Cornucopia is located high in the Eagle mountains at the
upper end of Pine Valley and is inaccessible in winter.

The peaks as seen from the townsite of Cornucopia were named by the miners, Cornucopia Mountain, Granite Mountain, Red Mountain, Mt. Roosevelt, Mt. Way Up and Simmons Mountain.

Elevations range from 4,700 feet at the townsite to 8,650 feet at the top of Cornucopia Mountain.

The town was hastily constructed when gold was discovered in 1880.
Millions of dollars in gold came from this area where the steep mountains and deep canyons are honeycombed with miles of subterranean shafts or bridged with high tramways.

The town of Cornucopia got it's name about 1885.
All kinds of names were suggested but no one could agree. Then a miner named Willaim Usher, who lived in Eagle Valley and later laid out the townsite of Richland, suggested "Cornucopia", meaning "horn of plenty", and they all liked that.

Names of some mines worked at Cornucopia are as follows: The Simmons Mine, the Way Up Mine, Queen of the West, the Robert Emmett, the Union, the Companion (later Union and Companion joined together) the Whitman, the Red Jacket, the Big Tree, the Mayflower, the Wild Irishman, the Contact Vein, the Last Chance.

Official records show that three mines, the Union-Companion, the Red Jacket and the Last Chance Mine produced $1,008,000.00 prior to 1903. Between 1903 and 1904 some records exist stating 272,776.64 ounces of gold and 1,088,000 ounces of silver were recovered from 983,927 tons of ore.
Copper recovered between 1933 and 1941 amounted to 671,778 pounds. The bulk of production came from the Union-Companion and Last Chance Mines, the latter being a thousand feet higher in elevation.

In spite of the lure to the mines for jobs, for the security of the jobs offered there, men who worked at the mines were well aware of a gloomy threat the mines presented. Not only were they subject to mine cave-ins, to premature dynamite explosions and potential suffocation, they feared the "sickness" that always came to men working long underground.
Production rated over safety or health. When a man could no longer "pull his weight" he was immediately replaced.

Cornucopia Gold Mines Company was also aware of the "sickness". In the last years the company provided a recreation room and a solarium to provide artificial sunshine to the miners. This did little to stop the deaths that occurred frequently in the mines.

(From "Oregon's Golden Years by Miles F. Potter".)
Everyone worked seven days a week, so holidays were well-earned. On Labor Day, Cornucopia was jammed with miners, ranchers, millworkers, and townspeople. By city ordinance, the saloons could serve nothing stronger than beer. That didn't bother the boys at all, for from somewhere back in the hills would come a bottled elixir of pure Pine Creek water mixed with corn squeezins, known locally as "tangle leg." A few drops would turn a pine squirrel into a screaming panther. Yet for the most part it was good clean fun, settled with bare fists and an occasional pick handle.

Today, should you take the time to climb the mountain to these great mines, you can feel the silence around the darkened tunnels with their rotting timbers - the rusty ore carts standing empty on tracks that disappear into darkness.
You will find yourself with strange thoughts. Before you is the evidence of over fifty years of labor - thousands of man-hours needed to build thirty-six miles of tunnels, and shafts hundreds of feet deep, dug by men into solid rock.

View the Submitted by Viking Snickars, Sweden.

View the Submitted by Kirk J. Andrews, Oregon.

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