Elias D. Pierce then became dedicated to finding and retrieving
gold in the
Nez Perce Indian region in Northern-Central Idaho, leading to the establishment of
Pierce, Idaho. Pierce had joined a former
Hudson Bay Company trapper in a trading expedition which led him to settle in the region. Additionally, many settlers rejected Pierce's idea to retrieve the gold in the region because they believed that it would provoke an all out war with the Indian residents. However, from his mining base called Walla Walla on August 12th, 1860, Pierce and 11 others snuck across the reservation to collect the gold, camping on Canal Gulch near where the town of Pierce would later be established. Moving slowly, as not to be caught by the Nez Perce Indians, the men took six weeks to make a one-week trip to the site of gold. On December 3, 1860, a second party came into the region to continue the extraction of gold, which Pierce had started, and to found the town of
Pierce, Idaho. By early the next year, Pierce's discovery had attracted several thousand unemployed gold hunters to the region and by June 8th, 1861 the county seat approved the city of Pierce as a permanent community. As for Pierce who was more interested in discovery than mining itself, he left Idaho in an attempt to find gold elsewhere but was mostly unsuccessful. ==References==