in the summer of 1854, as after the efforts of Thurston, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company made a spasmodic pretence of keeping their contract, which was soon again abandoned out of fear of the Umpqua bar,[1] and this abandonment, together with the successful rivalry of the road from Crescent City to the Rogue River Valley, and the final destruction of the Scottsburg road by the extraordinary storms of 1861–2, terminated in a few years the business of the Umpqua, except such lumbering and fishing as were afterward carried on below Scottsburg.
The history of beach mining for gold began in the spring of 1853, the discovery of gold in the sand of the sea-beach leading to one of those sudden migrations of the mining population expressively termed a 'rush.' The first discovery was made by some half-breeds in 1852 at the mouth of a creek a few miles north of the Coquille, near where Randolph appears on the map.[2] The gold was exceedingly fine, the use of a microscope being often necessary to detect it; yet when saved, by amalgamation with mercury, was
- ↑ The whole coast was little understood, and unimproved as to harbors. The Anita was lost at Port Orford in Oct. 1852. Three vessels, the J. Merithew, Mendora, and Vandalia, were wrecked at the mouth of the Columbia in Jan. 1853. Capt. E. H. Beard of the Vandalia, who was from Baltimore, Md., was drowned.
- ↑ S. S. Mann says that the half-breeds sold their claim to McNamara Brothers for $20,000. Settlement of Coos Bay, MS., 14. Armstrong, in his Oregon, 66, claims that his brother discovered gold on the beach at the Coquille in 1842, being driven in there in a schooner by a storm, while on his way to San Francisco.
Nov. 1855, by W. G. T'Vault, Taylor, and Blakesly, with Beggs as printer. Or. Statesman, Dec. 8, 1855; Or. Argus, Dec. 8, 1855. The name was changed to that of Oregon Sentinel in 1857. Id., July 25, 1857. D. J. Lyons was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1813, his family being in the middle rank of life, and connected with the political troubles of 1798. His father emigrated to Kentucky in 1818. Young Lyons lost his sight in his boyhood, but was well educated by tutors, and being of a musical and literary turn of mind, wrote songs fashionable in the circle in which George D. Prentice, Edmund Flagg, and Amelia Welby were prominent. Lyons was connected with several light literary publications before coming to Oregon. He had married Virginia A. Putnam, daughter of Joseph Putnam of Lexington, with whom he emigrated to Oregon in 1853, settling at Scottsburg, where he resided nearly 30 years, removing afterward to Marshfield, on Coos Bay. Beggs was a brilliant writer on politics, but of dissipated habits. He married a Miss Beebe of Salem, and deserted her. He ran a brief career, dying in misery in New York City.
