Anonymous

The site of Camp Grizzly and the outlying region, namely the Hoodoo Mountains have drawn people to them for years. Native Americans were the first peoples to use the region, but as in practically every other region of the United States, they were pushed out by the white settlers. John Grizwold, a reclusive settler accompanied by his Nez Perce wife, bilt a homestead in the region sometime in the late 1850's. Grizwold passed out of the region in the early 1860's to get away from the growing flood of miners, who worked the gulches and streams along the North Fork of the Palouse, just a few miles north of camp. We at Grizzly bear Grizwolds namesake thanks to a local homesteader called Ed Graham who originally built 'Grizzle Camp' to supply the Hoodoo miners, name the place after the "squaw-Man Griswold".

Since then mining developed in the region, which was followed by logging, which picked up around the turn of he century with the opening of the Potlatch mill and town. Scouts had begun to use the camp by 1930 and the Camp became the property of the Boy Scouts of America in 1938.

as told to Jim Henshaw,

transcribed by Diane Wilson and edited by Thomas R. Wilson

The Hoodoo trail was built somewhere long about 1860 as clear as I can come to. At that time, Ed and Jerry Chambers had a roadhouse (we called it a hotel) up there on the meadow on what's now called Laird Park. They ran a stage line from Walla Walla to Wardner, which is above Kellogg, and hauled passengers and freight. The route started at Walla Walla, came across the Snake River at Central Ferry, and then up to Colfax. From there they went up the Palouse, the up the Palouse River. There was another road that came up from Central Ferry and went across over to what they call Big Ferry. That was just on the hill on the other side of Moscow. From there you come right over the ridge to Paradise Valley. That was the Hoodoo road.

The old gap where the Hoodoo road crosses the Moscow divide was pretty close to where it crosses now, but at the top of the hill it turned west and went straight down into the valley. There used to be a marker up the Moscow grade coming this way (towards Laird Park) about halfway up the summit. It was a big spring and camping ground that was on the edge of the Hoodoo Road. It was pretty steep. At Viola there was a big campground where Ed Gray's house was, out on the flats. I used to have a big garden right in that flat. The old road used to go around pretty close to where the highway comes when you are coming this way (towards Laird Park). It went over just about to the big curve where you start to come up the hill, then it went straight up over the peak. They didn't believe in going around; they went straight up. That's when it came on down over to Kennedy Ford below Potlatch. The ford was a quarter mile down river from the bridge. From there the trail went across the flats and then took up to where Potlatch is. When it got to Harvard (which was built sometime later), the trail crossed just about where the highway crosses the next divide, then it followed 'way back around and up over the hills. But when you reach Big Creek, to where the old bridge crosses the river, they went straight across the flats, then up about where Menden's road goes in now (that old road still exists) and right on down to Laird Park.

The Chambers' stage station house stood in that big flat in Laird Park. There also used to be a big log cabin nearby; that was Grizzle Camp. It was run by he Chambers boys, too. Griswold had homesteaded before the Chambers built the stage station. This station was where they used to ship in supplies for the miners and the end of the Hoodoo Road. The trail to the mines was called the Hoodoo trail. On the trail everything went by packhorse . . . they packed in all these other mines; for example, Bonami #1, and the Misspaw . . . that's one big mine up there. There was also the Carrico mine; that was one of the early ones. Another one was the Lost Weelbarrow mine. They found a body there just recently according to the newspapers. (Note: the following item appeared in the Palouse Empire News, Tuesday, October 9, 1979:

The Chinese had a big camp on Poorman's and Strychnine creeks. They dug waterways to pick up Poorman's Creek and other creeks to get then up high enough so that they could run their hydraulic gun. They mined on Poorman's Creek and Deadman's Creek, and about two of the other creeks. After a time, the settlers decided to run them out. They simply rounded them up and says, "Get out of here!" They chased them down the hills . . . didn't even give them time to pick up their clothes. There's a legend that the Chinese took two big kettles of gold dust and were supposed to have buried them on what is known as Crane Creek, a little creek that runs into Gold Creek. Nobody's ever found it there.

Another story that's told was about some people from the east who came in on the state. They were eastern businessmen. The story goes that the miners were eating their dinner when one of the easterners went out to the back room for something or other and came running back quick and said, "Boys, let's get out of here! LET'S GET OUT OF HERE! They got a MAN hung up in back and they are cutting steaks off of him!" (Any of you ever seen a bear hung up?) Well, they said that there was sure quite a rouse out of that.

Gold was mined in several ways in the Hoodoo valley (the whole valley was called the Hoodoo). One was by sluicing. But there was lots of hard rock mining, too. Tunnels used to be all over the hills. I came near to losing myself and a saddle horse in a deep one. I was coming along the trail and I saw a bunch of brush stacked along side of it. I went back and the horse kind of shied away from it. There was an open gap, big enough to throw a stove in, so I picked up a rock and threw it down in there. I couldn't here it hit the bottom . . . that's how deep it was.

In 1910 a big fire went across the country. It started out on Benewah Ridge; that's the ridge between Big Creek and Gold Hill. It burned a strip three miles wide over to St. Maries straight on up to Kellogg and up the Palouse. I was just a boy when it through there. The fire burned the buildings that were of the Hoodoo mine; only the shells were left.

Later the companies tried to sell one of the mines to me and my dad. It was full of water; so they said, "We'll pump it out so you can go down in there to see that mine." I said, "How long will it take you to pump it out?" "Well, give us a week . . . it ought to take a week to pump it out." They pumped it out and when they got it all done they sent word for us and then we went down in that mine. Talk about a cold and dreary place . . . now to me, that was one. They couldn't show us anything that looked promising; so we didn't buy it.

Another way they tried to get gold out of here was with a dredge. A company came in and put a dredge to work for two or three years. I was in California at that time. When I left, the Palouse River was running pretty as could be and you could catch trout in it anywhere, anytime. When I came back, it was like mud. When the dredge went through, it just piled the whole bottom of the river in the middle. All the old building sites were buried in that rock pile.