Deep Dive into Dowsing

PlacerGold Equipment, History, Science January 11, 2021dowsing, exploration, geophysics, gold, gold mining equipment, mining, paleo-placer, paleochannel, placer 31 Comments

As prospectors, we have a deep connection to the past. We live in a world where technology has advanced to an amazing level. High tech devices that could only be imagined by science fiction authors a few decades ago are part of our everyday lives. Despite the current state of technological advancement, there is still no surefire way to detect unexplored gold deposits. Our pursuit of the yellow metal leaves no stone unturned. A good prospector will employ every tool at their disposal to get even the slightest edge in locating a gold deposit.

We look to the prospectors of the past and admire their ability to locate gold deposits with nothing more than their own ingenuity and a sense of adventure. Some techniques are no longer used and some haven’t changed for centuries. Dowsing fits somewhere in between. It’s always been a mystery. Nobody can explain how it works but many swear on their mother’s grave that it does.

Dowsing refers to the practice of using a forked stick, metal rod, pendulum, or similar device to locate underground water, minerals, or other hidden or lost substances, and has been a subject of discussion and controversy for
hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The practice is also called divining or witching. There is a history of mysticism, magic, and supernatural beliefs associated with the divining rod that dates back over 8,000 years.

In the Tassili Caves of northern Africa, an 8,000-year-old cave painting depicts a man holding a forked stick, apparently using it to search for water.
Divining rods were used by the Scythians, Persians, and Medes. The practice was used by Bavarian miners in the early 1500s and spread throughout Europe as their deep mining skills were highly sought after. Check out our article on Free Miners for a bit more info on that.

Controversy on the subject goes back to before medieval times. In 1518 Martin Luther listed the use of the divining rod as an act that broke the first commandment under the assumption that dowsing is in league with witchcraft. One of the most important books on mining during that period called “De Re Metallica”, published in 1556, describes the practice in this excerpt:

There are many great contentions between miners concerning the forked twig, for some say that it is of the greatest use in discovering veins, and others deny it. Some of those who manipulate and use the twig, first cut a fork from a hazel bush with a knife, for this bush they consider more efficacious than any other for revealing the veins, especially if the hazel bush grows above a vein.

Others use a different kind of twig for each metal when they are seeking to discover the veins, for they employ hazel twigs for veins of silver; ash twigs for copper; pitch pine for lead and especially tin, and rods made of iron and steel for gold. All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that the clenched fingers should be held toward the sky in order that the twig should be raised at that end where the two branches meet. Then they wander hither and thither at random through mountainous regions.

It is said that the moment they place their feet on a vein the twig immediately turns and twists, and so by its action discloses the vein; when they move their feet again and go away from that spot the twig becomes once more immobile.

Nevertheless, these things give rise to the faith among common miners that veins are discovered by the use of twigs, because whilst using these they do accidentally discover some; but it more often happens that they lose their labour, and although they might discover a vein, they become none the less exhausted in digging useless trenches than do the miners who prospect in an unfortunate locality.

Therefore a miner, since we think he ought to be a good and serious man, should not make use of an enchanted twig, because if he is prudent and skilled in the natural signs, he understands that a forked stick is of no use to him, for as I have said before, there are the natural indications of the veins which he can see for himself without the help of twigs.

There are variations on the construction of dowsing rods. The original technique consists of using a forked branch cut from a live tree, any tree will work but sticks from willows, witch hazel, and various fruit and nut trees seem to be the most popular. You grasp the ends of the “Y “in your hands with your palms facing upwards. The technique is to walk around and as you approach the target (ground water, gold deplost, etc) the rod will bend towards the ground.

Modern dowsers prefer to use metal rods. A modern dowsing rod consists of two metal rods created from sixteen inch long steel acetylene welding rods with a 90 degree bend forming a handle on each (also known as L-rods). The latest innovation uses ball bearings in the handle to allow the rod to move freely. The modern divining rods don’t bend towards the ground, the technique is to allow the rods to either cross or reach the operator’s chest or point in certain directions.

There are people claiming to be able to conduct long-range dowsing from distances of 100s of meters up to thousands of kilometers away. Some even claim to be able to dowse using a map from the other side of the world.

Dowsers claim to be able to find all sorts of things ranging from water to gold and even your lost car keys. Dowsing for water is the most common. There are quite a few practitioners of water dowsing that do so as a career. The American Society of Dowsers currently has over 2000 members.

Personal Accounts

In the summer of 2020 I had the opportunity to try dowsing myself. A friend of mine had some dowsing rods and we gave it a try while exploring his claim. He told me that you need to visualize the thing that you’re looking for. In this case we were exploring for a hidden paleochannel.

I held the rods horizontally so that they were able to move freely and walked in a straight line while keeping the idea of a channel in my head. At one spot I was surprised to feel the rods moving without my control and they did cross in front of me. It was a cool feeling and did seem supernatural. We marked the spot using a pin flag. My friend continued over a larger area and we mapped several spots where he felt the rods cross. The results didn’t match up to our seismic survey but he will be testing the area with his excavator next summer.

My personal account was by no means a conclusive test. It certainly piqued my curiosity though.

I know several professionals that occasionally use the technique to locate underground utilities such as water lines and electrical lines. They swear that it works, they don’t know how or why but swear that it does. Several utility companies in Canada do use divining rods occasionally.

Long Range Locators

There are even electronic devices that claim to extend the dowsing signal for great distances. These devices are called Long Range Locators (LRLs).

There is quite a range of LRLs on the market, they range from devices that look like a ray gun to “signal generators”, “oscillators”, “harmonic molecular resonators”, or other scientific-sounding names. The world of LRLs is very murky. The majority of LRLs are fake and many manufacturers have been charged with fraud.

One such device called the Omni-Range Master retails for $2,885 USD and makes the following claim:

The signal line from the Omni-Range Master can scan an area of at least 64 square miles and determine if any of the sought-after mineral is present within 15 minutes of the start of operation

It also claims to have “Accuracy of 1/32 of an inch from 50 feet to over 8 miles”. Wow, it would be pretty cool if that actually worked!

Omni Range Master Dowsing — Omni Range Master

Credit for the above photo goes to Carl at geotech1.com. He’s done a lot of research and testing on LRLs. Check out his site for some surprises on some of the most popular long-range locator products on the market.

The Omni-Range Master is a favorite among dowsing and LRL enthusiasts even though it doesn’t actually do anything.

The manufacturer supplies a list of frequencies to locate various substances and items such as:

Diamonds – 12.835 Khz
Gold – 3.025 Khz
Titanium – 13.385 Khz
“Prehistoric Rex” bones – 15.367 Khz
Paper money ($100) – 9.41 Khz
Paper money ($20) – 12.77 Khz

It’s interesting that it mentions bones of a non-existent dinosaur which would be made up of a complex mix of molecules. It’s also strange that it has two different frequencies for paper money and that it lists paper money at all.

This device uses a standard waveform generator (chip that produces an electrical current in a variety of voltages and frequencies). You then plug electrodes into the ground and the idea is that the device will induce “molecular resonance” in the surrounding area and create “signal lines” that you can follow with dowsing rods.

The device uses a 12V power supply and does not transmit enough power to do anything productive. I suspect that believers in “signal lines” and LRLs believe that a very low voltage can be amplified by a form of harmonic resonance but there is absolutely zero evidence for that.

At face value, the concept of “frequencies” and electrodes in the ground is similar to some geophysical techniques such as Induced Polarization (IP) and Resistivity that are commonly used. IP uses 25,000 volts and very specialized recording equipment. It also involves a comprehensive data processing technique. IP can detect conductive ore bodies if they are big enough but even that advanced geophysical technique won’t show you exactly where gold is (or dinosaur bones).

Explanations of the Phenomenon

Proponents of the dowsing technique have a variety of explanations of the mechanics behind the phenomena. One person on a prospecting forum recently claimed “The rods simply extend your personal magnetic field..which, in turn responds to, and interacts with vibrational frequencies of the Earth.”

Some claim that there is psychic energy involved while others say it has something to do with the solar cycle and charged particles from the sun. There are just about as many explanations as there are practitioners.

A recently published book, “The Art of Dowsing: Separating Science from Superstition” by Michael Fercik, tried to explain dowsing in scientific terms. Here’s a quote from the book:

The hands-on dowsing practices are absolutely 100 percent correct, but the dowsing theory could be slightly off here or there. I expressed in wording to the best of my abilities on how I can dowse to find sought objects, with the physics that came from electrical classes, a college physics class, educational books, and educational TV programming. If a group of open-minded physicists say one of the theories is not this way but is that way, then I stand corrected, and we go by the group of open-minded physicists’ theory.

The author seems to have a very faint understanding of science despite the fact that his book is titled “Separating Science from Superstition”.

Fercik explains his own theory of the concept of “elemental magnetism”. It’s important to clarify what the word “theory” means in the realm of science. People often claim something is “just a theory” or “I have a theory”. That word has a specific meaning in science. A scientific theory is an explanation of the natural world that makes testable and verifiable predictions. Those predictions must be confirmed by experiments using the scientific method. You can’t have a theory without it being able to make predictions that can be verified by other people, otherwise it’s just a guess and doesn’t have anything to do with science.

Fercik goes on to explain that each element in the periodic table has its own unique “elemental magnetism” and that a dowsing rod can “tune in” to that unique characteristic similar to a radio tuning to a radio station. He claims that you can tune in your rod by attaching a “one-tenth troy ounce” piece of silver, for example. Then your rod is tuned for silver. He emphasizes that it must be 99.999 percent pure silver or gold or else it won’t work.

