The Lost Blue Bucket Mine is a

lost mine The "lost mine" is a popular form of lost treasure legend. Although there are countless examples around the world, several common themes can be traced throughout the various legends. Usually the mines are said to contain valuable elements or min ...

reputed to be located along the Meek Wagon Train trail between the present day cities of

Vale A vale is a type of valley. Vale may also refer to: Places Georgia * Vale, Georgia, a town in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region Norway * Våle, a historic municipality Portugal * Vale (Santa Maria da Feira), a former civil parish in the municip ...

and

The Dalles The Dalles ( ;) formally the City of the Dalles and also called Dalles City, is an inland port, the county seat of and the largest city in Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the large ...

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

, United States. Its discovery traces back to 1845, several years before the start of the

California Gold Rush The California gold rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the U ...

(1848–1855).

The legend

Points of agreement

The various versions of the legend tend to agree on a few key points:The Lost Blue Bucket Mine
The Lost Blue Bucket Mine
accessdate: April 13, 2017 # Lost Oregon-bound emigrants discovered the mine in summer 1845, # The deposit is coarse

placer gold Placer mining () is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit mining or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment. Placer mining is frequently used for precious metal deposits (particularly ...

in a dry

stream bed A streambed or stream bed is the bottom of a stream or river and is confined within a Stream channel, channel or the Bank (geography), banks of the waterway. Usually, the bed does not contain terrestrial (land) vegetation and instead supports d ...

canyon A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency t ...

, # The canyon is bottomed with

lava Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a Natural satellite, moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a Fissure vent, fractu ...

pocked with cavities and

potholes A pothole is a pot-shaped depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affected ...

Versions of the legend

One version states that a

wagon train ''Wagon Train'' is an American Western television series that aired for eight seasons, first on the NBC television network (1957–1962) and then on ABC (1962–1965). ''Wagon Train'' debuted on September 18, 1957, and reached the top of the ...

got lost off the

Meek Cutoff Meek Cutoff was a horse trail road that branched off the Oregon Trail in northeastern Oregon and was used as an alternate emigrant route to the Willamette Valley in the mid-19th century. The road was named for frontiersman Stephen Meek, who wa ...

of the

Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and Westward Expansion Trails, emigrant trail in North America that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail crossed what ...

, near the

Malheur River The Malheur River ( ) is a tributary of the Snake River in eastern Oregon in the United States. It drains a high desert area, between the Harney Basin, the Blue Mountains and the Snake. In the past Malheur Lake (located in the enclosed Harn ...

. Three young men (or boys, or a single girl — accounts vary) went to fetch water, and while doing so put some shiny rocks into a blue bucket. Older members of the party said it was

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

. Someone asked, "Was there much of it?" One replied, "We could have filled one of these blue buckets". This was 1845, before the

, and back then many could not recognize

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

. A Mrs. Fisher kept one nugget and left the rest behind. The wagons eventually reached what is now

The Dalles, Oregon The Dalles ( ;) formally the City of the Dalles and also called Dalles City, is an inland port, the county seat of and the largest city in Wasco County, Oregon, Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 United ...

in October, 1845. The single nugget was eventually recognized as gold. Another version holds that when the Stephen Meek Wagon train stopped along the trail in present-day Crook County near Bear Creek, children went to gather water at some distance from the camp. They returned with a blue bucket filled with shiny pebbles. An old-timer in the party stated that the pebbles were made of copper. One of the families, however, kept several of the pebbles as souvenirs. Years later, and after having moved to California, the family came across the pebbles in a dresser drawer. By this time, the

had occurred, and the expertise was available to recognize that the pebbles were in fact gold. However, no one could remember the precise location where the pebbles had been found. Johndayrivermap

Results

The legend sparked a

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...

to the area of modern-day

Baker City, Oregon Baker City is a city in and the county seat of Baker County, Oregon, United States. It was named after Edward D. Baker, Edward Dickinson Baker, the only U.S. Senator ever killed in military combat. The population was 10,099 at the time of the 20 ...

.Oregon Gold
Baker - Oregon Gold
accessdate: April 13, 2017

Current status

If the mine existed, its location is unknown; the area comprises perhaps . It is believed to be on a

tributary A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...

of the

John Day River The John Day River is a tributary of the Columbia River, approximately long, in northeastern Oregon in the United States. It is known as the Mah-Hah River by the Cayuse people. Undammed along its entire length, the river is the fourth longest ...

, or in another version, on a Bear Creek tributary of the Crooked River. There are three real

mines Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging *Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun Mi ...

in the U.S. named the "Blue Bucket", including one in

Grant County, Oregon Grant County is one of the List of counties in Oregon, 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 7,233, making it Oregon's fourth-least populous county. The county seat is Can ...

, that are unrelated to the lost mine.

References

External links and references

* * * {{coord missing, Oregon Gold mines in the United States Blue Bucket Mine History of Oregon Oregon Trail Crook County, Oregon Baker County, Oregon Grant County, Oregon