Power of the County · Episode 5 of 7 · 20 min
Gunpoint in the Nez Perce: The 1976 Patrin Mining-Claim Standoff
On August 27, 1976, two young researchers measuring trees in Idaho's Nez Perce National Forest looked up to find three armed people ordering them off what the family called its mining claim. The episode tells the confrontation from one worker's contemporaneous account, covering the rifles, the standoff over an unpatented placer claim and the drive out, with both sides' accounts.
Who's who
- Ray McNichols+2 more episodesFederal judge who later presided at the trial
Where it happens
- Nez Perce National Forest, Idaho+4 more episodesSite of the tree-measurement plot and the confrontation
- Elk City, Idaho+5 more episodesArea where the Patrins worked mining claims
Timeline
- 1957Floyd Patrin moves to the Elk City area and works mining claims
- October 1972U.S. Attorney sues over an unpermitted road
- August 27, 1976Three armed Patrins order two research workers off the site
- November 1976Federal grand jury indicts the three Patrins
← Previous"A Rifle for a Building Permit": The Posse Comitatus Comes to IdahoNext →The John Birch Society: Seedbed of North Idaho's Anti-Government Defiance
