Republic, Washington — Gold on Top of a Fossil Lake

Republic was built because people found gold.

The stranger treasure was already underneath it.

Roughly fifty million years ago, an ancient lake occupied this part of Washington. Fine sediment preserved leaves, fish and insects from an Eocene ecosystem, eventually producing an extraordinary fossil deposit.

Modern visitors can search pieces of that old lakebed at the Stonerose Interpretive Center.

The nineteenth-century prospectors were after something else.

Gold discoveries around Eureka Creek produced a rush in the 1890s, bringing mines, businesses and transportation into remote country. The settlement, first called Eureka, eventually took the name Republic from the Republic Mine.

When Ferry County was created in 1899, Republic became the county seat.

Mining boomed, contracted and periodically revived. Logging later joined the local economy.

The fossils kept waiting.

Republic therefore has two prospecting traditions.

One looks for precious metal.

The other splits shale and hopes for a leaf fifty million years old.