The author claims that a dowsing rod and metal detector work in similar ways and that the dowsing rod is powered by “human neuron electrical signals”. Apparently walking while dowsing builds up a static charge strong enough to move the rods when your target is close.

Fercik claims that metal detectors and dowsing rods both work by “picking up the unique emitted elemental magnetic flux lines of the targeted element or targeted elemental mass.” In reality neither device works that way.

Metal detectors transmit an electromagnetic field from the search coil and any magnetically susceptible metal objects that are close enough and large enough become energized and retransmit their own field. A second coil receives the field transmitted by the metal objects. It’s a similar concept to electromagnetic geophysics such as HLEM or aerial TEM. Modern metal detectors are able to differentiate certain phase responses and that allows them to discriminate between different metals such as gold and iron. When metals have a similar phase response such as tin foil and gold it’s hard to tell the difference.

The author describes the movement of the dowsing rod as the result of closing a circuit and allowing static electricity to flow. According to the book, when in contact with the sought element’s “elemental magnetic flux lines” a circuit is created and the dowsing rod connects the static electricity of the human body’s nervous system with the “elemental flux density” of the sought element.

The author goes on to introduce numerous other terms related to magnetism that he created from his own imagination. His ideas don’t meet the criteria for a scientific theory, they could be easily tested but there is no evidence of that in the book. He also fails to recognize that water is not made of a single element, it’s composed of hydrogen and oxygen.

The author should have consulted someone with a background in physics or chemistry instead of his emphasis on “educational TV programming”. Scientists aren’t hard to find, however, had he done that there wouldn’t be a book to write since it would have been debunked before it even reached the publisher.

Ideomotor Effect

Dowsing rods have been shown to work on the same principle as a Ouiju board. The rods, or the planchette in the case of the Ouija board, are moved by human muscles not ghosts, magic or “elemental magnetic flux lines.” The reason the operator isn’t aware that they are actually moving the object is what’s referred to as the ideomotor effect.

The ideomotor effect was discovered by William Benjamin Carpenter in 1852 and describes the movement of the human body that is not initiated by the conscious mind. Your body moves without requiring conscious decisions all the time. In sports it’s referred to as muscle memory. Driving a car is another example, or playing a musical instrument.

When you are startled or accidentally touch something hot your body is able to move in a way to protect you without conscious input from your brain. Many experiments have shown that under a variety of circumstances, our muscles will behave unconsciously in accordance with an implanted expectation. As this is happening we are not aware that we ourselves are the source of the resulting action.

One of the first people to study this effect was the famous scientist Michael Faraday who also established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics among many of his important contributions to the world of science. During the time of Faraday’s ideomotor experiment, in 1853, mysticism was at an all time high and Ouija boards were very popular. He set out to determine what the real force behind the Ouija board was.

Faraday’s experiment was simple. He placed a small stack of cards on top of the Ouija planchette (the piece that you put your hands on). In this experiment, if the force was coming from the participant’s hands the top of the deck of cards would move first. If there was another force the bottom cards would move first. What Faraday and others have shown in every case is that the force was coming from the participant’s hands and not some external entity.

Modern experiments have been done to test dowsing using high-speed cameras. It has been shown that the force on the dowsing rods comes from the person and not from an external force.

It’s interesting that today’s purveyors of the technique insist that testing needs to be done by “open-minded” scientists as if there is some kind of conspiracy against dowsing. There is no conspiracy, in fact there have been a lot of scientific experiments conducted to test the dowsing.

Take a look at some of the studies mentioned below. This is by no means a comprehensive list, there are hundreds of studies on this subject.

Chris French 2007

Psychologist Chris French conducted a double-blind study on dowsing in 2007. The study was filmed as part of a TV show hosted by Richard Dawkins.

Professor French had this to say about the dowsing experts that took part in the study:

I think that they are completely sincere, and that they’re typically very surprised when we run them through a series of trials and actually say, at the end of the day, “Well your performance is no better than we would expect just on the basis of guess work.” And then what typically happens, they’ll make up all kinds of reasons, some might say excuses, as to why they didn’t pass that particular test.

Ongley, P., 1948

New Zealand Diviners

Ongley tested 75 professional water diviners in New Zealand in 1948. The report, linked above, is quite interesting, it discusses some of the history and methods available at the time.

Ongley concluded, “If the seventy-five diviners tested representative of all occupations and from all parts of New Zealand, not one showed the slightest accuracy in any branch of divination. That 90 percent of the diviners are sincere does not lessen the harm that they do.

Vogt, E & Hyman, R, 1959

Water Witching, U. S. A.

Vogt and Hyman argue at some length that anecdotal evidence does not constitute rigorous scientific proof of the effectiveness of dowsing. The authors examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.

Taylor, J. G. & Balanovski, E., 1978

Can electromagnetism account for extra-sensory phenomena?

In this study John Taylor and colleagues conducted a series of experiments designed to detect unusual electromagnetic fields detected by dowsing practitioners. They did not detect any.

Foulkes, R. A, 1971

Dowsing Experiments

Experiments organized by the British Army and Ministry of Defence suggest that results obtained by dowsing are no more reliable than a series of guesses.

McCarney, R et al, 2012

Can homeopaths detect homeopathic medicines by dowsing? A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

This study took place in 2012 and studied a different part of the dowsing technique. The study states: “According to the theory of psionic medicine, every living thing and inanimate object is continuously vibrating at a molecular level. This vibration is sensed subconsciously by the dowser, and it is then amplified through the pendulum or other dowsing device.”

Participants were tested on their ability to detect naturopathic medicine vs a placebo in double blind trials. The study showed that the experienced dowsers were not able to identify the correct substance with results better than chance alone.

Whittaker, W, 2013
Grave Dowsing Reconsidered

This study is a review of previous experiments which was put together by the office of the state archaeologist at the University of Iowa. The study concluded:

Simple experiments demonstrate that dowsing wires will cross when the dowser observes something of interest; this is an example of the subconscious ideomotor effect, first described by Carpenter (1852). This does not disprove dowsing, but demonstrates that simpler explanations can account for the phenomena observed by dowsers The premise that dowsing rods cross when exposed to a large magnetic field created by a subsurface anomaly runs contrary to basic scientific understanding of magnetic fields, and does not hold up under simple experiment.

One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge is an offer by James Randi, a famous magician, to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria.

In his book, “Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions”, Randi describes one of the tests that he conducted in 1979 where four dowsers took an attempt at the prize.

The prize in 1979 was $10,000 and he accepted four people to be tested for their dowsing ability in Italy. The conditions were that a 10 meter by 10 meter test area would be used. There would be a water supply and a reservoir just outside the test area. There would be three plastic pipes running underground from the source to the reservoir along different concealed paths. Each pipe would pass through the test area by entering at some point on an edge and exiting at some point on an edge. A pipe would not cross itself but it might cross others. The pipes were 3 centimeters in diameter and were buried 50 centimeters below ground.

Valves would select which of the pipes water was running through, and only one would be selected at a time. At least 5 liters per second of water would flow through the selected pipe. The dowser must first check the area to see if there is any natural water or anything else that would interfere with the test, and that would be marked. Additionally, the dowser must demonstrate that the dowsing reaction works on an exposed pipe with the water running. Then one of the three pipes would be selected randomly for each trial. The dowser would place ten to one hundred pegs in the ground along the path he or she traces as the path of the active pipe. Two-thirds of the pegs placed by the dowser must be within 10 centimeters of the center of the pipe being traced for the trial to be a success. Three trials would be done for the test of each dowser and the dowser must pass two of the three trials to pass the test.

A lawyer was present, in possession of Randi’s $10,000 check. If a claimant were successful, the lawyer would give him the check. If none were successful, the check would be returned to Randi.

All of the dowsers agreed with the conditions of the test and stated that they felt able to perform the test that day and that the water flow was sufficient. Before the test they were asked how sure they were that they would succeed. All said either “99 percent” or “100 percent” certain”. They were asked what they would conclude if the water flow was 90 degrees from what they thought it was and all said that it was impossible. After the test they were asked how confident they were that they had passed the test. Three answered “100 percent” and one answered that he had not completed the test.

When all of the tests were over and the location of the pipes was revealed, none of the dowsers had passed the test. Dr. Borga had placed his markers carefully, but the nearest was a full 8 feet from the water pipe. Borga said, “We are lost”, but within two minutes he started blaming his failure on many things such as sunspots and geomagnetic variables. Two of the dowsers thought they had found natural water before the test started, but disagreed with each other about where it was, as well as with the ones who found no natural water.

Cargo Cult Science

Dowsing has never actually passed any real scientific test. That has nothing to do with how “open minded” the scientists doing the study are. Science does not rely on opinion, it’s simply an unbiased way of testing and explaining the natural world. True science does not try to prove a hypothesis, a real scientist should try their best to disprove the hypothesis and only when all attempts to disprove it have failed can we draw the conclusion that the phenomenon is true.

The famous physicist , Richard Feynman, described this perfectly in his 1974 commencement address to the graduating class of Caltech. It’s a great speech that touches on pseudoscience and cargo cults. Check out the video below.

Dowsing is a pseudoscience, at best, and attempts to explain dowsing would definitely fit into Feynman’s description of Cargo Cult Science.

It would be amazing if a prospector could actually pick up two metal rods and walk around until they find a high-grade gold deposit. The idea is very appealing, and that desire is what has kept it around for so many years. If that actually did work, everyone would be able to find gold in large quantities and the practitioners of dowsing would all be multi-billionaires.

Even if you ignore the scientific studies and everything else mentioned in this article it’s pretty obvious that the practitioners of dowsing have failed the fundamental logic test. If they have the magical ability to find gold by holding two rods, shouldn’t they have tons of gold in their possession?

