TOLD by the PIONEERS - Washington Secretary of State

Told
by the Pioneers
John McCarthy, one of the early miners, still plies his tools, as this
is written, on Blewett, where steady effort and patience learned by
years of seeking minerals, show results in a forty foot tunnel blasted
into the mountain side above a turbulent stream. Red hair, turning
slightly gray and untrimmed,. with his miner's cap perched jauntily
on one side of his head and supporting his miner's lamp, John Mc­
Carth~· was the typical prospector, ever seeking and always hopeful.
This pioneer was born in 1847 at Shapope, Minnesota, where he
fished and swam, and later, worked between seasons until 1870, when
he struek out for the 'Vest. He rode on the first engine to run into
the Red River, Dakota, district. Mike Donahue was the engineer.
John was taken ill with typhoid fever, and says he cured himself with
"medicine out of a bottle." He recovered, and hopped a ride on a
raft which landed him at Fort Gary, Canada. After a year there, he
returned on one of the three new boats then navigating the Red River
and "went to the Black Hills.
Going down the Little Big Horn river in Montana in 1879, with three
pals, he saw the Custer battlefield where General Custer and his gallant
band had been massacred the year previous. Reaching the Black
Hills, McCarthy contracted to build what he believes to have been the
first stamp mill in the that region. He obtained a mining claim, and
later sold it for $19,000. From here he went to Fort Keogh, now Miles
City (named for General Nelson A. Miles), and for a time drove stage
between this point and Bozeman. Weary of his occupation, he quit
and spent three years hunting buffalo. He relates that as many as
two t.housand buffalo hides would be stacked on the river banks waiting
for transportation.
When the railroad reached Missoula, John decided it was time to
move on, and joined a party bound for Seattle, but he stopped off in
~llensburg. He relates that he built the first round house and other
Northern Pacific buildings, then bought and built houses, offices and
a planing· mill. The town burned on July 4, 1889, and his partially
completed buildings were destroyed.
He eonrted, won and lost his wife, and reconstructed the railroad
buildings, and in 1890 he joined the first gold rush to Blewett Pass.
Today he says he is still a victim of the gold fever. He helped build
the Tom .Johnson stamp mill, which, with saloons and seven cabins,
line one side of the road. The hotel, more saloons and six cabins on
the opposite side of the road, compr~se the town, and in this ghostly
old boom town of forty-odd years ago live J oim McCarthy and his
second wife, still hopeful they will find a mother lode, or at least, a
stray pocket of gold sufficient to a competence in their remaining
years.
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