Part VII: The Grizzly Bear Mine

The Legend of Oregon's Lost Cabin Mine

Part VII: The Grizzly Bear Mine

By M. Hayward | Lost Cabin Mine

The discovery began with a grizzly bear.

Two prospectors exploring the mountain country of Northern California reportedly encountered the animal near a hollow above a small stream. What followed became the foundation of another extraordinary lost-mine story, one involving coarse gold, abandoned cabins, the death of a companion, and directions that failed to bring anyone back to the discovery.
The account became known as the Grizzly Bear Mine.

Although generally associated with Northern California, it shares several features with the early accounts of Oregon's Lost Cabin Mine. The similarities do not establish that the stories describe the same discovery, but the men involved, the circumstances of their search, and the history of the surrounding mining country deserve examination.
Unlike some versions of the Lost Cabin legend, this account preserves the names of three prospectors: Cox, Benedict, and Compton.
It also identifies a fourth man, Maxwell, whose involvement began after the original mining expedition had ended.

North Into the Mountains

According to the account preserved in Harry L. Wells's History of Siskiyou County, California, published in 1881, the story began during the opening years of the California Gold Rush.
Cox and Benedict had traveled west in search of gold. After reaching California, they continued into the northern mining country, where prospectors were exploring streams and mountain valleys beyond the more established settlements.
There they joined a younger miner named Compton.
The three men traveled into the rugged country associated with the upper Trinity River, searching for ground that had not already attracted large numbers of prospectors.

Their expedition belonged to a period when the boundaries between familiar mining districts and little-explored country were changing rapidly. News of a rich discovery could bring hundreds of miners into a drainage within weeks, while neighboring valleys remained comparatively unknown.
The men were looking for a discovery of their own.
According to the story, they found one in a most unexpected place.

The Bear and the Gold

During the expedition, Compton remained at camp while Cox and Benedict explored the surrounding country.
The two men encountered a grizzly bear near a hollow in the ground. After killing the animal, they noticed something unusual beneath it.
The disturbed earth contained pieces of coarse gold.
What had initially been an encounter with a dangerous animal became an extraordinary mining discovery.
The men examined the hollow and reportedly found enough gold to convince them that they had reached exceptionally rich ground.
They returned to Compton, and the three prospectors established a camp near the discovery.

One detail in the account deserves closer attention.
The gold was not described as coming from the active channel of a large creek. The discovery was associated with a hollow in the ground, within the mountainous country surrounding the upper Trinity watershed.
That description raises an interesting geological question.

In the mining districts of southwestern Oregon and Northern California, gold was not confined to the gravels of active streams. Prospectors also worked elevated benches, old channels, weathered rock, and localized concentrations of coarse gold.
Some of these deposits were remarkably productive within a limited area.
The Althouse Creek district of Southern Oregon provides a historical example of miners pursuing rich placer deposits and searching for the sources of coarse gold.

The Grizzly Bear account does not contain enough geological information to establish the origin of its reported deposit. A hollow containing coarse gold could have formed under several different circumstances, and the story itself may have changed through retelling.
Still, the distinction between gold recovered from a stream and gold exposed in a hollow above or near one is worth preserving.
It is one of the details that makes the account useful for comparison with other early mining discoveries.

Cabins Beside the Discovery

After locating the gold, Cox, Benedict, and Compton reportedly established a mining camp and constructed shelter near the workings.
The men spent the remainder of their season recovering gold.
Their success was substantial enough that they expected to return and continue mining after winter.
As the weather changed, they packed their gold and left the mountain country.
The cabins and workings remained behind.
At that moment, the discovery had not been lost. The men had occupied the ground, worked the deposit, and departed with the expectation of returning.
The difficulty came afterward.
Cox and Benedict eventually returned east, while Compton remained in California.

Their separation would prove important because Compton became the remaining source of information about the discovery for those who hoped to find it again.

Compton and Maxwell

Compton never returned to the mine.
According to the historical account, he became ill with cholera and died before another expedition could be organized.
Before his death, he reportedly shared information about the mine with a fellow Freemason named Maxwell.
Maxwell had not participated in the original discovery, but he became associated with the effort to recover its location.

The information Compton passed along was apparently sufficient to inspire further searches, though not sufficient to lead anyone reliably back to the workings.
The account describes additional parties entering the mountains in pursuit of the lost gold.
They searched for the cabins and the rich ground associated with the grizzly bear.

