Pioneer Miner, Merchant, and Stockman Orville P. Johnson [otd 08/10]

Western pioneer and Idaho freighter and stockman Orville Payne Johnson was born August 10, 1832, somewhere in Tennessee. Orphaned young, he knew his parents only by their first names, William and Sarah. Still, he somehow had the wherewithal to become a Forty-Niner, taking the isthmus route to the California gold fields. “O. P.” made a small fortune mining, but the raw teen-ager frittered it away in the dives and gambling dens of San Francisco.
O. P. Johnson. [French]
He almost quit and returned h...