W.R. Bassett

Bassett, whose initials appear variously in the sources and who is most often recorded as Wilbur F. Bassett, was the man credited with the first actual gold find in what became Idaho. A veteran of earlier western rushes, he joined Elias D. Pierce's party of about a dozen prospectors that crossed the closed Nez Perce reservation in August 1860 and worked its way to the headwaters of Orofino Creek.

In late September or early October 1860, at Canal Gulch about a mile north of the future town of Pierce, Bassett sank a pan, by tradition while the others were building a cabin, and washed out the colors that proved the district. The party staked claims and carried the news out that winter, and by the spring of 1861 thousands of miners were pouring up the Clearwater. The rush founded Pierce and Oro Fino, forced the renegotiation of the Nez Perce treaty in 1863, and led directly to the organization of Idaho Territory that same year.

Of Bassett himself little else is securely recorded, and even his initials are given differently in different accounts. Like most of the Pierce party, he left no substantial later record, and his birth and death dates are unknown; his name endures for a single pan of gravel that opened a territory.