I have had long conversations with numerous expert dowsers. Except for a few that get paid to dowse for water, they all have a day job and dowse as a hobby. Dowsers all swear that the technique works and is effective but they don’t have any gold to show for it. I have yet to meet a dowser that has discovered billions of dollars worth of gold and lives in a mansion.

It is possible that there is some hidden force that we don’t yet understand that can be tapped into using the human body and two metal rods. That’s the idea promoted by dowsing practitioners. They claim there are unexplained “frequencies”, “harmonic molecular resonance”, “elemental magnetism” or other clever-sounding phrases that science hasn’t yet been able to explain.

Dowsing, like many other forms of divination or intuitive practices, can tap into a person’s beliefs about the nature of reality, the power of the mind, and the existence of unseen forces or energies. For some individuals, the act of dowsing may feel like a sacred or meaningful practice that connects them to something greater than themselves. This sense of connection or spirituality may contribute to their confidence in their abilities, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Additionally, the social dynamics of a community of dowsers may also contribute to their confidence in their abilities. If a person is part of a group that strongly believes in dowsing, they may feel more confident in their own abilities due to the collective reinforcement of their beliefs. This social reinforcement can create a sense of community and belonging that reinforces the belief in dowsing as a valid and effective practice.

Carl Sagan famously stated, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The claims made by dowsers are certainly extraordinary. The extraordinary evidence has yet to present itself.

If you’re waiting for the discovery of a magical force that presents signal lines to buried gold that only a specialized few are able to pick up on with their innate abilities, I wouldn’t hold your breath. It’s far more likely that the phenomenon of dowsing is little more than a self-delusion brought on by unconscious movements in response to implanted expectations, also known as the ideomotor response.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and personal dowsing stories. Feel free to post them in the comments below.

Modern Laws for Claimjumping

PlacerGold History March 29, 2020claimjumper, gold, gold mining, gold rush, Klondike, legal, mining, mining laws, placer, placer claim, yukon 13 Comments

Throughout mining history, there are stories of scoundrels, cheats, bandits, and liars. The gold rush towns had their share of bad actors but above everything else, there is one title that nobody wanted to have, “the claimjumper”.

In the world of mining, claimjumpers are the lowest of the low. During the gold rushes of North America miners traveled into areas where laws didn’t exist yet. In the California Gold Rush of 1849, the territory had no government, police or administration of any kind. Despite the lawlessness and disorder of the early gold rushes one thing was held sacred above everything else, the right of the miner to locate a mining claim and to hold it against all comers.

What does claimjumping mean? There are two forms of claimjumping but they both amount to the same thing:

Producing minerals from a claim that belongs to someone else
Attempting to seize the land on which another party has already made claim

Historically, stealing or mining ore from someone else’s mine was referred to as highgrading. While claim jumping referred to the actual seizure or taking over of someone else’s claim. Today the two terms are intertwined.

Claimjumping is illegal today just as it was in the mid-1800s and even before that. You can’t shoot a claimjumper anymore but the modern laws are quite powerful nonetheless. In British Columbia and throughout Canada you can face huge fines, jail time and being banned from the right to hold claims. As well as having to forfeit any ill-gotten minerals or profit. If, in the process of claimjumping, you break any environmental regulations or mining laws you will be on the hook for those penalties too. On top of that your equipment and even your vehicle can be forfeited if proven to be involved in the crime.

There are honest and dishonest forms of claimjumping in which the law does make a slight distinction. Honest being that you were unaware that you were engaging in claimjumping. The difference only applies in terms of repayment for the ore that was extracted, the fines and other penalties still apply whether you are knowingly claimjumping or not.

It’s difficult to find the information on Canadian claimjumping laws. Part of that comes from the fact that there isn’t an accepted term for the crime. In legal terminology claimjumping has been referred to by many titles including:

Mineral Trespass
Wrongful Abstraction of Ore by Trespass Workings
Wrongful Working of Minerals
Highgrading
Wrongful Interference with Personal Property
Wrongful Conversion
Trespass and Conversion
Willful Trespass

My favorite is “Wrongful Abstraction of Ore by Trespass Workings”, it has a certain ring to it. There are slight differences to some of those terms but they all point towards the same thing. Trespass and benefiting from something that doesn’t belong to you. Trespass is actually a complicated part of the legal system. There are different kinds of trespass. We are all familiar with what it means to trespass on private property but a mining claim isn’t necessarily private property. Perhaps we should clarify what a mining claim really is.

Trespass and Conversion

In Canada, and specifically in BC, mineral rights are held by the crown. The actual “Crown” in Canada is a story in itself but basically means that the mineral rights are owned by the people of British Columbia. When you are the holder of a mineral or placer claim, you lease the rights to those minerals for the duration of your tenure. From the issue date to the “good to date” of your claim the minerals in that plot of land belong to you and nobody else. Surface rights are a totally different story. Check out our post on Free Miners for more info on that.

Trespassing is defined as “the wrongful interference with one’s possessory rights in real property.” When it comes to claimjumping you are definitely interfering with the claimholder’s rights when you are extracting ore that belongs to them. The trespass itself is not listed as a crime under the Canadian criminal code, but it does allow the claimholder to sue the claimjumper for damages.

In Canadian law there are two ways to deal with the proceeds of trespass and conversion. The mild rule, and severe rule.

Under the mild rule, the guilty party has to pay the claim owner for the value of ore that was extracted. The costs of mining the ore, bringing it to market, etc are not included. This rule applies when the trespass (claimjumping) was not intentional.

The severe rule forces the guilty party to pay the realized value of stolen ore including the cost of mining.

Either way you have to pay back the claim owner for whatever gold you mined on his claim, the severe rule means that you have to pay the full value not accounting for the costs that you incurred in the process. The mild rule is quite lenient that way but you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you commited the crime unintentionally.

There are plenty of examples of supreme court rulings where the trespasser had to pay back the claim owner for their ill-gotten gains. Here is an example from 1907 in the Yukon in which one miner produced ore an another miner’s claim and mixed the ore with his own.

Here’s some info on a more recent case in the Yukon. I actually worked with one of the miners in this story in Klondike back in 2010, I won’t say which one though.

Claimjumping supreme court cases are common in Alberta although the claimjumping takes a slightly different form. These cases are regarding mineral rights for oil instead of precious metals but the concepts are the same. In Alberta, mineral rights are divided by different sedimentary layers that contain petroleum. So different companies can own the mineral rights in the same location but at different depths. Due to the complexities of this system, companies drill into other company’s leases all the time.

The consequences of mineral trespass vary, but the Alberta Energy Regulator introduced a penalty of $50,000 per occurrence. In addition to the penalty, compensation is owed for the value of any minerals obtained during trespass. Alberta mineral trespass is treated the same in a legal sense as gold claims in BC just with a much higher frequency of settlements.

Miner’s Meetings

During the gold rushes you couldn’t file a complaint to any governing body. Miners took justice into their own hands and had a form of democracy called Miner’s Meetings. The meetings were notorious for their swift justice but they were considered fair. In order to participate in a miner’s meeting you had to be the holder of an active claim.

A journalist named Baryard Taylor gave this account of the situation in the California Gold Fields in 1849:

In the absence of all law or available protection, the people met and adopted rules for their mutual security rules adapted to their situation, where they neither had guards nor prisons, and where the slightest license given to crime or trespass of any kind must inevitably have led to terrible disorders. Small thefts were punished by banishment from the placers, while for those of large amount or for more serious crimes, there was the single alternative of hanging.

As gold rushes progressed further North the miners took their knowledge and customs with them. During the Fraser River gold rush, the miners brought with them knowledge of mining placer gold with long toms, rocker boxes and hydraulic mining as well as their own customary law that had spontaneously developed in the California Goldfields.
During the Fraser River gold rush each bar had it’s own set of rules which were democratically chosen by the miners.

The Daily Alta California published the laws passed by a miners’ meeting held on May 12th, 1858 on Hill’s Bar, Fraser River, which included:

Claim sizes were defined as twenty-five feet along the river bank’s high water line for each person.
Miners were restricted to to one claim by preemption and one by purchase.
Claims were “not considered workable” between May 20th and August 20th.
During the non-workable period the work requirement was removed.
During the workable times claims must be “represented”, or worked, within three days or they were otherwise free to be jumped.
There was a regulation declaring that any thieves or claimjumpers would be expelled from Hills Bar and lose their claims.
And anybody “interfering with or molesting any Indian” would be punished as “the community shall see fit.”

Just up the river at Yale, the rules were slightly different:

There was a rule concerned with equality, limiting miners from holding more than one claim.
A one-day work requirement every five-days was established.
The office of recorder was created to keep track of claim registration.
Proven claimjumpers were to be banished from the placers and have their claims and gold forfeited.

All along the Fraser, mining communities drew on norms established in California to regulate society on the lower Fraser. This community didn’t legitimate itself based on an external authority. Instead, the miners assumed their own legitimacy and authority.

Miner’s meetings progressed into miner’s boards which were legislated under the Goldfields Act in 1859. The miner’s boards stayed in place until 1888.

More remote areas still used the principles of the miner’s meeting since police presence and regulations were often slow to follow the prospectors. Here’s an account of the legal landscape in the notorious Circle City which is situated just over the Alaska border from the Klondike by Arthur Walden in 1896, two years before the brunt of the Klondike Gold Rush:

Here was a town . . . which had no taxes, courthouse, or jail; no post-office, church, schools, hotels or dog pound; no rules, regulations, or written law; no sheriff, dentist, doctor, lawyer, or priest. Here there was no murder, stealing, or dishonesty, and right was right and wrong was wrong as each individual understood it. Here life, property, and honor were safe, justice was swift and sure, and punishments were made to fit the case.

