Part V: Hillman, Skeeters, and the Lost Cabin Search

Hall and Thompson failed to relocate the Lost Cabin, but they were not the last prospectors willing to follow the story into the mountains.

By the spring of 1853, another search was taking shape in Jacksonville, Oregon.

The surviving accounts differ in some details, but they agree on the broad sequence. A party of California prospectors arrived in Jacksonville while quietly gathering supplies for an expedition. Their secrecy drew attention, and someone within the group revealed that they possessed information concerning a fabulously rich lost mine. Later historical versions identify it as the Lost Cabin Mine and place the expected location within present-day Josephine County.

Among those who became interested was Isaac G. Skeeters, a Jacksonville merchant. According to accounts preserved by the Crater Lake Institute, Skeeters learned that the Californians intended to leave in search of the mine and approached John Wesley Hillman about financing an Oregon expedition. Hillman agreed, and a party of roughly eleven men was organized to follow them.

The Oregon party included Skeeters, Hillman, Henry Klippel, James L. Loudon, Patrick McManus, and several others whose names vary among the later records. Their purpose was not to begin an independent search from original directions. They intended to follow the Californians, who were believed to possess the better information.

That difference changes how the expedition should be understood.

Hillman’s group was following searchers.

They were not necessarily following the original miners.

Following the Californians

The Californians quickly realized they were being trailed and attempted to lose the Jacksonville party by scattering, doubling back, pushing through brush, and camping in difficult places. The Oregonians continued after them until dwindling provisions made the contest increasingly impractical. Eventually, the two parties declared a truce and agreed to continue together.

By then, both groups had become uncertain of their position.

The combined expedition continued searching for landmarks associated with the lost diggings, but the country no longer matched their expectations. A National Park Service historical study later concluded that the parties had wandered far east of their intended objective and were approaching the upper Rogue River country.

That failure may preserve one of the most revealing moments in the Lost Cabin story.

The men did not simply fail to recognize the mine.

They appear to have followed the wrong country.

A Possible Connection to Hall’s Search

The records do not identify the California party followed by Skeeters and Hillman as Hall’s expedition. No surviving source currently proves that the groups were the same.

Even so, their stories contain enough similarities to raise a reasonable question.

Hall had already searched for the Lost Cabin using information supplied by Thompson. His party failed to relocate the camp, and the story spread among miners throughout Northern California and Southern Oregon. Only a short time later, another California party appeared in Jacksonville claiming knowledge of the same or a remarkably similar lost mine.

It is possible that these men belonged to an entirely separate tradition.

It is also possible that they had inherited information from Hall’s search, from Thompson’s account, or from others who had already followed the same directions unsuccessfully.

That is my interpretation rather than a conclusion stated by the historical sources.

If the California party had inherited an earlier mistake, Hillman’s group may have followed that mistake deeper into the mountains. Each expedition could have moved farther from the original discovery while remaining confident that it was retracing the correct route.

Later searchers may not have been following the men who found the mine.

They may have been following the men who had already lost it.

The Jacksonville Eleven

The Oregon searchers are sometimes remembered collectively as the Jacksonville Eleven, although the reported membership and exact division between the California and Oregon groups vary among later accounts.

What remains consistent is that Skeeters helped set the expedition in motion and Hillman supplied the organization or financing. Once the groups joined, the search became a combined effort rather than two competing parties.

Their provisions continued to fall.

Game was scarce.

The landmarks they hoped to recognize never appeared.

Eventually, a smaller group was sent forward to search for food and climb to higher ground in an attempt to determine where they were.

On June 12, 1853, members of that party reached the rim of a vast blue lake within the collapsed summit of an ancient volcano. Hillman described it as the bluest water he had ever seen, while Skeeters reportedly favored the name Deep Blue Lake. Today it is known as Crater Lake.

The lake had long been known and held sacred by Indigenous peoples. Hillman’s party represents the earliest authenticated Euro-American sighting recorded in the surviving historical literature, not the first human discovery of the place.

What Crater Lake Actually Tells Us

Crater Lake became the expedition’s lasting place in Oregon history.

It did not become evidence that the Lost Cabin stood nearby.

The party was lost, short of food, and attempting to recover its bearings when it reached the lake. The mine was never found, and the historical accounts indicate that the searchers had already moved well away from their intended destination.

Crater Lake therefore records where one search ended.

It does not necessarily record where the Lost Cabin story began.

The distinction is especially relevant when the earlier accounts are considered. Set Em Up’s story points broadly toward Oregon mining country. Hall and Thompson remain tied to the Siskiyou Mountains and the northern California–southern Oregon border region. The Jacksonville expedition, by contrast, moved eastward into the southern Cascades only after following another party and losing its direction.

That sequence supports a more restrained interpretation.

Hillman, Skeeters, and their companions may not have narrowly missed the Lost Cabin Mine near Crater Lake.

They may have turned away from it much earlier.

The expedition found one of Oregon’s most extraordinary landscapes while searching for something else entirely. A poor result for the miners, perhaps, but an unusually generous mistake for everyone who came afterward.

The Lost Cabin remained unfound.

Its story, however, continued spreading.

Decades later, newspapers and regional publications began preserving the old searches in print. Among them was The Hermit of the Siskiyous, which carried the Lost Cabin tradition into another generation.

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References

Early and Historical Sources

Gorman, M. W. “The Discovery and Early History of Crater Lake.” Mazama: A Record of Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest, vol. 1, no. 2, 1897. Reproduced by the United States Geological Survey.

Hillman, John Wesley. Recollection of the 1853 expedition, published in The Oregonian, June 7, 1903, and reproduced in later Crater Lake histories.

Government and Historical Sources

National Park Service. “History & Culture: Crater Lake National Park.”

United States Geological Survey. “Discovery of Crater Lake, Oregon: June 12, 1853.”

Crater Lake Institute.