps sprang up in Laurier, Boyd, and Rock Cut.

In a world of myriad digs but very little actual revenue, the First Thought claim stood out. According to a state geological report, three tunnels were driven westerly into a promising mineralized zone that ranged from 15 to 110 feet wide. The property was equipped with a 60-horsepower gasoline engine, 7-drill compressor, 15-horsepower hoist, and a 500-foot capacity diamond drill. From the lower main working tunnel, a shaft was sunk on a steep slope to a depth of 130 feet below. From this shaft, three drifts were driven both to the right and left, and the central ore vein traced by solid steps back up to the tunnel. Miners found particularly rich pockets at the intersection of diagonal faults.

At first that outflow was hauled down a three and a half mile wagon road that wore its way from the portal to the new town of Orient. But before long a young Canadian named William Morley Manning offered Colville tribal member Alex Herring $150.00 for his consent to let a tramway run through his allotment. The consummated deal not only proved that at that time a legal tribal presence still extended beyond the reservation boundaries, but also laid the groundwork for a true industrial accomplishment: the completed aerial tramway carried ore in buckets from the First Thought tunnels 13,000 feet downhill to bunkers on the tracks of the Great Northern line, just outside of Orient.

Between 1904 and 1910, 36,150 tones of ore were shipped from the First Thought diggings. The ore revenues averaged $15.00 a ton in gold and about a half an ounce of silver, although a 1920 geological report assures us that much higher values were obtained from portions of the deposit. Then after a few glorious years, the high-grade gold ore began to wane and a crash in the silver market left the First Thought, and indeed the entire Orient mining district, dead in the water. A curious article that appeared in the Colville Examiner issue of Christmas Eve, 1910, seemed to echo the tone of time.

The Duke is Dead
Died, at the First Thought
Mine, from the effects of cancer
of the throat, "Duke," the mas-
cot of the mine.

Duke was a male domestic sheep who had clambered up First Thought Mountain in 1898, back in the days when the storied mine was nothing more than a glint in the ground. In a symbolic meeting of the two major industries of the region at that time, the ram was part of a herd being driven into the boundary district of British Columbia by herders employed by P. Burns & Co.

The shepherds sold half a dozen of their sheep to the prospectors who were proofing up the claim, and while five ewes soon went into the stew pot, Duke became an instant favorite pet among the men. His royal bearing earned him his name, and over the succeeding years his rack grew to an impressive double curl. In a photograph that accompanied his death notice, Duke faces the camera head on. His horns shoot forward toward the cameraman in a cascade of forward twists, and a monogrammed wool robe‹could it have been cut from a Hudson's Bay Company blanket?--covers his back.

According to the article, soon after his arrival Duke began to follow the crew to work inside the mine, strutting comfortably into the tunnel's darkness and never leaving until the men called it a day. During the boom years, if a night shift followed the first crew back in, Duke would turn around and keep them company as well. "He had many miraculous escapes from death, the men often going back into the mine after the blasts had gone off expecting to find him dead, but always found him on his way out unhurt."

During the cold months of winter, or when too many coyotes were singing around the mineworks, Duke would sleep in front of the men's sleeping quarters. In time he learned to butt open the bunkhouse door and stroll in to curl up by the wood stove there. The officials of the mine always treated him with respect, and the article concludes with a straight-faced eulogy.

During his
life Duke made friends extending
from one side of the continent to
the other, and far into Canada,
and they will all hear of his
death with regret. "Duke's"
last resting place is in a little
plot among the roses of the First
Thought garden.

Duke's passing seemed to mark the end of an era. When Washington state geologist Charles E. Weaver filed a report about Stevens County Mineral Resources in 1920, there was no way to hide the depressed state of the Orient District. He found most of the mine roads in a bad state of repair owing to disuse," and his "investigations of the ore deposits in the underground workings was greatly hampered because of the fact that the majority of the properties were inactive and the shafts filled with water and the tunnels caved."

But miners, like Duke, are a resilient lot, and the First Thought was far from dead. Between 1931 and '32 the Sunset Gold Mining Company worked 400 tons of the original tailings, with yields a little less of gold but considerably higher in silver from those during the mine's heyday. From 1934 to 1942, the First Thought Mining Corporation milled 45,000 tons of ore at much reduced rates. Since World War II, a succession of mining companies has revisited those tailings and tunnels, taking new assays, always hoping for a return to that magic first decade of the 20th century, and the miner's luck that Duke the ram somehow carried with him.

Illustration by Emily Nisbet

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