Eventually communities grew, the North West Mounted Police set up outposts and federal and provincial laws began to take over. The days of frontier justice faded into the background but many of the principles that the miner’s meetings established made their way into legislation.

Current Laws

In the United States many individual states have clear laws regarding claimjumping, or as it is now referred to “mineral trespass”. They vary from state to state but almost all have similar rules on the proceeds of mineral trespass.

For example when a willful trespass occurs in Colorado, the trespasser is not entitled to set off the mining costs. In addition Colorado allows punitive damages for “Willful and Wanton” trespass claims. Punitive damages are a fancy word for additional fines to punish the defendant for outrageous conduct. That is uncommon in Canada.

US penal codes clearly list claimjumping as a crime which isn’t quite as easy to find in Canada. For example in Washington state Mineral Trespass (RCW 78.44.330) is considered a class C felony which carries a punishment of up to 5 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines

In British Columbia, claimjumping falls under our Mineral Tenure Act. There are two sections of the law that deal with claimjuping:

9(2)A person must not hand pan on a valid mineral title unless the person receives permission from the recorded holder of the mineral title.

As well as

28(1)Subject to this Act, the recorded holder of a claim is entitled to those minerals or placer minerals, as the case may be, that are held by the government and that are situated vertically downward from and inside the boundaries of the claim.
(2)The interest of a recorded holder of a claim is a chattel interest.

Punishments are listed under section 63 of the Act, which states:

63 (1) A person commits an offence who does any of the following:

(a)wilfully and without lawful excuse pulls down, defaces, alters or removes a staking or legal post, a legal corner post or other survey monument;
(b)explores for, develops or produces minerals contrary to this Act or the regulations;
(c)knowingly makes a false statement or provides false information under this Act, or in a registration;
(d)offers for sale, or sells, a mineral title for a non-mining usage.

(3) A person who is convicted of an offence is liable to a fine of not more than $25,000 or to imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or to both.

The following activities are in violation of the Mineral Tenure Act and will result in criminal charges:

Panning on a mineral claim or placer claim without permission
Producing minerals or placer minerals from an active claim by any means, pan, sluice, shovel, dredge, or even your bare hands.
Removing rocks or minerals from a claim, either rockhounding or for any other purpose.

In addition to a potential fine of $25,000 or 6 months in prison, anyone who is proven to be claimjumping will lose their FMC and any claims for a period determined by the Gold Commissioner. That means that you can lose your free miner rights for life and no longer be able to own claims.

A person guilty of removing minerals from a claim is guilty of theft under the Criminal Code of Canada. Section 334 of the criminal code states that theft under $5000 carries a prison term not exceeding two years. For theft over $10,000, a prison term not exceeding ten years.

The Criminal Code of Canada has provisions for selling unrefined ore and specific laws regarding fraud of unrefined ore. If you are engaged in claimjumping it will be difficult and illegal to sell your ill-gotten gold. Precious metal assayers and buyers know these laws and will not accept placer gold unless you can prove the source.

394(1) (b) of the Criminal Code, makes it an offence for anyone to sell or purchase any rock, mineral or other substance that contains precious metals “unless he establishes that he is the owner or agent of the owner or is acting under lawful authority”.

The punishment for violation of that part of the Criminal Code states:

A person who contravenes subsection (1), (2) or (3) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years

In addition to the fines and penalties for those caught in the act of claim jumping you can also be on the hook for any illegal mining or environmental practices that you conduct. The mining and environmental laws are extensive but I’ll list a couple common ones here.

There are a lot more environmental inspectors than there are mining inspectors. They are likely the ones to catch you.
The most common fine is under Environmental Management Act Section 6(3) which states:

a person must not introduce or cause or allow to be introduced into the environment, waste produced by a prescribed activity or operation.

The standard fine for a small highbanker or river sluice is $575. You can see a list of some of the most recent fines here.

In his book Poachers, Polluters and Politics: A Fishery Officer’s Career, former fisheries officer Randy Nelson recounts on an incident where he caught some claimjumpers operating an illegal dredge in the Cariboo:

It was two days before Christmas, I had just caught up with a pile of paperwork and I decided to go for an afternoon patrol North of Quesnel. I crossed the Cottonwood River on Highway 97 North and climbed the big hill from the river valley. I glanced down a side road and saw a parked pickup truck with fresh footprints leading away from it down the snow-covered road.

It could have been any number of activities but I decided to check it out. I walked through the deep snow for over a mile, climbing along the upper banks of the Cottonwood River. The tracks finally turned off and headed downhill toward the river where I could hear a small motor running. Surely no one would be dredging for gold in this salmon stream in the winter?

They were so surprised I’m not sure their wet suits remained dry. They said, “Don’t you ever take time off? We never dreamt you’d be working this time of year or walk into this spot” I took it as a compliment and made sure to to pass that information on to the judge.

There wasn’t much the two of them could say. They were caught and one had a previous conviction. I seized everything at the site, including their dredge, gold dry suits, diving gear and tools. I loaded whatever I could carry and walked out with them out to their vehicle. I told them I would give them a ride home because I was seizing their truck too. Merry Christmas!

It would have taken several days to dismantle and pack the dredge out from the river and it was two days before Christmas so I hired a helicopter to sling the gear out from the river. The two miners were convicted in court and received fines of $3,000 each plus forfeiture of $4,000 worth of gear.

That was a bad day for those two claimjumpers. In situations where you are running bigger equipment that requires a Notice of Work permit (NOW) you can get into a whole bunch of fines and penalties. In a recent Mines Act decision a mine in the Cariboo was fined $28,000 for operating without a proper permit.

How can you avoid claimjumping?

Just like any other law in Canada your ignorance of the law does not exempt you from it. That means that if you are gold panning, mining, rockhounding, or producing mineral of any kind it’s up to you to understand the laws and claims in that area.

Before you go out gold panning make sure that you’re not on someone else’s claim. The best place to check is the BC MTO website (mtonline.gov.bc.ca). That is the website run but the Mineral Titles Branch of BC’s Ministry of Energy, Mines & Petroleum Resources. The MTO maps are a bit daunting to a newcomer but all the information is there.

Local mining laws can take a bit to understand at first but you can always email or phone the MTO with any questions.

Claims are rarely marked in the field since BC now has an online staking system. If you are out gold prospecting a GPS is just as important as your gold pan these days. Make sure your maps are up to date and you know how to use your GPS.

The best place to prospect is a panning reserve, your own claim, or a claim where you have permission from the owner. If you aren’t certain that you’re operating legally then don’t start digging.

In summary, these are the penalties for claimjumping in BC:

Repayment for full value of the ore that was stolen
$25,000 fine or 6 months in prison; Mineral Tenure Act
2 to 10 years in prison for theft, plus summary conviction; Criminal Code of Canada
Loss of FMC, potentially for life; Mineral Tenure Act
Up to 5 years in prison for selling ore without proving the source; Criminal Code of Canada
Fines for violation of mining and environmental laws
Possible confiscation of mining gear and your vehicle

Modern-day prospectors and miners work hard to explore their claims. It takes time and money to locate a claim, stake it and begin exploration work. There are hurdles to operate a mine legally. Most miners put a lot of effort into setting everything up properly so that they can mine and reap the benefits of their hard work. Claimjumpers try to cut corners and steal resources from the people that have done the hard work. There’s a reason that nobody wants the earn the title of “claimjumper”.

You can’t be banished from the land or hung you like they did during the gold rushes but you will have to repay all the gold you steal and face penalties for your crimes.

What does it mean to be a Free Miner?

PlacerGold History January 22, 2020exploration, free miner, gold, gold mining, gold rush, Klondike, lode gold, mining law, placer, placer claim 10 Comments

In British Columbia it is necessary to hold a Free Miner’s Certificate (or FMC for short) to buy and sell mining claims. Most miners, prospectors and industry professionals hold an FMC but do they know what it stands for? The concept of the Free Miner holds historical roots dating back to medieval Europe where being a free miner meant a certain status and freedom during a time when freedom was reserved for a select few.

Mining law in BC dates back to before British Columbia even existed. Few British Columbians actually know the history and genesis of this beautiful province. We talk about the fur traders and explorers like Simon Fraser, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and David Thompson. To this day they are credited with “discovering” BC. Their names are on our streets, our rivers, and countless monuments around the province.

The early explorers definitely laid the groundwork for things to come but it wasn’t until word got out about a peculiar yellow metal that things really got rolling. Once word reached California about gold in the Fraser Canyon the rush was on. Modern-day BC consisted of a disputed territory called New Caledonia during the time of the gold rush.

The mining law in BC was modeled after regulations in other British colonies such as Australia and New Zealand. The underlying principles of our mining laws date back to medieval Europe with a history dating all the way to the Roman Empire.

Beginnings of the Free Miner

Work in mines during the time of the Greek and Roman empires was primarily conducted by slaves and prisoners. The Romans were producing gold and silver coins used as currency and required more precious metals than were being produced by traditional mines. During the reign of Emperor Charlemagne (768-814) the demand for gold and silver increased. The easily exploitable deposits were beginning to run out and there was a need for specialized mining skills and knowledge.

The Romans recognized the prospecting skills that miners possessed and began to allow slaves and peasants the freedom to explore. The Romans created the right to ownership based on discovery where if a man discovered a mineral deposit he could claim ownership. It was required that he pay a royalty or tribute to the emperor. Through this process, the miner ceased to be a serf and became a free man.

The incentive of freedom drove men to the farthest reaches of the Roman empire in search of metals and subsequently their own freedom. The adventurers taking part in the gold rushes of the 1800s in North America were driven by the same force, to find freedom and wealth on their own terms. The right to discovery has always been one of the core tenents of the free miner system.

