It’s been 25 years since work crews last coated the massive gold pioneer statue atop the Oregon Capitol Building in Salem with 23-karat gold leaf. And it’s been a rough quarter century of ...

But when gold was discovered in Oregon creeks in the early 1850s, it attracted its own influx of miners and fortune-seekers, a process that would continue over the subsequent decades.

The Oregon Pioneer will soon undergo a partial regilding, its fifth since its installation in 1938. The 87-year-old statue also known as Gold Man weighs 17,000 pounds and stands 23 feet tall.