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Golden Country: Does ‘X’ mark the spot in Oregon Jack Valley?

A map might indicate the location of missing stolen gold.
15393308_web1_190205-ACC-M-Oregon-Jack-Valley
Looking east down Oregon Jack Valley, a few miles below Ashcroft. Is a fortune in gold buried in the area? Has it been found? Was it ever there in the first place? No one knows for sure, and as this picture shows, locating it would be no easy task, even with a map. Photo: Barbara Roden.

Treasure maps—with X marking the spot of buried riches—have been a staple of fiction for many years, at least since Robert Louis Stevenson gave us Treasure Island in 1883. They aren’t quite as common in real life as in fiction, sadly, but at least one such map supposedly exists. What’s more, it gives tantalizing hints of a golden bounty buried within a few miles of Ashcroft, not far off Highway 1.

“Gold fever” lured many people to the Interior of British Columbia, once gold was discovered in the Fraser River near Yale in 1858, and later in the Cariboo goldfields, but for every person who struck it rich, dozens—if not hundreds—remained stubbornly empty-handed.

Some enterprising souls quickly realized that there was more than one way to capitalize on gold fever, and they set about establishing ranches or roadhouses or other businesses along the Cariboo Wagon Road to cater to the needs of the thousands of people attracted to the area.

Once such person was Jack (or John) Dowling, an American settler whose place of origin gave rise to his nickname, “Oregon Jack”. He started off as a gold miner, but by 1858 had decided there was more money to be made in packing supplies to others than in looking for gold himself. In 1862 he and a partner, Dominic Gavin, were able to purchase land about 16 miles northwest of Cook’s Ferry (now Spences Bridge) and establish a roadhouse there, which opened in 1863 and catered mostly to packers and freight-team operators.

History has left us with a contradictory picture of Oregon Jack Dowling. On the one hand, Dowling and Gavin were known to be responsible farmers, and were good friends to the aristocratic Cornwall brothers, their neighbours to the north at the roadhouse at Ashcroft (now Ashcroft Manor).

The Cornwalls spoke well of both men, and invited them to Christmas dinners at their home, which carried considerable weight with others in the area. The Cornwalls were English gentlemen, and had been educated at Cambridge University, so they were unlikely to tolerate the company of undesirable people.

And while it was agreed that things could get a tad wild at Jack’s roadhouse—Henry Cornwall noted that “Oregon Jack gave a dance, at which everybody got very drunk, I believe!”—it was generally felt that the host was as hospitable and friendly as most travellers could wish for. The Cornwalls themselves were known to visit Dowling’s establishment; on Jan. 15, 1865 Henry Cornwall wrote in his diary “[D]rove over to Oregon Jack’s for dinner and back again the same night–got home about 1:00 am… we were feasted in great style having a really fine dinner with excellent pastry and egg nog afterwards.”

Not everyone shared this charitable view of Oregon Jack, however. One guest described him as a vile-looking man, with a red face, bald head, and bowed legs, with the red face attributed to the fact that Dowling had not, during his many years in the area, drawn one sober breath. And the Indians of the Oregon Jack band (Dowling had given his name to a valley in the region, and thence to the natives who lived there for some of the year) were constantly having run-ins with him. His land near the Thompson River adjoined Oregon Jack Reserve land, and Dowling seemed to go out of his way to antagonize the Reserve’s inhabitants; so much so that in 1882 the government Indian Agent for the region advised that someone should have a word with Dowling over his misuse of water rights, which was affecting the Oregon Jack Indians.

However, once gold fever takes hold it is a hard thing to shake, and Jack never seemed to manage it. Even during his years as a successful packer and roadhouse owner, he continued to search for gold in the valley which bears his name, but with no success. By the late 1880s he had spent more than three decades fruitlessly looking for gold, and perhaps something snapped, because his next move was as dramatic as it was risky. He held up a stagecoach on the Cariboo Road, shot one passenger, and escaped into Oregon Jack Valley with a quantity of gold, in the form of small bars.

Unlike many other thieves, Jack eluded the law and made good his escape, returning to Oregon, where he died in obscurity (and seeming poverty) in a nursing home a few years later. It was an undistinguished end for a man who supposedly had access—due to his successful stagecoach robbery—to more than enough gold to see him in comfort for the rest of his life. So what happened to the gold, and why did Dowling not use it to ease his final years?

These questions remain unanswered. However, some time after Dowling’s death, a trunk was purchased at auction. When opened, it contained a number of personal items that had once belonged to Oregon Jack. There was no gold, alas, but there was something that was certainly intriguing: a map which supposedly showed where Dowling had buried his stolen gold. According to this map, he had left his illicit fortune somewhere in Oregon Jack Valley, a place he knew very well, perhaps realizing that a man attempting to fly from justice will travel more quickly—and raise fewer suspicions—if he is not encumbered by heavy gold bars. It seems likely that he intended to return for the gold one day, when the search for him had died down, but had been prevented, possibly due to declining health.

The map supposedly gives only the approximate location of Oregon Jack’s buried loot, which might explain why no one has ever come forward to say they found it.

However, rumour has it that a couple who lived in Oregon Jack Valley during the 1940s and 1950s, near the alleged site of the cache, often used small gold bars to pay for purchases during their trips to Ashcroft. Perhaps the map was more accurate than we think, and did indeed lead some searchers to the right spot.

If not, there could still be a small fortune in gold, hidden more than a century ago, waiting to be discovered in Oregon Jack Valley. All that would-be treasure hunters have to do is find Oregon Jack’s map, head to the valley, –and hope that X does indeed still mark the spot.



editorial@accjournal.ca

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