Bluebucket

There are at least a dozen versions of the story of the Lost Blue Bucket Mine that I am aware of. Most of them agree on certain essentials ·the first one being that it was not a mine at all.

Covered wagons and their accessories were pretty much identical. In order to denote ownership, pioneer families painted all their equipment the same color. This practice was the field-expedient substitute for stencils or name tags. The Blue Bucket Mine legend grew from a single bucket from a covered wagon in which a child or children collected ?nteresting·pebbles which turned out to be nuggets of pure gold. The gold was found in an area where a wagon train that had become lost while searching for a shortcut to Oregon stopped for water.

From this point on, the stories diverge in so many directions that an entire book could be devoted to examining them. However, since one line of stories in particular led to the discovery of gold at Griffen Creek and the start of the Oregon gold rush, I?l present the essentials of those stories here.

In the summer of 1845 half a dozen wagon trains totaling 300 wagons were gathered at Fort Boise, Idaho, in preparation for the final trek along the Oregon Trail. The wagon masters for all these trains were approached by a man named Stephen Meek who offered for $5 a wagon to lead them through a shortcut that would shave 200 exhausting miles off their trek. All or most of the wagon masters agreed to follow Meek into the wilderness where he promptly got them lost. Safe drinking water became a serious problem, and people began to die. By this time, in most versions of the story, Meek had already been killed by the outraged pioneers. How many others died depends upon the story, but in all stories (of this line) the pioneers were given a temporary reprieve by a desert cloudburst. The cloudburst turned a dry wash into a stream where the wagon trains camped for the night. It was at this location that a little boy whose sister had died en route collected the golden pebbles in his blue bucket. It was here also that his much aggrieved mother murdered her abusive drunkard husband by driving his nail through his head as he slept. So many had died en route that no suspicions were aroused when the camp awoke the next morning to find her already heaping a mound of stones upon his body. Much later, when it was discovered that the attractive pebbles collected by her son were gold, the mother was understandably vague about the area where they came from.

There are many other stories, but this is the one that Henry Griffin was following when he discovered gold on October 23, 1861 along the Elk Creek that would eventually be re-named after him.

The story is also at least partially confirmed by the journal of a member of the original wagon train. According to that journal three persons died on three consecutive days starting the day after the life-saving cloudburst. Earle Stanley Gardner, in his search for the gold, found three graves about 12 miles apart (the right distance) ending in the area between Rabbit Creek and Foley Creek. He did not find the gold, and it is not recorded if one of the skeleton? had a nail through its head.