FORGOTTEN GOLD CAMPS

Evening Star, Issue 21717, 11 May 1934, Page 11

FORGOTTEN GOLD CAMPS

MINERS STREAMING BACK BOOM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA Seventy years lie between British Columbia’s first gold boom and her latest. By one or time’s ironies, mining camps which have slumbered since the ’sixties and 'seventies are now the scene of new discoveries (writes Sholto Watt, in. the London ‘ Daily Telegraph’). . The miner of this winter, going by aeroplane where his forerunners took snowshoes or struggled along the frozen rivers, finds himself at veritable Rip Van Winkle towns where “ old-timers ” linger on, eternally hopeful. It may amuse him to explore the old bar-rooms, draughty relics of the days of mighty drinking and gambling, with their walls still adorned fay. pictures of alluring ladies permitting slender ankles to be seen beneath a swirl of petticoats. Here, fifty or more years ago, the hurdy-girls, Austrian dancers imported to entertain the camps, reaped a golden harvest—nuggets, bracelets, and little bags of precious dust. In at least one such town, two of these delicious intruders into an almost exclusively masculine world still survive, venerable and respected. . Their plush and horsehair furniture is protected with antimacassars; thenclothes are of the fashion of many years, ago; they are the guardians of rigid decorum in their small community. The new gold boom of to-day is caused partly by the devaluation of former gold currencies, partly by new discoveries. One of the most important of these is due to the persistence of Fred Wells, an “ old-timer ” m Barkerville, long an almost forgotten town, centre of the Cariboo country. . Soon after the gold rush started in 1858, Barkervillc was a town of seven or eight thousands, where placer gold was sifted from soil and sand; but the exhaustion of the gold and the “ strikes ” in new fields drew away the population until only a few hundreds remained. Fred Wells maintained that lode gold was also to be found, and after years of effort managed to enlist enough capital to open a tunnel and set up a small fifty-ton mill. For the last half-year the monthly “ brick ” produced has been worth £7.000 to £II,OOO. , Barkervillc is now a town ot thousands again. The old houses on stilts so built that the tailings, or rubble, could run beneath—are being rehabilitated. Something of the liveliness ot long ago is being recovered. But efficiency has taken its toll of the picturesque. CARIBOO’S RICH GOLDFIELD. Gold never seemed to stay with the man who wrested it from the earth. Many “ Forty-niners ” made fortunes in California, lost them between professional gamblers, restaurant owners, transport agents, washerwomen; came

to British Columbia to repeat that feat in the Cariboo or Kootenay, and were perhaps found later in the Yukon. William Dietz, a German, known as “ Dutch Bill,” who discovered Williams Creek in the Cariboo, one of the richest goldfields in the world, was a few years later living on charity in Victoria. From Williams Creek in 1863 Barnard’s Express, a stage-coach service, carried £20,000 in gold weekly to the coast, and one son of that Barnard, who, be it said, deserved every cent he made, is a wealthy senator, and another an ex-Lieutcnant-Governor of British Columbia. Incredible hardships had to be endured in snow-bound mountains and when tho spring thaws turned the valleys to mud. During those eventful days Dancing Bill, Black Jack, Red Alicb, and French Frank, fighting, working, drinking at Goose Creek, Antler Creek, Quesnel, 150-Mile House, Horsefly River, led lives that put Bret Hartc’s imagination to shame. For their dealing with the Indians, the French, the Japs, and’the Chinese, the miners used _ that curious lingua franca of the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Alaska, Chinook —a language of only 500 words, elaborately inflected,' in which, oddly enough. * 1 cultus Boston ” means worthless American. More “ mad men,” handy with their “ shooting irons,” were found in the rich Wild Horse area, which was tor some time a month’s ride from justice, than anywhere else. Wild Horse, a camp of thousands of men,_ returning two members to the Colonial Parliament at Victoria, presently shrank away to one of the few Rotten Boroughs of North America. election day at wild horse. In the election of 1881 the eleven voters at Wild Horse were divided five against five, and the odd man was kept continually drunk, so as to be incapable of registering his, casting vote. Unfortunately, the two parties were equally divided in the House: the majority depended on the Wild Horse members, and a second election became necessary. This used up all the liquor in tho place; it was too late in the season to bring up more, and Wild Horse had to spend a ‘ dry " 'now’ they are working Wild Horse again, the Cariboo and other old fields —the Bridge River section and Sheep Ct lfis difficult to estimate what the new rmld developments have realised. Up to 1932 British Columbia s total gold production was 226,86i,000d01. Placer gold production was heaviest in the ’sixties, rising to nearly 4,000,909 dollars a year. , Lode production was at its greatest from 1910-1915. when it averaged well over 5,000,000d0l a_ year. After the war production declined, and only be<mn to mount appreciably in 1932. “ Last vear was doubtless an excellent one." For the first sis months gold figures totalled 2,292,946d01, as combs reel with 1,88U37d0l in the corresponding period of 1932, an increase of 22 per cent. This is calculated in gold at the standard price. In addition, the gold premium averaged about 21 per cent., and it brought in _ 480,000d0l more to the producers. This has since risen. What bounty next year or _ future years will provide cannot be said, but the estimated potentialities are so great that thev appear almost fantastic. The Cariboo Trail, that breathtaking mountain road which, was built by the Royal Engineers of the British Army, has carried great wealth from Quesnel, Cariboo, and Prince George districts lo the Fraser River and the coast; the .British Columbia Govern-

ment now plans to extend the Pacific Great Eastern Railway to the Peace River country—the “last Great Northwest,” Areas on the route, have been surveyed for mineral wealth. It is estimated officially that one Peace River block of 5.000 square miles could produce £60,000,000 of placer gold. It is of the same formation _as the Cariboo country, and this estimate is based on known placer production in the latter field, hut reduced for the sake of caution by 50 per cent. LURE FOR GOLD ADVENTURERS. The railway will run by Mount Selwyn, a mountain of solid ore, where, if unofficial estimates, the only ones available, are accurate, there is enough mineral deposit to pay the National Debt of Canada. News may come at any time of another big “ strike,” and then the adventurous will lie drawn from all the corners of the world to dig and sift the trench and sluice in the hitter wilderness for that strangely useless yellow metal men have made a paramount value. In that vast hinterland, hidden in the forest since the dawn of time or ringed by snow, El Dorado itself may lie.