Medieval Europe

During the middle ages land was owned outright by lords. Lords were subject to the king but they decided what would and wouldn’t happen on their land. The land was worked by peasants who owed a certain amount of workdays to the lord. In exchange, peasants could use small portions of land to produce their own food. Peasants were subject to the rules and taxes of the lord whose land they occupied.

A peasant couldn’t just take off and go looking around the mountains for gold. He would have to cross into different lands that are owned by different lords. Not to mention he was obligated to work for his lord and nobody else. It would be hard to prospect for minerals if you are tied to a very small plot of land.

Across much of central Europe, free miners were allowed to roam freely across land boundaries of land-holding lords and claim and work the deposits that they found. Since miners possessed the necessary skills and knowledge to exploit subsurface mineral deposits they were always welcomed by local authorities.

The free miner who made a discovery would be awarded a double-sized discovery claim along the vein. Later miners would only be allotted a single claim. In medieval Europe, a claim was called a “meer”. The head meer belonged to the miner who discovered the vein and all other meers were measured off of the head one. This practice continued well into the gold rushes of North America. A medieval free miner would typically not be required to pay for the registration of a claim, the royalty was enough.

Free miners in Germany and Austria developed a system of democracy that was independent of the king, government or lords of their time. In each mining district, the miners got together and elected a “Bergmeister”. The Bergmeister acted much like the gold commissioner in more modern times. He would determine the size of a claim that is to be awarded upon discovery, settle disputes about claims and so on. If the miners weren’t happy with the Bergmeister they would replace him with a more competent one. There is a ton of information of the systems and techniques of mining in the middle ages in an old book called “De Re Metallica”, published in 1556. The title is Latin for “On the Nature of Metals”.

The rules, laws, and practices of free mining communities were brought to England before the invasion by the Normans in 1066. There were several distinct free mining districts in medieval England. Districts were built around a specific commodity such as tin, coal, lead, zinc, and gold. A miner could explore anywhere in his claim regardless of land ownership. A claim was permanent, transferable and heritable as long as he kept up the required work obligations and paid the required royalty.

One of the first written laws regarding free miner’s rights was passed by the Bishop of Trent (modern-day Italy) in 1185. Under that law, the state held all mineral rights. Miners were permitted to freely enter the land to explore and mine provided that they shared the wealth with the state.

Miner’s Law

Free miners typically had immunity from the jurisdiction of the surface owner’s courts and had immunity to common-law. Different lords had different laws, different taxes and so on. Since free miners could roam freely, crossing different land boundaries they needed their own set of laws to provide some sense of continuity. Free mining districts had free miners’ courts which were controlled by the mining community. The concept of miner’s law lasted for centuries and even played a role in the gold rushes of Western North America from California to the Yukon.

Across medieval Europe, there were two main types of free miners. In more populated areas such as Southern England, the free miner system was community-based. Free mining communities existed where miners belonged to a self-governing community outside of the feudal hierarchy. In these areas, miners would work a claim in close proximity to other miners for decades and sometimes even passing on their claim to their descendants.

In the mountainous areas such as Northern England, Scotland, Germany, and Austria claims were spread out and miners would act more individually. In these areas, it was important for a free miner to be able to explore vast areas without being bound by individual landowners.

Both systems influenced the development of mining rights during the gold rush periods and many of the concepts still exist today. A free miner today in BC still has the right to roam freely in search of untapped mineral deposits, although there are a few limitations.

A free miner’s claim was not a standard amount of surface areas such as an acre, hectare or anything like that. The area that a miner was given depended on the strike and dip of their vein. A standard claim was 100 feet along the vein and a width of half the length. The strike of the claim was measured from the apex (outcrop) and could slope downward or lie flat with the land.

A steeper dipping vein would provide a smaller surface area for the claim. Free miners measured claims this way since a steeper dipping vein provided more ore per the same amount of area.

Since the amount of ore was the whole point, this system was considered fairer among free mining communities. This concept followed European settlers into the New World. During the homestead period of Western Canada and the United States settlers were given a predetermined amount of land while miners were given more freedom depending on the geology.

Property during medieval Europe was controlled by feudal lords. Many landowners had large swaths of land under their control and needed information about the geology and mineral deposits on their lands. Free miners were able to develop knowledge of geology due to their right to wander without concern for legal boundaries with large districts.

Medieval Lords commonly permitted free miners to operate on their lands in exchange for mining and geological information. Much as we do today with work and assessment reports as part of the upkeep of modern claims.

The California Gold Rush

At the onset of the California Gold Rush in 1848, the territory of California was only recently transferred to the United States from Mexico. Congress had not yet set up any kind of local government and there were no laws in place to govern the practice of mining. The 49ers were literally left to their own devices.

Each camp developed its own set of rules. Across all districts, miners asserted a universal right to free prospecting and mining on previously unclaimed lands. They developed systems for dealing with staking, noticing, acquiring and abandonment of claims. They dealt swiftly with proven claim jumpers. There were no royalties paid to any government but fees were collected to fund the local miner’s collective. They imposed a rule of one claim per man and work requirements. They also had a rule that allowed no more than one-week absence or your claim would be forfeited.

As discoveries slowed down in the California gold fields prospectors moved to other areas such as Australia, Colorado, Oregon, the Fraser River, Cariboo, and the Yukon. The principles developed in the California camp laws carried with them but had to be adjusted since the new districts actually had governments and laws while California didn’t enact actual public laws until two years after the first gold miners arrived.

The Australian Gold Rush

When the gold rush broke out in Australia in 1851 miners were shocked to find that New South Wales already had a government, property law, courts, military and police. That was a big difference from the wild west of the lawless California gold fields. There were some major conflicts as Australia tried to impose land restrictions, fees and various other rules on the miners.

In the end, a compromise was made and Australia’s Gold Fields Act was passed in 1854. That piece of legislation was based on the European principles of free mining and the lessons learned in the California gold fields. The act protected the miner’s right to free entry, the right to discovery, a personal right to the minerals in place, the right to occupy the claim and a right to participate in the making of local mining rules.

The Fraser River Gold Rush

With the influx of 30,000 prospectors, mostly American, the British population of 100-200 people was completely overwhelmed. Britain’s claim to present-day BC was under threat.

With the madness of the California gold rush fresh in people’s minds, the young government had to act quickly. HBC Governor James Douglas stationed a gunboat on the Fraser River to intercept gold rush miners to collect mining licenses and lay down the law. Great Britain acted quickly to make BC a crown colony on August 2, 1858.

It was the gold rush, not fur trading that really made BC part of the British Empire and subsequently part of Canada. Our mining laws were imported from Great Britain. Much of our current mining law in BC came from the passage of the Gold Fields Act in 1859.

The Gold Fields Act was strongly based on the legislation passed in Australia three years prior with the same name. The three principles of the free miner were paramount: the right to discovery, the right of entry to explore and the right to miner’s law. Under the new act, any person 16 years of age or over could obtain a Free Miner Certificate for the cost of one pound. An FMC gave its holder (the “free miner”) the right to freely enter onto, and stake a claim, on any un-staked area of Crown land – including private property and First Nations’ territories.

Governor Douglas’ law differed from the Australian law in that it allowed more freedom for miner’s boards. The rules for claim size and the ins and outs of staking a claim varied between mining districts. The government was small and the territory was vast.

The BC government didn’t have the means or the manpower to police all details of mining. They set the ground rules, issued a free miner’s license and let the miners boards police themselves. The large geographical areas and differences among deposits necessitated that claim size, rules and laws be different across the province. The local miner’s boards were able to rule by consensus.

Vigilante justice and decisions by majority vote prevailed in the camps. In time the North West Mounted Police (the predecessor to the RCMP) took on a larger role and established itself in most of the gold rush towns. By the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, there was a substantial NWMP presence in the gold mining areas.

Changes in Legislation

In 1891, provincial legislation formally recognized locations in which free miners could not enter onto and prospect for mineral claims. This included towns, private homes and Indian reserve lands. Today, areas that do not carry the automatic right of entry include land occupied by a building, the 75m of land directly surrounding a private residence (if that area is lawns, gardens etc.) and crop lands.

During the gold rush era (1850s to 1910s) most of the areas being prospected and mined took place on unoccupied frontier land. There were very few people around. On top of that, the techniques of placer mining consisted of pans and rocker boxes. In later years when miners employed more capital-intensive techniques like damming and hydraulicking, water licenses and land use started to become an issue.

In 1911 the Mineral Easements Act was passed. This new act established rules for right of way access to mineral and placer claims over private land. These rights of way included the right to construct the infrastructure required for mining and the right to use existing roads in aid of their mining activities

Under this act, only thirty days’ notice (including an advertisement published in the British Columbia Gazette and in a local newspaper for one month) was required for the establishment of a right of way that could last over an area of land for generations and permit the construction of a pipeline, tramway, and movement of heavy machinery.

Today, the ability for free miners to secure a right of way over private land, without the consent of the landowner, is preserved under section 2 of the Mining Right of Way Act – a legislative successor of the Mineral Easements Act of 1911.

Modern Laws on Free Miners in BC

Much of the free miner system remained the same until the 1990s. In 1995 the Mineral Tenure Amendment Act was passed, which added some limitations to mineral rights and activities on private lands. The act prohibited free miners from “interfering with any operation, activity or work on private land”. That was the first major restriction on the free entry system since 1891.

In 2002 amendments to the Mineral Tenure Act, removed the prohibition against free miners and recorded holders from interfering with any operation, activity or work on private land. The amendment provided that interfering with privately held land was permissible, so long as it was minimal and the private owner was compensated.

