Cornucopia, a gold camp in the mountains of eastern Oregon, is most easily reached from Baker. Baker itself is not a mining town but it grew out of the eastern Oregon gold rush in 1863, and became a supply center for the mining camps in the Blue and the Wallowa Mountains.

Pine Creek, which runs far below the road to the mining camp and whose banks are densely covered with second-growth timber, was the scene of rich placer operations in the 1870’s and 1880’s.

The Cornucopia placers extended from just below the town for several miles downstream toward Carson. Big piles of boulders and fragments of pipes and old machinery are still visible in the creek bed. Two miles below the town, near the mouth of Boulder Creek, were the Underwood-placers where there was a bench boulder gravel deposit with bedrock several feet above the present stream. The best pay gravel was found in an old channel of Pine Creek. This whole location was later developed by the Boulder Creek Mining Co. who equipped the property with flumes, pipes, giants and derricks operated by water power and proceeded to hydraulic the ground. The gold recovered was close to bedrock and was coarse in texture.

With the subsequent discovery of lode mines, the Cornucopia mining district was formed. It was small in area—all mines and prospects being within four miles of the town. The Union and Companion claims, covering gold-bearing veins which form the nucleus of the Cornucopia group of mines, were located in 1878 or 1880. A short time afterward, 25 other mines, also part of the same group, were staked. The Union and Companion claims were developed by the owners until 1895 and some bullion was produced. That year the property was sold to the Cornucopia Mines Co. of Oregon for $60,000.

The new owners promptly erected a 20-stamp mill and a chlorination plant. These ran successfully until 1903, by which date the mines had produced gold valued at more than a million dollars. This amount was then put back into the property for further development. The mines closed down during the year 1903 but were reopened at a later date. The shaft of the Cornucopia mine was high above the town at an elevation of 6,300 feet and when the property was at its peak production, it contained 30 miles of underground workings.

The Last Chance mine, owned by the Baker Mines Co., was still higher up the mountain with its principal workings at 7,000 feet elevation. Other properties in the district included the Queen of the West, on the opposite side of Bonanza Basin from the Last Chance, the Mayflower, the Jim Fisk nearby, the White Elephant, and the Wild Irishman, later known as the Valley View.

The district was a steady and profitable producer of gold and silver, especially after the completion of a cyanide plant at the Union Companion mine in 1913, and the construction of a similar plant to treat ores from the Last Chance property. The mines were active between 1913 and 1918, producing higher than average ore. They continued to be worked until late in 1926, when production decreased and operations were suspended.

Just at the edge of the town, rows of gray company houses, dating from 1936 and belonging to the Cornucopia Gold Mines Co., line the right side of the road. A curve to the left takes one across Pine Creek to a big mill and its accompanying buildings, but the original townsite is one-quarter of a mile away. To reach it, a less travelled road cuts through the trees parallel to Pine Creek and passes many frame buildings, half hidden by dense timber.

Some are built of chinked logs; some have porches; some have false-fronts; and nearly all have roofs made of shakes. The three-story, false-fronted Keller Hotel with its bar is the most imposing relic. Not far from it stands the barber shop and on the flat near the creek is the present schoolhouse and gymnasium built in 1938 and never used to capacity. Old foundations, smothered in weeds and shaded by huge pines, fill every vacant space along the streets between existing buildings. The mines were so high above the town that tramways were needed to convey the ore from their portals to the mills far below. Today one mill and dumps and settling ponds mark the several properties.