Baker

The prospectors on Griffin Gulch were hunting a legend. In 1845 a wagon train following Stephen Meek's cutoff across central Oregon lost its way, and the story grew afterward that children had filled a blue bucket with shiny pebbles from a creek and left it behind, not knowing the pebbles were gold. Men looked for the Blue Bucket for years. Henry Griffin's party found something else on October 23, 1861, when he sank a hole to bedrock and found color. Nobody has ever shown where the Blue Bucket creek was, if it was anywhere.

What the plaque says

Historic Oregon Trail Baker In October 1861, a group of prospectors in search of the mythical Blue Bucket Mine, made camp on a creek six miles southwest of here. That evening, Henry Griffin discovered gold in the gulch which bears his name. That started a stampede which continued for years. In 1862, Baker County was created and named for Colonel E. D. Baker, U. S. Senator from Oregon. The present town of Baker was an important home station on the stage line between Salt Lake City and Kelton, Utah to The Dalles, Oregon, and a great distributing center when jerk-line freight teams hauled supplies into the vast interior.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center — 4.7 mi
  A hilltop museum that Baker City built to revive its economy, above a mile of wagon ruts and the first view the emigrants had of the valley ahead.

More markers nearby

• The Lone Tree of the Oregon Trail — 3.5 mi
• The Lure of Gold — 4.3 mi
• Cattle Drives — 11 mi
• Durkee — 22 mi