The Buffalo Hump Gold Discovery
   Submitted by Lyle Wirtanen, Director
   The Historical Museum at St. Gertrude
   During the last 100-plus years, the Buffalo Hump mining district has produced millions of dollars worth of gold. Mining claims dot the area even today and old timers still talk of finding the "mother lode" or that main vein of gold.
   The following is from Pioneer Days in Idaho County, Vol. 1 (1978) by Sister Alfreda Elsensohn. Sister Alfreda was the founder of the museum. Her two-volume work is still considered the authoritative history of Idaho County.
   It was not until the prosperous year of 1898 that any scenes of activity showed themselves in the Buffalo Hump district. Then the famous Buffalo Hump mines created an excitement which carried the county forward in population, production of wealth and general development at a faster rate than had been known since the days of placer mining.
   In June, 1898, a prospector and miner, Charles F. Robbins, in company with George Mitchell, went in to Florence on a prospecting trip. In Florence, Robbins met another prospector named Bert Rigley. The two men, with Mitchell and a fourth mining man known as Perry Mallory, formed a party to go into the Meadow Creek country. There they located some placer property and worked the ground for a week. Not obtaining satisfactory results, they abandoned their claim and went to the Wind River country, where Robbins and Rigley did further assessment work. Mallory and Mitchell, in the meantime, returned to civilization. Rigley and Robbins resumed their prospecting and on the second day out, Aug. 7, 1898, they camped about 75 yards from the ledge of rock upon which the Big Buffalo claim was afterwards located. When camp had been made, Rigley started to hunt for deer. Returning about 6 o'clock, he passed over the big ledge. His attention was attracted by the character of the rock and he picked up a piece of quartz weighing about 40 pounds. Putting it under his arm, he went on to camp where that night it was put through the roasting process. The result was satisfactory, and the next day the two men laid claim to the Big Buffalo and Merrimac mines. On the 10th, the Ore Fino, a southern extension of the Merrimac, was staked out. The men worked on the various claims for the morning of the 8th to the evening of the 11th, leaving next day for Florence in order to secure a fresh supply of food. They told the story of their good fortune, and soon the news of the discovery spread to the outside world.
   Buffalo Hump, the most prominent of the peaks of the Clearwater Mountains, rises in the center of a triangle formed by the three mining towns of Warren, Elk City, and Florence, mining camps which in the 60s [1860's] produced something over $100,000,000 in placer gold. This high mountain peak can be seen to the southeast of St. Gertrude's Monastery, snowcapped much of the year. Buffalo Hump takes its name from a prominent intrusive into the Idaho granite batholith rising to an elevation of 8,926 feet in the form of a recumbent buffalo and is a prominent landmark of the central Idaho region. It was so called by the early miners in 1862, either because of its resemblance to the hump of a buffalo, or because the Nez Perce called it "See-nimp," meaning "the buffalo hump."
   The special Industrial Edition of the Grangeville Standard, issued in December, 1904, had this to say: "The Buffalo Hump discoveries were heralded by voice and pen as the most important ever uncovered in the world. Men mining the golden reefs of Transvaal in South Africa threw down their tools and started for Idaho. Gold quartz miners from the Malaysian peninsula and other distant lands crossed the Pacific. As a result of the discovery of Robbins and Rigley, the camp of Buffalo Hump in particular, and Robbins Mining district in general, have possibly enjoyed the greatest general advertisement ever accorded a single mining camp in the world. In German, in French, Spanish, and Italian, the transcontinental railways, the transatlantic steamship lines, and other transportation companies set forth in pamphlet and in map the golden opportunities to be encountered by either a residence or interest in what this class of literary effort was pleased to style the greatest gold camp on earth."