He’s Sniffed After Pay Dirt for 65 Years

“Of course, I dream of hitting a bonanza. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” snorted “Salmon River Steve” Huntington, 83, as he worked the gravel in the stream, looking for color.

For 65 years Huntington has been following his hunches, searching for gold throughout the West.

“Hell, old prospectors like me are always chasing rainbows. But my nine claims up Specimin Gulch ain’t rainbows. I can smell the gold,” insisted the blue-eyed, flop-hatted miner. His gray beard was stained with tobacco juice dribbling from his Optimo cigar.

Huntington’s home is an old weather-beaten trailer on blocks, topped with a corrugated iron roof. A clutter of rusting mining equipment embraces the trailer, situated in a dense forest of alders overlooking the North Fork of the Salmon River six miles from Forks of Salmon, a remote Northern California hamlet. His nearest neighbor is five miles away.

Million-Dollar View

“Salmon River Steve” has a million-dollar view. The back end of his trailer hangs out over a hill, where giant boulders covered with brilliant green moss spill into the roaring, crystal-clear Salmon River. Spectacular snow-capped mountains tower over his campsite.

“At my age, with my resources, if I wasn’t mining I’d probably be holed up in some God-awful Skid Row flophouse in L.A., Frisco or Seattle,” said the miner. “Instead I’m living in this paradise. Most people have never seen country this beautiful, let alone live in it.”

He drinks the river water, bathes in it, washes his clothes in it, swims in it, finds specks of gold in it.

The miner’s companion for 17 years, his dog Tessie, died a few months ago and is buried nearby. He was married twice, both times for 13 years. His first wife died. He divorced the second one.

“I like women, but I don’t plan to get hitched again. When I get lonely I go to a dance. I don’t get lonely often. I’m too busy pursuing gold,” he explained.

Mining, he said, has been good to him. “There’s something fascinating about gold mining. I’ve enjoyed working whether I’ve made money or not. It’s kept me in grub most of the time. I’ve never struck it rich, but I’ve hit little pockets. What I’ve made, I’ve put back in equipment.

“Oh, I’ve been flat busted many times. So broke I didn’t know whether I was ever going to eat again. But somehow I’ve always pulled out of it. You got to take it on the chin like a fighter. You get hit on the chin time and time again. But you don’t want it to knock you out.”

When the gold fails to show, “Salmon River Steve” relies on what he calls “those Social Insecurity checks” to keep him afloat.

Knows No Sawbones

He doesn’t wear glasses. He has his own teeth. He chops his own wood for his stove. He doesn’t know a doctor and doesn’t want to know one. He hikes 10 miles to his “diggins.”

The old miner said he was born in Cody, Wyo., that his father, Hallam Huntington, was “one hell of a cowboy. When he threw a rope I never saw him miss.” His father, he recalled, was a friend and hunting companion of Buffalo Bill Cody and “Salmon River Steve” remembers sitting on Buffalo Bill’s lap when he was 3 years old.

“If I found the kind of gold I’ve been searchin’ for all these years, I would travel the world,” mused the miner. “First place I’d go would be Cody. I left there when I was a little kid. Never been back. I’d like to see Cody again.”