Category: Places
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History of Discovery, Part 1
First person accounts served as primary sources for writing the history of Randolph at Whiskey Run. These accounts arose from a chaotic social setting where men focused on obtaining wealth and surviving harsh working and living conditions instead of creating a written record of events. Although it took 120 years, historians finally credited the Groslouis…
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Whiskey Run Geology
Is it possible that gold wasn’t found at Whiskey Run until the early 1850s because it wasn’t there? While writing Whiskey Run Gold Nearly Missed!, I wondered how early travelers could have missed the gold on the beach. I imagined a variety of possibilities: While unrecorded human thoughts and behavior are lost to time, the…
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Whiskey Run Gold Nearly Missed!
What if there had been no gold rush to the beach at Whiskey Run in 1853? Would a mining camp town have been established there? Would Randolph have become a local place name? As described previously (It Began at Whiskey Run), eighteen months after the news spread that gold had been found near the mouth…
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Blessed are the Children
Before resuming my dialogue with Randolph’s history, I have updates on two cemetery burials discussed earlier: Mary Hutchinson and Paul Lane. Mary L Hutchinson/McCue When I originally wrote about Mary (Grave Stories, Part 6), I only knew that she had died in March 1869. Recently, though, thumbing through the Catholic Church Register for the Roseburg…
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Pat Dunwoodie Berry Remembers Randolph
How does place figure into your favorite memories? Pat Dunwoodie Berry fondly remembers her childhood in Randolph. Sincere thanks to Pat and her son, Mike, for sharing her memories at this year’s Randolph Club Picnic. Farm Pat lived in the Randolph area when her father owned a dairy farm situated on the north bank of…
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Panning for Gold at Whiskey Run in 2023
While reading about the history of Randolph, I began to wonder about the accuracy of my childhood memories of Whiskey Run Creek. My sister and I would hunt for agates alongside our parents and grandparents, wade in the water, and investigate whatever had washed up on the beach, usually seaweed. I returned to the creek…
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There’s still gold at Randolph . . .
. . . and it glimmered on September 09, 2023. Many thanks to Charlie Ruddell, the “self-proclaimed mayor of Randolph” and owner of the historic Randolph School, for hosting this year’s Randolph Community Club picnic. Club members, former students, and their guests gathered on a sunny afternoon to enjoy a meal, good humor, and storytelling.…
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A Puzzling Name
Historians say that after the discovery of gold at Whiskey Run, “sober citizens” soon began to call the emerging mining camp-town “Randolph.” Why Randolph? The history of Randolph may be likened to a jigsaw puzzle of heroic proportions with many pieces missing. – Verne Bright In 1853, a group of men known as “The Coos…
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It Began at Whiskey Run
To examine the history of Randolph, I’m first sharing a historical account (copied verbatim) that clearly and concisely describes the place Peterson and Powers call “Randolph-the-First.” The map below shows it situated south of Cape Arago on the Pacific Coast. Randolph-the-First: A Historical Account “Gold was discovered at the mouth of Whiskey Run in the…
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So Many Stories, So Many Questions!
Where are the black sand gold mines? Who first discovered the gold? When was Randolph there? Then, there? And, finally, there? As I began to read histories about Randolph, Coos County, Oregon, I soon realized that I was reading about more than one place. It had shifted geographically, in tandem with the economic fortunes of…