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North Fork Grave
Clearwater, Garfield County, Washington

T9N R42E Sec. 35

Contributed by Jill Boles, Jan 26, 2001 [suzy1@clarkston.com]. Total records = 1.

The following is a transcription of Robert Weatherly's work, used with permission.

Robert Weatherly, an Asotin County cattleman and historian, has located a number of graves in remote areas and has identified many occupants through the years. But he's left to speculate about his latest find.

Lyle Register, a retired Spokane resident, told Weatherly about a grave he had found in the North Fork drainage while prospecting for gold. Weatherly and Everett Scoggin of the Pomeroy District of the Umatilla National Forest checked out the prospector's tip on horseback. They found the grave on the lower ridge between Spout Springs Ridge and Elk Point. It is about 50 yards uphill from the creek in a sloping clearing about 50 feet in diameter. They found a mound of dirt with a flat rock standing on edge as a marker. No similar rocks are in the immediate area, indicating that this one had been carried there from the creek, Weatherly said. A stump about two feet high and 18 inches in diameter is near the burial site. Weatherly said the tree apparently had been chopped down many years ago. Weatherly speculated that the burial could have been before 1900 when the site was much father from civilization than now. It is not an area where a sheep camp would have been, but it possibly could have been a hunter's or prospector's camp.

"Could the tree have been chopped down to make a burial box?" he asked.

The only readable marker in that vicinity is on a nearby pine tree, and it identifies Register's mining claim. There is no trail and the closest road is the Warner-Clearwater Mountain Road in the ridge at least a mile away.

- Jill Boles