Seth Ferrel

Seth Ferrel, whose surname also appears in records as Ferrell, was one of the small band of prospectors who accompanied Elias D. Pierce on his celebrated 1860 expedition into the Clearwater country of present-day Idaho. In August of that year the party of about a dozen men evaded detection while crossing the Nez Perce reservation, then closed to outsiders, and spent weeks working slowly toward the forested headwaters of Orofino Creek.

That autumn the party found paying placer gold in Canal Gulch, with Wilbur F. Bassett usually credited with the first pan; Ferrel shared in the discovery and in the staking that followed. The find was the first gold discovery in what became Idaho, and when the party returned with their dust the news set off the Clearwater rush of 1861, which built the towns of Pierce and Oro Fino and drew thousands of miners onto Nez Perce lands, with lasting consequences for the tribe.

Beyond his place in the discovery party, almost nothing is reliably recorded of Ferrel's life; his origins and his birth and death dates are unknown. He is one of several members of the Pierce party whose names survive in the annals of the discovery while the rest of their lives went unrecorded.