[or-roots] Guy Leabo and BMA

[Leslie Chapman]

Here is that item I promised last week. Les

The newly opened collection
is named for a late Cottage
Grove mining enthusiast

By Mark BAKER
The Register-Guard

Sunday; 26 Oct 2003

COTTAGE GROVE — He drove a Greyhound bus during the week, but on weekends,
Guy Leabo went mining.
A lifelong Cottage Grove resident, Leabo died of cancer March 27 at age 71.
But his gold- and silver-hunting comrades won’t soon forget him.
In fact, they’ve named the Bohemia Mine Owners Association’s new museum
after him.
The Guy E. Leabo Memorial Gold Mining Museum held its grand opening Saturday
on Main Street in an old storefront.
Most of the museum’s items have been donated, said Perry Thiede, the museum
director.
“We want to preserve what’s left of our mining history,” he said. “We want
to keep it going so everybody can have a look at it and keep the history
alive.”
The Bohemia Mining District is 35 miles southeast of town in the Calapooya
Mountains and its history goes back to the 1860s when gold prospectors first
came to the area.
Legend has it that two men, James Johnson and George Ramsey, fled to the
area in 1863 after killing an Indian in the Roseburg area. One day, while
dressing a deer. Johnson caught a glimpse of gold quartz and the Bohemia
Mining District was born.
By 1880, more than 100 claims had been staked at mines with such colorful
names as El Capitan, Golden


Continued from Page Cl

Slipper, Cripple Creek, Oro Fino, Peek-a-Boo, Quickstep, Holy Smoke, Holy
Terror and Tall Timber.
The museum includes old photographs of those mining days, mixed with recent
ones; cases of rock minerals; old mining tools; books; and even some gold to
buy in little capsules.
Leabo realized his dream of starting a gold mining mill in the mining
district’s Crystal Basin about five years ago, said Bruce Stewart, the
mining association’s president.
And Leabo’s was the last mill to operate in the district, Stewart said.
It wasn’t something that made him rich — those days are long gone in the
district, Stewart said. It just made him happy.
“Bohemia Mines was his passion,” Stewart said.
There he found not only gold, but silver, lead, copper and zinc.
The Bohemia Mine Owners Association has about 350
members, Stewart said. And many of them have land claims
 among the district’s 1,000 acres. But operating a mill and pro- cessing
gold has become too ex-
pensive, although he and some other members of the associa- tion still would
like to get an- other mill going

And getting a permit to use cyanide or other chemicals that dissolve gold
and silver from ore is difficult these days be-
 cause of environmental laws, Stewart said.
Instead, members still pan for gold in the district’s creeks or dig it out,
he said.
.	“There’s still lots of gold, it’s just that it’s costly to get it out.”