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Florence is a ghost town in Idaho County, Idaho, United States. About 14 air miles (22 km) east-northeast of present-day Riggins in remote north central Idaho, it was settled as a mining camp in the winter of 1861. Then in Washington Territory, the town at an elevation of quickly became the seat of a new Idaho County and the rich placer gold fields in the Florence Basin attracted thousands of prospectors to the area, contributing to the establishment of the Idaho Territory in 1863. However, intensive mining depleted the richest ground and the county seat moved elsewhere in 1869. The town thrived again from 1895–1900, based more on lode mining. Then the town slowly faded away, having only ten inhabitants in 1940, and was totally abandoned sometime after 1951. ==Early discoveries and prosperity== The discovery of gold around Pierce and Orofino in 1861 drew thousands of prospectors into the Clearwater River area of present-day north central Idaho, east of Lewiston.〔''An Illustrated History of North Idaho Embracing Nez Perces, Idaho, Latah, Kootenai and Shoshone Counties, State of Idaho'', Western Historical Publishing Co., CITY (1903).〕 With all the best ground claimed, many newcomers began to look elsewhere. In late summer 1861, a party of men headed south toward a local divide between the Clearwater River drainage and the Salmon River watershed. At that time, much of that area was still part of the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. (A new treaty in June 1863 reset the reservation boundary.)〔Merrill D. Beal and Merle W. Wells, ''History of Idaho,'' Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc. New York (1959).〕 Perhaps because of Indian protests, the party split at some point. A smaller band of five made their way into a high mountain basin about thirty miles (50 km) south of today's Grangeville. There, they found very rich placer gold along most of the nearby streams in August 1861. Despite mutual promises to keep the find quiet when they returned to Elk City for supplies, word quickly got out. The camp went briefly under the name of Millersburg, but a miners' meeting soon settled on Florence in November 1861. That was the name the town had when the Washington territorial legislature made it the seat of Idaho County on December 20, 1861. By the time winter took hold, the camp reportedly held nearly two thousand men.〔M. Alfreda Elsensohn, Eugene F. Hoy (ed.), ''Pioneer Days in Idaho County,'' Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho (1951).〕 Unfortunately, the winter of 1861–1862 "proved to be one of the coldest in the history of Idaho." No one knows how many men died from the cold, but one newspaper writer had "no doubt that at least one hundred men have perished from the cold."〔 Survivors told horrific stories of near-starvation, frostbite, and widespread snow-blindness. As was common to many of those early placer mining districts, the richest days in Florence lasted only a couple years.〔 About five years of steady, but lesser production followed. By around 1869, Chinese miners were working most of the claims in the region, whites having leased the properties or abandoned them. Probably not coincidentally, Florence lost its designation as county seat on June 1, 1869.〔 The period of largely Chinese production lasted until about 1880, followed by a long stretch of minimal activity. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Florence, Idaho」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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