| The Golden Historic District is significant under criterion A as one of Oregon’s most undisturbed turn-of-the-century rural mining settlements. It is also significant under criterion B as the best resource associated with the Ruble family and their development and patenting of the Ruble Elevator. The Golden Historic District includes the remains of the historic Golden town site as well as the adjacent mining site, which was the main impetus for the establishment of the community. As a result of the abandonment as a settlement in the early-twentieth century, the district retains notable integrity of setting, association, feeling, and design, and is an example of one the most intact towns adjacent to a mining site in Oregon. The significant buildings that remain include the Ruble House (the family that started the mining operation) (1894), the church (1892), the Bennett Store and Post Office (c.1903), a grain shed (c.1900), and most recently returned to the district, the school house (1897). Collectively, the town and mining site provide an ideal context to relate the nineteenth and twentieth century mining experience that shaped the history of Oregon and much of the West.
It is estimated that the community of Golden comprised more than 100 people during the mid-1890s. The community served as a hub for miners in more distant areas as well as those who worked for the Rubles or had their own claims in the Greenback area valley. Although Golden was never incorporated, it did evolve into a community. The Ruble family and others assisted Henry McIntosh in constructing a school, which was completed in 1897. Miss Mary Griffith was the first teacher. On Sundays, the school was also used by the Methodist congregation, headed by Reverend Mark C. Davis. Golden School operated through at least 1922, with Mrs. Harry Stumbo as the teacher, and Inez Howard, Evelyn McIntosh, Kenneth McIntosh, Dorothy Perkins, and Lee Perkins, as students.
There were downturns in the mining industry during the first quarter of the twentieth century, during which time many families began moving away to larger communities. In 1920 the post office closed. The majority of the buildings associated with the settlement disappeared and hydraulic mining operations washed away most of the settlement south of Coyote Creek Road.
Golden continued to slowly fade away and a brief increase in population during the 1930s was short-lived. At the end of the 1940s, the Porters became the major land owners in the area. In 1942 there was small-scale placer mining and some activity in chrome and manganese and in 1950 two lode and five placer mines had some production in the Greenback Area of Josephine County. The last hydraulic miners on Coyote Creek were Joe Inman and Hap Fitzpatrick, operating from 1958 to 1964. Their operations were closed down for environmental reasons, relating specifically to water quality concerns. It was during this period that most of Golden’s buildings were demolished.
Melvin Davis (Mel), son of Reverend M.C. Davis, had the school house moved to his property, about 0.7 miles to the west on Foley’s Gulch (where his father had begun Payne’s Placer Mine). Mel wanted to mine the area where the school had been located and it is thought that he moved the school in c.1940 to access the claim.
In 1968, Josephine County bought the old Ruble mining claims near Golden. In 2002, it was purchased from the county by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD). In 2006, OPRD purchased an additional 5.43 acres from Golden Coyote Wetlands, Inc., to expand the new State Heritage Site.
In 2013, the Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL) came into possession of the property where the school house was located after they were informed its owner died without an heir. Over the next several months OPRD worked with DSL and interested citizen, literally setting the wheels in motion to transport the school house back to Golden.
The school was loaded onto a trailer on June 17, 2013 and trucked to the Golden State Heritage Site. The building was been placed on a concrete foundation just east of the general store and just across the street from its original location which was washed out by mining operations. Although the school is a few hundred feet away from where it was initially constructed, it is within the boundaries of historic Golden and in close proximity to its original location. It continues to demonstrate the relationship of the school to the other buildings historically and within the parameters of an abandoned mining town. The Golden School makes an especially important contribution to the district as the only school that was ever located within the historic district. It is significant as a representative of educational facilities of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in rural areas of Oregon and in providing a more complete representation of Golden within its period of significance, 1881-1920. |
