In 1854, Joseph Morel, a teamster for the Hudson Bay Company, was taking a drink of water from the Columbia River near what is now the Canadian Border.  He noticed black sand on the river bottom.  When Angus McDonald had taken charge of Hudson Bay Fort Colvile in 1852, he had hinted that there might be gold in these waters.  Morel sifted through those sands and found flakes of gold.  News spread quickly and veterans of the California gold rush of 1849 and prospectors from the West Coast soon flooded the area.  You can still pan gold out of that stretch of the Columbia today. The prospectors soon found more gold in Sullivan Creek, (named after prospector, Michael R.O. Sullivan) near Metaline Falls.  It is another area that still continues to attract … Read entire article »