On January 12, 2005, the whole game changed. BC initiated the online staking system that we know today. Prospectors were no longer required to physically drive claim stakes into the ground, staking could now be done with the click of a mouse. This opened the door to a whole new level of speculation. The number of staked claims grew exponentially. Free miner rights remained intact.

In 2008 the Mineral Tenure Act and Mineral Tenure Act Regulation were amended once again to require that any person beginning mining activities on private land had to give notice at least eight days prior to beginning any mining activity. That law stands to this day. A free miner still has the right to occupy private property but must give a minimum of 8 days’ notice prior to occupation. It is important to note that notice does not require consent. A free miner must notify private landowners but does not need their permission to occupy private land for the purposes of mining.

The current law is specified in the Mineral Tenure Act of British Columbia.

The restrictions on land are broken into two categories. Free miners who hold a title and those who don’t.

As specified in section 11 of the act, the current restrictions on private land where a free miner doesn’t hold a claim include:

land occupied by a building
the curtilage of a dwelling house,
orchard land
land under cultivation
land lawfully occupied for mining purposes
protected heritage property, except as authorized by the local government
land in a park

Free miners without mineral tenure have rights to explore and search for minerals on most land. In BC a free miner can access any private property as long as proper notice is served and none of the above restrictions apply. That means that as long as you serve notice, you can explore freely on pretty much any private property in BC. The main exceptions are farms and land with a house on it.

If a free miner holds a claim overlapping private property there are less restrictions on access:

There is a mining prohibition in that area under the Environment and Land Use Act
The area is a designated park under the Local Government Act
The area is a designated park or ecological reserve under the Protected Areas of British Columbia Act
The area is an ecological reserve under the Ecological Reserve Act
The area is a protected heritage property.

When a free miner holds an active tenure the rules change slightly. Access to private land is much less restrictive. Not only does a free miner have access to the land, an active tenure give the right to use the land for all operations related to the exploration and development or production of minerals or placer minerals.

Section 14 of the Mineral Tenure Act which states:

Subject to this Act, a recorded holder may use, enter and occupy the surface of a claim or lease for the exploration and development or production of minerals or placer minerals, including the treatment of ore and concentrates, and all operations related to the exploration and development or production of minerals or placer minerals and the business of mining.

The concept of the “Free Miner” has deep historical roots and much of the free entry system and principles of the free miner are still present in BC laws and practices. The three core tenents of the free miner The right to discovery, Freedom to roam and self-government are built into our current laws. The miner’s meetings and self-government are no longer necessary as we now have strong governments with actual mining laws in place.

The free entry system is often misunderstood by people who aren’t familiar with the intent and history of the system. Private landowners are often surprised to learn that they have to allow miners onto their property. As a result, the free entry system is under threat by people outside of the mining community. Ontario, Quebec and the Northwest Territories have abandoned free miner’s rights due to public pressure.

The same principles that created free entry in Roman and medieval Europe are true today. In order to explore for minerals, it is necessary to have access to the land. If we lose the free entry rights then it will become harder and harder to discover and produce the minerals that our society needs.

When you hold a Free Miner’s Certificate you belong to a long history of free miners. It’s not just a piece of paper. The FMC represents freedom in the true sense of the word. A free miner means belonging to a community that built its own rules and paved the way for modern society. We might have modern tools, advanced technology, and modern government but a discovery today is no different than a discovery in medieval Bavaria. All miners strive for independence and to feed their sense of adventure.

Top Ten Gold Rushes of BC – Part 2

PlacerGold History, Lists November 23, 2015Atlin, Cassiar, ghost town, gold, gold mining, gold rush, Klondike, mother lode, Omineca, placer, Tulameen, vancouver 7 Comments

In part one of the top ten gold rushes of BC we covered the early gold rushes primarily in the Southern regions. As time went on gold hungry adventurers pushed further in the wild North of the Canadian West coast. Their adventurous spirit was rewarded greatly and eventually led them into the Yukon and Alaska.

1865 Big Bend Gold Rush

KootenalMap1897_crop — 1897 Map of the Big Bend Area

The Big Bend refers to the shape of the Columbia River as it makes a huge detour at the continental divide. This region encompasses several different mountain ranges including the Selkirks, the Cariboo Mountains, the Monashees and the Rocky Mountains. In 1865 gold was discovered on French Creek which is straight North of Revelstoke. As in other gold rushes a town was quickly erected named French Creek City. Within the first year the town reached a population of over 4000 people. Nothing is left today but during the rush French Creek had a general store, saloons with cabaret shows, barber shops and of course brothels. Other important towns of the rush were La Porte and Downie Creek. The inhabitants came mostly from the Wild Horse area and other areas in BC.

Steamboats were a major factor during the big bend gold rush. Many of the prospectors reached the area on steamboats via the Arrow Lakes which make up part of the Columbia River. The lake network allowed boat passengers to travel from areas as far South as the US border.

Other notable creeks in the area are Carnes Creek, Downie Creek, McCullough Creek, and the Goldstream River. A 14 ounce nugget was reported to be found on French Creek and numerous smaller nuggets were also found. In 1865 miners were bringing out multiple ounces per day to the man on some claims. On McCullough Creek pay streaks averaged 1/8 of an ounce per yard for many years. Just like other places in the late 1800s hydraulic and drift mining driven by mining companies and syndicates quickly replaced hand mining techniques. The big bend gold rush only lasted two years but mining in the area continues to this day. Several large projects and proposed mines are located in the big bend.

1869 Omineca Gold Rush

The Omineca is a huge region in Nortn-Central BC. The southern boundary is marked today by the Yellowhead highway the North boundary is the Liard Mountains. Gold was first discovered in the Omineca in 1861 but the rush didn’t take place until eight years later. The original discoveries were made on the Finlay River. In the early days there were very few people in the area due to a complete lack of trails, roads or maps and unforgiving terrain and weather. Much of the area is still wild today.

Northern BC circa 1898, red symbols are known gold discoveries

One of the first claims on the Finlay called Toy’s Bar produced 4 ounces to the man each day. Several expeditions were launched though the area searching for gold. One such party, the Peace River Prospecting Party, found a great discovery on Vital Creek in 1869. The creek was named after one of the party members, Vital Laforce who was also instrumental in exploring the Cariboo region. Vital Creek produced nearly 5000 ounces in the years following the rush.

Manson Creek and the Germansen River held the best gold deposits in the Omineca. Gold discoveries were also made on Blackjack Creek, Kildare Creek, Mosquito Creek, Slate Creek and Nugget Gulch. In the early days of the gold rush anything less than an ounce a day was considered unworthy. Many creeks were paying 100 ounces per week. If the gold rush happened today that would be well over $100,000 every week. I’d be finding my way up there any any means possible. Travelling to the Omineca in the 1800s was a feat in itself.

The discovery of gold in the Cassiar in 1873 spelled the end of the Omineca gold rush. As with all gold rushes those who held good ground stayed and kept mining while everyone else headed on to the next boom town. The Omineca is one of the least explored regions in BC today and there are still gold strikes waiting to be found.

1873 Cassiar Gold Rush

Gold was discovered on the Stikine River in 1861 and a minor rush developed. A few hundred prospectors ascended the river in search of gold. There was an existing fur trading fort at the mouth of the river called Fort Stikine which later became Wrangell, Alaska. Not enough gold was found to entice more adventurers to the region but the excitement was enough to prompt Britain into claiming the region as a colony in 1862.

The Cassiar gold rush really took off once the high grade gold deposits in the extreme North of BC were discovered. This part of the country is extremely rugged with huge mountains, glaciers and a very cold winter. The discovery was made in the summer of 1872 by Henry Thibert and Angus McCulloch on a creek that drains into Dease Lake. The creek was named after Thibert who froze to death the following winter. Thibert Creek was very rich, in the first year miners were getting up to three ounces to the pan.

TurnagainNugget — The 52 oz “Turnagain Nugget” from Alice Shea Creek in the Cassiar

In 1874 an even bigger discovery was made further North on Mcdame Creek. The largest gold nugget ever found in BC was taken from Mcdame Creek tipping the scale at 73 ounces! Another giant nugget was found on Alice Shea Creek that weighed 52 ounces.

Several towns sprung up near the gold discoveries such as Laketon, Porter Landing and Centerville. They are all ghost towns now but in the height of the rush thousands of people were passing through the shops and saloons of the Cassiar. Like the Omineca much of this region is just as wild today as it was 150 years ago.

The Cassiar’s rich gold reserves have not been forgotten. There are many large mining projects under way in the region. Due to the high grade mineral deposits the area is known as BC’s “Golden Triange”.

1885 Granite Creek Gold Rush

Granite Creek is a tributary to the Tulameen River. In the gold rush era of the late 1800s the Tulameen was still a remote and wild area. Like many of the best discoveries the Granite Creek gold was found by chance. In this case it was actually found by a cowboy named Johnny Chance. In the summer of 1885 Chance was delivering some horses to New Westminster and took a route through the Tulameen. True to his lazy nature he took a nap at a spot on Granite Creek on a hot day. When he woke up he happened to notice the reflection of some gold nuggets in the water.

Within a year of the discovery the once vacant valley at the mouth of Granite Creek had over 2000 people living there. At the time Granite City was the third largest town in BC. There were over two hundred buildings, 13 of which were saloons. The town never had a school or a mayor though. The bars in Granite ran flat out and never closed down. It was known as one of the wildest towns in the West.

In the early days gold nuggets weighing 5-10 ounces were commonly found. Platinum was also prevalent on the creek. Miners were producing equal weights of platinum and gold. Interestingly for the first few years the Granite Creek miners had no idea what platinum was and most of them threw it back into the creek. At today’s prices gold is going for $1077/oz and platinum is at $870/oz.

