The Legend of Oregon's Lost Cabin Mine Part V | Hillman, Skeeters, and the Lost Cabin Search

The Legend of Oregon's Lost Cabin Mine

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

By M. Hayward | Lost Cabin Mine

By the spring of 1853, the story of a rich gold discovery somewhere in Southern Oregon had traveled far enough to bring a party of California prospectors into Jacksonville. They were not searching at random. According to the historical accounts, they possessed information about landmarks they believed would lead them to the Lost Cabin Mine.
Their confidence attracted attention, and John Wesley Hillman organized an expedition to follow them.
The pursuit ended without the gold, but it left behind a remarkable historical record through the expedition's encounter with Crater Lake on June 12, 1853.

The Californians themselves remain something of a mystery. Their names were not preserved in the familiar accounts, and the source of their information is uncertain.
There is, however, an earlier account worth considering.
Colonel Samuel C. Hall had also been involved in an unsuccessful search for a rich mining camp associated with a cabin. His account included miners who knew the workings, supplies left behind, and an attempt to return to the discovery.
The similarities invite a closer examination of the years separating the two expeditions.

Pocket mine diggings near Althouse Creek, Southern Oregon

A Story Already in Circulation

The Lost Cabin Mine was evidently familiar to prospectors before Hillman's expedition began.
The account published by M. W. Gorman in 1897 describes the Californians arriving in Jacksonville and taking considerable care to conceal their intentions. Their behavior attracted the attention of local miners, who eventually learned that the visitors were searching for exceptionally rich lost diggings.
Once the Jacksonville party began following them, the Californians made repeated attempts to escape their pursuers.
Their actions suggest that they believed their information was valuable enough to protect.

When the two parties finally agreed to cooperate, they exchanged knowledge of the landmarks associated with the supposed discovery. Even with that information, they failed to locate the mine (Gorman, 1897).
The episode establishes that the Californians possessed, or believed they possessed, a description of the country they intended to search.
It does not establish where that description originated.

That missing history is especially interesting because another unsuccessful expedition had already entered the Lost Cabin Mine tradition.
Colonel Hall's Earlier Search
The account attributed to Colonel Samuel C. Hall, preserved in the appendix of L. W. Musick's The Hermit of Siskiyou; Or, Twice-Old Man, describes miners returning from the mountains with unusually rich gold.
Among them was D. V. Thompson.

The men reportedly described a productive mining camp, a cabin, and equipment left behind for their return. Hall subsequently became involved in an expedition to relocate the workings.
Despite the miners' familiarity with the discovery, the search failed.
The circumstances bear a resemblance to the Jacksonville expedition. Both accounts concern a rich deposit that had already been worked, information carried away from the original camp, and men attempting to return to ground they believed could be identified.
There are differences as well.

Hall's account preserves names associated with the original discovery. The Jacksonville story identifies the men who followed the Californians but provides little reliable information about the Californians themselves.
The surviving descriptions do not establish that the two expeditions were connected.
Nevertheless, the possibility deserves examination within the chronology of the early gold rush.

Could the Same Men Have Returned?

One possibility is that members of Hall's earlier expedition, or men familiar with its account, later participated in the California party followed by Hillman.
The suggestion is not based on a matching name or an identified document linking the groups. It arises from the circumstances described in the surviving narratives.
Both parties were searching for a discovery already known through the experiences or descriptions of other miners. Both expected to recognize particular features of the country. Neither succeeded.

The movement of prospectors between Northern California and Southern Oregon makes the possibility historically reasonable.
Mining camps were rarely isolated communities. Men traveled between settlements, exchanged information, formed new partnerships, and returned to abandoned prospects when circumstances allowed.
A failed expedition did not necessarily end interest in a promising discovery. Information might be carried to another settlement, shared with new companions, or used to organize another attempt.
The Californians who entered Jacksonville in 1853 may have been doing precisely that.
But there is another possibility...

