Mining Lore … But Not Much Ore [Tales from UpCreek]
A lot of the new folks downriver never heard of UpCreek. They hear people talk about it, they think they just mean ‘up stream.’ Like a lot of places lost to rot and ruin and history too, UpCreek once was a prosperous town of prospectors and gold panners around the turn of the last century. Prospecting in 1890 was like high-tech startups are a hundred years later, fat money to be made and plenty of thieves waiting to steal discoveries. Mining towns sprang up like human molehills, tunnels leading everywhere. Monte Cristo made a few men rich, but UpCreek made most men poor.
Except the storekeepers and the bars and the ladies of the night…. Before I was born, but the old timers tell me UpCreek was a wild and lawless place back then, a frontier when most folks farmed down in the fertile valleys. I guess it was the same in the Klondike, the same in Silver City, the same everywhere men leave their wives and family in search of fast riches. Nowadays the casinos make it a little easier, even put ATM’s by the slots for the folks grubstaking their way toward the gold vein or the hot hand. They’ll sell you food and entertainment. They’ll pick you cleaner than an eagle scarfing spawning salmon on Beaver Creek, nothing but bones and head without eyes when they’re done.
My place is an old cabin built from fir logs and roofed with cedar shakes right where a little steam hits the Little Beaver on its way down to the Big Beaver and on to the Stillaguamish. There’s a mineshaft at the back of the property, covered now with vines and lost memories, but occasionally I cut my way into the entrance, just a few rotted timbers left I don’t have much faith in. I go a few yards in with a lantern every few years, but not being a gambler or a daytrader, I back out into the sunlight where poverty looks better than risking everything on a roll of the dice or a turn of the shovel.
I’ve never understood Gold Fever myself, but UpCreek wouldn’t be here if folks didn’t imagine winning the Lottery. Course, now it’s just me and the rest of us who bought the abandoned mines and played out dreams. Maybe we were the winners after all….
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