MEDFORD, Ore. — When Ernie Singer first saw the 80 acres straddling Wolf Creek a decade ago, he figured he found a gold mine, and he had.
But the mounds of mining tailings from previous prospectors were everywhere and the rusting mining machinery proved others had thought so, too.
But gold wasn’t the treasure Singer saw on this remote property some three miles north of the community of Wolf Creek.
“I saw this valley and I thought, ‘Aha,’” he said. But there is a tinge of bitterness amid the beauty.
“I had been looking for 20 years for a place that was secluded and had plenty of water. Here was a place with four creeks and a spring for drinking water. I love water.”
He bought it the day he saw it. Singer, 65, has spent a decade restoring the land while retaining portions of the mining legacy. A pond created by mining activity has been turned into a lake a quarter of a mile long. Five miles of hiking trails now cover the property.
He restored and enlarged an old house using trees from the property.
“I had intended to hand this property off to the next generation,” he says. “But my daughter got married and left and is now in Texas. Then my woman left.”
So it’s for sale.
“If it sells, it sells,” he says with a shrug. “I like living here.” He enjoys putting around on an ATV with his dog, Diva, running alongside.
Born in Poland, in 1941, Singer spent part of his childhood in Germany before coming to the United States at age 9 with his family.
He is a retired hardware store owner who has always been interested in helping restore land.
His parcel includes portions of Hole-in-the-Ground Gulch and Bear Gulch, once-rich mining areas. He will tell you early miners used a lot of Yankee ingenuity to harness water to use it for hydraulic mining.
A huge mining ditch diverted water from Wolf Creek, which was funneled into a 3-foot-diameter metal pipe. The water shot 150 feet down the pipe onto the hillside through huge nozzles. Pressure from the water cannons shot out 200 feet, washing away entire hillsides.
“It was amazing what those miners could do. Just looking at the pipes, you know there was so much work involved to divert that water. They worked hard. I don’t see how they did it,” he added.
The property was in the heart of gold mining in the Wolf Creek drainage beginning in the 1860s, observed Grants Pass resident Larry McLane, whose 1995 book, “First There was Twogood,” recounts the history of northern Josephine County.
“There was an astronomical amount of gold up there,” said McLane, 76, who was raised on nearby Grave Creek. “And Bear Gulch and Hole-in-the-Ground Gulch were the richest mining areas up there on Wolf Creek.”
Back then, he said, gold sold for around $17 an ounce and several ounces a day often came out of the areas being mined.
“My God, at $1,000 an ounce today, it would have been an incredible amount — millions,” he said.
Singer has also harnessed the local water but for irrigation and domestic consumption.
“You look out at that lake at 6:30 in the morning and the surface is just like a mirror,” Singer said. On this day, four young Canada geese, too young to fly, waddled swiftly away near the south side of the lake.
“Off the road, guys,” Singer says. The goslings headed back to the lake.
On the slope overlooking the east end of the lake is a gnarly old apple tree, likely planted by a miner long ago.
“But they mainly were looking for gold and they found a lot,” he says. “In fact, we’re still finding gold. A neighbor, he did a little dredging and found gold. “If I don’t sell, maybe I’ll go back to looking for gold,” he added. “I know it’s here.”
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