Their efforts were unsuccessful.
With Compton dead and the other original miners no longer present, the discovery passed from the knowledge of men who had worked it into the hands of those attempting to reconstruct their route.
That change is particularly significant.
A man who has traveled through unfamiliar country may remember a route through a combination of landmarks, distances, and experiences that are difficult to communicate accurately to someone who has never seen the place.

Even detailed directions can become unreliable when the original traveler is no longer available to clarify them.
Maxwell's involvement illustrates that difficulty. He reportedly possessed information about the discovery, but he had not accompanied the men who found it.
The historical account does not establish that he successfully reached the original workings.

The Search Continues

The story of the Grizzly Bear Mine continued to circulate long after Compton's death.
Prospectors reportedly searched the mountain country for the cabins, the hollow where the bear had been killed, and the exceptionally rich gold described by the original party.
The discovery gradually became part of the region's lost-mine tradition.
Its history was preserved in Wells's 1881 account and repeated in later publications.

There is an important limitation to this evidence.
Wells published his history decades after the events reportedly occurred. The account preserves names and circumstances, but it does not provide the kind of contemporary mining records that would independently establish the precise location, quantity of gold recovered, or outcome of every subsequent search.
The Grizzly Bear Mine therefore remains a historical tradition rather than a verified identification of a particular deposit.
Its geographical setting also deserves care.

The surviving account associates the discovery with Northern California and the Trinity River country. It should not be moved into Oregon simply because some of its details resemble the Oregon Lost Cabin stories.
The comparison must begin with what the sources actually say.

A Familiar Sequence

By this point in the investigation, several accounts have introduced remarkably similar circumstances.
Set Em Up reportedly returned to Yreka with rich gold from a cabin somewhere in Oregon.
Hall and Thompson's account described miners who had occupied a productive camp, left equipment behind, and failed to relocate the workings.

The Grizzly Bear Mine tells of another successful discovery, cabins constructed beside rich ground, and a planned return interrupted by events beyond the miners' control.
In the Grizzly Bear story, the death of Compton is especially important. The men who originally knew the country became separated, and the information passed to Maxwell did not produce a successful return.
That does not make the stories identical.

Temporary cabins, seasonal departures, and lost routes were ordinary features of nineteenth-century prospecting. The resemblance of such details cannot establish a shared location.
But the accounts contain enough specific circumstances to justify comparing their chronology, the movements of the miners, and the mining districts in which they originated.
The Grizzly Bear Mine also introduces a useful distinction between the original discovery and the later search.
The men who found the gold reportedly knew where it was.
The men who came afterward did not.

The Ground That Remained

The most enduring feature of the Grizzly Bear story is not the bear itself, remarkable as that encounter may have been.
It is the description of a productive mining camp abandoned with the expectation of returning.
The miners reportedly left behind cabins and workings associated with a rich deposit. Later searchers looked for those remains, but the account does not establish that they recovered the original site.

There is no reliable evidence presented here that the mine was exhausted, deliberately concealed, or permanently destroyed.
Nor is there evidence that its gold remains untouched.
A later generation of miners could have worked the same ground without recognizing its connection to the earlier story. Equally, the discovery may have been elsewhere, or its reported richness may have grown in the telling.
Those possibilities remain unresolved.

The history of Oregon's Lost Cabin Mine cannot be reconstructed by assuming that every similar account concerns the same place. It requires examining each story independently before considering where their circumstances may intersect.
With the Grizzly Bear Mine added to the earlier accounts, the investigation has reached that point.
The next chapter places the stories beside one another, examining their similarities, their differences, and the possibility that some of the lost discoveries preserved in regional history may have shared more than a familiar kind of ending.

References:
Wells, Harry L. (1881). History of Siskiyou County, California. Oakland, California: D. J. Stewart & Co., pp. 116–117.
Hult, Ruby El. (1957). Lost Mines and Treasures of the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Oregon: Binfords & Mort. Edition and relevant page numbers to be confirmed.
Fiorini-Jenner, Gail. (2016, February 19). "Legend of Lost Cabin Mine Haunts Northern California." Jefferson Public Radio, As It Was. Based on Wells (1881).
Musick, L. W. (1896). The Hermit of Siskiyou; Or, Twice-Old Man. Crescent City, California: Office of the Crescent City News. Included for comparison with the separate Lost Cabin Mine tradition.

← Previous: Part VI - The Hermit of the Siskiyous
Next: Part VIII: Where The Stories Begin To Overlap →

Copyright
© 2025 Lost Cabin Mine
Original concept, writing, and design by M. Hayward.