Note: I wrote this a long time ago and never posted it (I’m not sure why). I think the beer if references was a one-off that you won’t be able to find anymore but the story is still super interesting. Enjoy!

In case it has become entirely obvious, I love craft beer. I also love discovering weird stories, especially about places near where I live. Ex Novo’s Blue Bucket of Gold allowed me to partake in both things.

What is a Blue Bucket of Gold, you may wonder? Well, I am so glad you asked. The western half of the United States’ history is littered with stories of gold and silver rushes (and as someone who grew up in California, I learned about a lot of them in school) but the legend of the Lost Blue Bucket Mine was a new one for me.

The story of this lost gold mine starts in 1845 (several years before the California gold rush started in earnest) somewhere between Vale and The Dalles in what is now Oregon. For those of you unfamiliar with Oregon geography, these two places are not close together. At all (to drive, it’s about 306 miles). Vale is almost in Idaho, while The Dalles is a river away from Washington. In short, we’re talking hundreds of square miles.