Hearing rumors of gold in the hills, Captain Elias Davidson Pierce left Walla Walla for this area on August 12, 1860, with a crew of ten: Benthnel Farrell, Horace Dodge, Joseph L. Davis, J.R. Benfield, Jonathan E. Smith, Wilber Basset, Frank Turner, David Diggins, Samuel B. Reed, and John W. Parks. They arrived in what is now called Pierce on September 28, 1860. Basset found the first gold in Canal Gulch, and when he returned to camp later that day he told the others. The next day, before dawn, the entire party was digging in creek bottoms and gulches and finding gold almost everywhere, then headed back to Walla Walla with the news.