Two cents: Newsmen write two books on historical tragedies which provide new insight for regional readers

Gazette editor

Small books sometimes carry a big impact. Two new books now making the rounds this year provide amazing reports of long-ago events in Hells Canyon.

R. Gregory Nokes, a retired reporter and editor for the Portland Oregonian, spent a decade researching “Massacred for Gold, The Chinese in Hells Canyon.”

The book gives an account of how Chinese miners, who were mining gold along the Snake River in Hells Canyon, were shot and killed by a group of young men from in Inmaha area of Oregon in May of 1887.

The shootings were done at Deep Creek at a place now called Chinese Massacre Cove u...