The Granite Creek rush brought attention to the surrounding area as well. Other notable creeks in the Tulameen are Slate Creek, Lawless Creek, Lockie Creek and the Tulameen River. Gold and platinum are still being produced today. I heard from a Princeton local that the biggest nuggets to come out of the Tulameen this year were over an ounce. I have some claims on Granite Creek and the Tulameen River myself. Check this post from earlier this year Tulameen Prospecting Trip.

By the end of the 1890s the population of Granite City began to decline. The easy gold was all claimed and in the process of being mined. Those that didn’t already hold good ground headed North to try their luck in the Atlin and Klondike gold rushes that followed.

1898 Atlin Gold Rush

The Atlin gold rush was the last one to take place in BC. It was a direct offshoot of the Klondike gold rush that took the world by storm. The Klondike was the mother of all gold rushes, over 100,000 adventurers poured into Dawson City, YK from all over the world. Some of the adventurous prospectors took a different route and ended up in Atlin.

The first big discovery was on Pine Creek. A town was set up on Pine Creek aptly named Discovery. At it’s peak there were over 10,000 people living in Discovery which was rivalled only by the infamous Dawson City. Discovery had all the excitement of Dawson. There were saloons, brothels, and gambling available at all hours of the day. Discovery is a ghost town today, it was replaced by the town of Atlin.

The gold that was found in the Atlin area was truly legendary. It is estimated that over 1.5 million ounces of placer gold have been produced from the creeks. Some giant nuggets were found too. Several creeks are known to have produced nuggets in excess of 50 ounces! The best placer gold creeks were Pine Creek, Spruce Creek, Ruby Creek, McKee Creek, Birch Creek, Boulder Creek, Otter (Surprise) Creek, and the McDonnel River.

Atlin is a beautiful town, I had the pleasure of working up there a few years ago. In the early 1900s it was nicknamed the “Switzerland of the North” due to the picturesque mountain setting. In many ways Atlin is like Dawson City’s little brother. The music festival is smaller, the gold rush was smaller, less gold was produced but the Klondike is nowhere near as scenic.

Gold mining in Atlin has never stopped. Every time the gold price spikes the area receives another mini gold rush. There are a lot of large hard rock mining prospects in the area as well. The region is not far from the golden triangle and benefits from similar underlying geology. Due to its remote location the area is very under explored and has outstanding potential for exploration.

The BC gold rush period lasted just 50 years. Many of the participants experienced more than one rush in their lifetime. It would have been an amazing time to be a prospector. Here’s a recap of the top ten BC gold rushes:

1851 Haida Gwaii Gold Rush
1858 Fraser River Gold Rush
1858 Rock Creek Gold Rush
1859 Cariboo Gold Rush
1863 Wild Horse River Gold Rush

1864 Leech River Gold Rush
1865 Big Bend Gold Rush
1873 Cassiar Gold Rush
1885 Granite Creek Gold Rush
1898 Atlin Gold Rush

The history of British Columbia is the history of gold and the men who hunt for it. It was the Fraser River gold rush that led to BC becoming a colony and later a province. Our towns, overland trails and roads, and much of the early infrastructure was built to support gold mining activity. Without our lust for precious metal men would not have risked their lives to explore the rugged and unforgiving wilderness of this beautiful province.

Top Ten Gold Rushes of BC – Part 1

PlacerGold History, Lists November 16, 2015Barkerville, Cariboo, Dewdney, Fraser, ghost town, gold, gold mining, gold pan, gold panning, gold rush, Lecchtown, Lillooet, lode gold, placer, placer claim, Rock Creek, Similkameen, vancouver, Wild Horse 5 Comments

Prior to the gold rushes in BC this part of the country remained almost entirely unexplored. The Clovis people and their descendants the North American Indians were the first settlers of North America. The Clovis crossed the Beringia Land Bridge from Siberia to present day Alaska approximately 13,500 years ago. When Europeans began exploring the area, first by sea in the late 1700s and later by canoe, they encountered aboriginal groups covering much of the province. Many Indians had seen gold in creeks but had little use for it. They did not have the knowledge or motivation to mine gold until they came into contact with Europeans. After learning the value of gold to the British they began to mine it and trade for goods.

Map of British Columbia Goldfields circa 1858, click for larger image

The Spanish explorers on the other hand were completely obsessed with the yellow metal. Spanish explorers were motivated primarily by legends of “El Dorado” in their search of the Americas. Each Spanish explorer had the ultimate goal of returning to Spain with a ship full of gold. Most of their attention was focussed in South America where their superior weaponry, armour and small pox allowed them to quickly decimate tribal empires and steal their gold. There is evidence of Spanish gold exploration in BC as well. Most of the Spanish exploration took place on Vancouver Island and other coastal areas such as Haida Gwaii. One Spanish expedition travelled inland as far as the Okanagan and Similkameen regions.

Fur trading is what led to the first European settlement of British Colombia but the impact remained relatively small. The first settlements were established by early explorers such as Simon Fraser, Alexander Mackenzie, and David Thompson. Early forts were established along the river routes that these explorers used as well as along the coast. The area became a recognized fur trading district called New Caledonia and it held that name until it became a British Colony in 1858.

Fort St. James was founded in 1806 and was the first major inland fur trading post in BC and still bears that name. Other notable early forts are Ft. George (now Prince George), Ft. Kamloops, Ft. Langley and Ft. Victoria (1844). During the fur trade the European population slowly grew to a few hundred people but little effort was put into exploring new ground outside of the established trade routes.

1851 Haida Gwaii Gold Rush

The Haida Gwaii gold rush was the first recorded gold rush in BC but was very short lived due to hostilities with the local natives. The rush began in 1851 when a Haida man traded a 27 ounce nugget for 1500 blankets in Fort Victoria. A Hudson’s Bay Company ship was sent up there soon after and discovered a very high grade lode deposit.

The HBC crew began mining the lode deposit but the Haida Indians soon turned against them and prevented further mining. In 1852 a ship with 35 adventurers from San Francisco set out for the islands. They arrived at “Gold Harbour” in the Tasu Sound but did not have much luck finding gold. They did however manage to trade with the Haida Indians for gold.

1857 Gold Found At the Nicoamen River

Placer gold was discovered in Nicoamen River which is a tributary to the Thompson River. The Nicoamen enters the Thompson about 12 kilometers up stream from the confluence with the Fraser River at Lytton. A local Indian discovered gold there by chance and soon the majority of the tribe was mining the area. This discovery is credited with igniting the Fraser River gold rush.

1858 Fraser River Gold Rush

The Fraser River gold rush involved one of the largest populations of migrant prospectors in history. It is estimated that around 30,000 people rushed to the lower Fraser River in 1858. The rush began after an 800 ounce gold sample was sent from Fort Victoria to San Francisco for assay.

Soon after a shipload of 800 American prospectors from California arrived in Victoria to hunt for gold on the Fraser River. The influx of American prospectors overwhelmed the small government that managed the territory. HBC Governor James Douglas requested immediate help from Britain to control this massive foreign population . The British Government responded by formally claiming BC as sovereign British Colony in 1858. The new government quickly enacted mining laws to prevent the mayhem that took place in the California goldfields. Along with the declaration came British military support and the Royal Engineers who went on to build several major road systems including the Cariboo Wagon road and Dewdney Trail.

The early work centred around the community of Hope where steamboats allowed for easy access. The majority of the gold rushers were participants in the California gold rush that fizzled out a few years earlier. As a result the population of Yale was largely american and the town was modelled after San Francisco.

A story in the San Francisco Bulletin is credited with igniting the rush. According to the newspaper:

“In one month the Hudson’s Bay Company fort in Victoria had received 110 pounds of gold dust from the Indians … (prospected) without aid of anything more than … pans and willow baskets.”

Numerous bars were prospected and mined between Hope and Lytton. Some communities along the Fraser are still named after the bars that were mined such as “Boston Bar”. Like most gold rushes the men who arrived first snapped up the good claims and the the majority of the adventurers ended up working for them.

Cariboo Wagon Road in Fraser Canyon 1867

The British Royal engineers developed a route from Port Douglas at the head of Harrison Lake to Lillooet to accommodate the influx of miners. Many new communities popped up and some are still settled today.

The Fraser rush brought people from all over the world but the bulk of the miners came from California. At the peak of the rush there were over 10,000 miners operating on the section of river form Hope to Lillooet. The bars depleted rapidly and by 1860 most of the miners continued on the other gold rushes in BC.

1858 Rock Creek Gold Rush

Gold was discovered in Rock Creek in 1858 soon after miners rushed in from the United States and the rest of the world. The Rock Creek rush was also instrumental in the development of British Columbia. The discovery was made by two American soldiers who were chased North of the boarder by a band of Indians. Just 5km from the border where an unnammed creek entered the Kettle River they found gold.

XGEA8_008 — This photo is actually from Rock Creek in Alaska, not BC. Still a good photo though.

At the time of the discovery the colony of British Columbia was only a year old. American miners tried to claim the area as part of the United States due to the high grades and the fact that it was discovered by Americans. The Rock Creek claim issues prompted the construction of the Dewdney Trail as a means to separate the new colony from the United States. The Dewdney Trail snaked its way from New Westminster all the way to Wild Horse in the Kootenay region staying just North of the Canada-US border.