They may have obtained their information from an entirely separate account of the Lost Cabin Mine. By the early 1850s, stories of extraordinary discoveries were circulating through mining settlements, and similar descriptions could easily have become attached to different places.
Without identifying the Californians or establishing the origin of their directions, the two explanations remain equally open to investigation.

The Problem With the Landmarks

The historical accounts repeatedly return to the importance of recognizable features of the landscape.
Hall's narrative describes an unsuccessful attempt to relocate a known camp. The Californians followed by Hillman reportedly possessed information about landmarks associated with their intended destination.
In both cases, the searchers believed they had enough knowledge to find the place.
That confidence proved insufficient.

A landmark can be recognizable to someone who has already visited an area and nearly useless to a person approaching from another direction.
Early miners often traveled without surveyed roads or reliable maps. Routes followed streams, ridgelines, animal trails, and whatever passage the country permitted.
A description that appeared straightforward to one party could lead another into an entirely different drainage.
Even a miner returning to familiar country might struggle to recognize a route after a season of storms, flooding, fallen timber, or changes in vegetation.

The failure of these expeditions does not necessarily mean that the original discovery was imaginary.
Nor does it establish that the searchers came close to finding it.
It demonstrates the difficulty of transferring knowledge of a remote place from one group of men to another.

What the Dates Allow

The chronology provides a useful starting point.
The Hall and Thompson account concerns an earlier search associated with the first years of mining activity in the region. The Jacksonville expedition took place in 1853, when the California party was already following information about the Lost Cabin Mine.
That sequence leaves room for knowledge of an earlier expedition to have reached the Californians.
It does not prove that it did.

The surviving version of Hall's account was published in 1896, decades after the events it describes. Gorman's account of Hillman's expedition appeared in 1897, also many years after the search.
Both sources preserve important historical recollections, but their publication dates require caution. Memories can change, details can become confused, and later writers may incorporate information from stories already circulating in the region.
A convincing connection would require more than the resemblance of two expeditions.
Names, contemporary correspondence, mining records, newspaper reports, or an identifiable description shared between the accounts would provide stronger evidence.

Until such evidence is found, the possibility remains an interpretation of the surviving history.

The Men Between the Accounts

The most interesting part of the Jacksonville expedition may be the group whose identities were never adequately recorded.
The Californians arrived with enough confidence in their information to finance and undertake a difficult journey. They guarded their plans, attempted to evade Hillman's party, and eventually shared their landmarks when cooperation became necessary.
They were searching for something they believed another person had already found.

Whether their information came from Hall's expedition, another group of miners, or an entirely different Lost Cabin Mine tradition is unknown.
Their presence in Jacksonville nevertheless demonstrates how a mining discovery could continue to attract attention after its original location had been lost.
The story did not remain with one miner or one unsuccessful search.
It traveled.
And as it traveled, new men attempted to recover the place described by those who had gone before them.

The earlier accounts leave us with cabins, mining equipment, rich gold, and unsuccessful returns. The Jacksonville expedition adds another group of searchers and a documented date.
The next account takes us into the Siskiyou Mountains, where the story of a hermit, an abandoned cabin, and the recollections of early prospectors preserves another chapter in the Lost Cabin Mine tradition.

References:
Gorman, M. W. (1897). The Discovery and Early History of Crater Lake. Mazama: A Record of Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest, 1(2), 150–161.
Hall, Samuel C. Historical recollection reproduced in the appendix of L. W. Musick, The Hermit of Siskiyou; Or, Twice-Old Man (1896). Original account date and relevant pages require verification.
Musick, L. W. (1896). The Hermit of Siskiyou; Or, Twice-Old Man. Crescent City, California: Office of the Crescent City News.
National Park Service. (n.d.). Crater Lake National Park: Administrative History, Chapter One, Discovery and Exploration.

← Previous: Part IV: Hall, Thompson, and the First Trail Back
Next: Part VI - The Hermit of the Siskiyous →