Soon after the discovery an estimated 5,000 prospectors migrated to the newly established town of Rock Creek. In the beginning there were two saloons, a butcher’s shop, a hotel and five stores. Within the first year a revolt broke out due to tensions between Chinese and American miners and refusal to pay for mining licences. The incident became known as the Rock Creek War. The governor of British Columbia Sir James Douglas travelled there from Victoria to straighten out the miners. He threatened to send in 500 British soldiers if they couldn’t behave themselves. Sir Douglas was successful and soon the miners paid their claim fees and mined the creeks in peace.

There were some amazing claims on Rock Creek. Adam Beame’s claim on Soldier’s Bar in 1859 allegedly netted $1,000 in six weeks. That gold would be worth $70,500 today! Other bars such as Denver Bar and White’s Bar produced similar results.

1859 Cariboo Gold Rush

Gold was discovered on the Horsefly River in 1859 by prospectors who participated in the Fraser River rush. They were guided by a local Indian and shown a spot on the Horsefly River with abundant gold and nuggets the size of wheat kernels. The rush was on as more miners from the Fraser River rush migrated North to the Cariboo. Soon a town was erected near the strike that exists today.

In 1860 gold was discovered on Keithly and Antler creeks to the North of Horsefly. Other notable creeks of the region are Lightning, Lowhee, and Williams Creeks, the Quesnel River and Parsnip River. Towns popped up all over the place with the most exciting being Barkerville. That town was named after a British prospector named Billy Barker and had a popluaton of 10,000 at its peak. His claim on Willams Creek was one of the greatest gold producers in history yielding an estimated 37,500 ounces of gold. Barkerville was restored in 1997 as a tourist historic town that is a popular attraction in the area.

Barkerville1868 — Barkerville circa 1868

The Cariboo gold rush saw 100,000 people flood into the area during 1862-70 from all over the world. By 1864 the Cariboo Wagon Road was completed from New Westminster all the way to Barkerville. This allowed for easy travel of people and supplies, wich substantially brought down the costs. It also allowed for stage coaches to securely move gold from the mines. The stagecoaches operated on this road from 1863 to 1917 carrying people, mail, express packages and of course gold. The stagecoaches saw surprisingly few hold ups, even though they carried literally tons of gold. There are only five hold ups on record, two of which were successful.

By 1870 the gold rush had largely fizzled out. The good claims were now owned by mining companies who could gather the money needed to undertake underground drift mining. Those who didn’t stick around to work in underground mines spread around other parts of BC’s North and some sparked gold rushes in new areas. Others settled in and started up cattle ranches or logging companies. Gold mining in the Cariboo is still active today, as a matter of fact I have a couple claims near Keithly Creek.

1863 Wild Horse River Gold Rush

Gold was discovered on the Wild Horse River in the Kootenay region in 1863 once again by American prospectors. The Wild Horse held great gold reserves and still does today. Early in the rush huge nuggets were found with the biggest tipping the scale at 36 ounces. The first town that was built was called Fisherville. Apparently after one resident found a nugget under his house the size of his fist the whole town burned their houses down to dig underneath.

A town was erected named Galbraith’s Ferry, named after John Galbraith who operated a ferry across Kootenay lake. Later the town was re-named Fort Steele after the legendary Sam Steele. A second gold rush broke out in the same area in 1885. Later hard rock silver rushes spread around the region.

The Wild Horse River is estimated to have produced over $7,000,000 in the initial gold rush which would be worth about $490,000,000 today. There is a very well preserved historic town at Fort Steel that is a popular tourist spot with many actors playing the roles of old time blacksmiths, prospectors, sheriffs and so on. It is located North of Cranbrook at the intersection between Highway 93 and 95.

The initial gold rush ended after about 6 years but soon the great silver rush would flood the region. Places like Nelson, Kaslo, Slocan grew out of the silver rushes that blanketed the Kootenay region.

1864 Leech River Gold Rush

The Leech River gold rush started with a letter from Robert Brown who was Commander of the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition. Yes that was the correct name of the VIEE expedition. The expedition was launched by the British government in Victoria.

1880Leechtown — 1880 map depicting the locaton of Leechtown

A letter from Brown published in the British Colonist newspaper on July 29, 1864 ignited the rush. Here are some exerpts from the letter:

..the intelligence I have to communicate is of too important a nature to bear delay in forwarding to you, even for one hour…

The discovery which I have to communicate is the finding of gold on the banks of one of the Forks of the Sooke River, about 12 miles from the sea in a straight line, and in a locality never hitherto reached by white men, in all probability never even by natives. I forward anquarter eighth of an ounce (or thereabouts) of the coarse scale gold, washed out of twelve pans of dirt, in many places 20 feet above the river, and with no tools but a shovel and a gold pan. The lowest prospect obtained was 3 cents to the pan, the highest $1 to the pan, and work like that with a rocker would yield what pay you can better calculate than I can, and the development of which, with what results to the Colony you may imagine.

Leechtown - Berks Hotel — Leechtown – Berks Hotel

A town called Leechtown was built near the discovery. By November that year there were an estimated 6 general stores, 3 hotels and over 1,200 miners at work in the area. By 1866 an estimated 200,000 ounces of gold had been produced in the area and the gold rush had passed its peak. It was over in a flash as the Leech and Sooke river placer deposits, although high grade, were limited in size.

In the span of one decade gold rushes turned the vast unexplored fur trading district of New Caledonia into a sovereign British Colony. By the end of the 1860’s the new region had gone from a population of under one thousand people to a colony with several major wagon roads and towns covering much of the Southern half of BC. The gold rushes continued and led to more development in British Columbia. Stay tuned for part 2.

Check out part two here:

Part 2: Top 10 Gold Rushes

Search for Slumach’s Lost Gold Mine – Part 1 The Legend

PlacerGold History, Trip Reports June 9, 2015gold, jackson, lost mine, Pitt lake gold, quartz vein, rock climbing, slumach, stave glacier, terrarosa, volcanic brown 18 Comments

There are many legends on the West Coast of lost treasure, mines, and caches of precious metal. They are entertaining and spark our adult imagination the same way fantasy novels did when we were kids. I have to admit that I am fascinated with theses stories and the lure of stumbling upon a huge reserve of gold is hard to ignore. The closer to home the legends are the more tantalizing they become. One pervasive legend is the legend of Slumach’s lost gold mine. I have been part of two expeditions to find this mine in 2012 and 2014.

Mountain Panning — Panning Above Stave Valley

On the West coast this legend is well known. Books have been written about this legend so I’m not going to regurgitate the whole story here, this is about my own search for the treasure. I first read of the story in a book called “Lost Bonanzas of Western Canada”. There was a description of the legend and stories of historic attempts to find the mine. Another great book on the subject is “Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend“. There is lots of info online as well.

The legend states that in the late 1800s a Coquitlam native named Slumach would occasionally come into New Westminster with a bag full of gold nuggets. He would blow the wealth on liquor and brothels and eventually return to his cabin on Pitt Lake. Slumach allegedly would never tell the location of his mine to anyone. In 1890 Slumach was found guilty of the murder of man named Louis Bee and hanged a year later for the crime. There is a lot of debate around the circumstances of the murder, it may have been self defence but that is irrelevant as far as the gold is concerned. It is said that prior to being hanged Slumach put a curse on the mine in the Chinook language “Nika memloose, mine memloose”. When translated into english the curse means “No man who finds the gold will live long enough to bring it out.”

There are all sorts of ideas about the facts surrounding Slumach’s trial, his life and so on. The truth is there isn’t much recorded history about the guy. Some say he took women up the mine to cook for him and murdered them to hide the location. Others believe their is no mine at all and he got his gold from robbing other miners in the area. None of that really matters as far as finding a rich gold deposit in the mountains North of Pitt Lake.

There are other characters in the ongoing story that hold much more compelling evidence. Not least of which is a prospector known only as “Jackson”. He left a letter vaguely describing the location of a creek rich with nuggets. Apparently Jackson found a very rich gold bearing stream somewhere North of Pitt Lake. He carried as much gold with him out and buried the rest due to the weight under a tent shaped rock. Jackson seemingly wrote the letter from his death bed in San Fransisco unable to return to claim his gold. Here is the text of the Jackson letter:

Dear Friend,
It will come to you as a surprise after all these years to hear from me for no doubt you have long since forgotten me. But you will remember the old man you so kindly grub staked with money and provisions at Guytos. Since then I have prospected with the varied success that usually goes with the life of a prospector.
In 1901 I went to B.C. and it is of this trip I want to tell, and hope you will gain by it untold thousands for your kindness to me. I heard you went broke like most everyone else at Guytos but had lost all trace of you since then except that you had gone to Washington. Well, I made a great discovery in New Westminster but after coming out for supplies and tools was taken down with a severe attack of rheumatism that ever since has left me almost bedfast until a short time ago, when I recovered sufficiently as though to make the trip again.
I made up my mind to hunt you up and take you with me. In hunting over a Seattle directory I found your name and address and concluded to come to Seattle and talk the matter over with you. A few days after arriving here from my little place in the hills, I was suddenly stricken down again and the Doctors say that I will never recover and may drop off any time for my heart is badly affected. So I will tell you of my trip and what I found and direct you to the best I can to find it. It is too great to be lost to the world and I know with you it will be in good hands.

Well, I arrived in Vancouver about the first of July and hired a couple of natives to take me to the headwaters of the ____ then dismissing the natives I struck out in the mountains, and they are rough ones. I prospected up beyond the lake but found nothing of importance. But the formation looked all right. I concluded to prospect back towards ____ Lake. I kept well up on the mountains but was often compelled to make long trips down before crossing could be found on the deep canyons.
I had been out about two months and found myself running short of grub. I lived mostly on fresh meat for one can’t carry much of a pack in those hills. Found a few very promising ledges and some color in the little creeks, but nothing I cared to stay with. I had almost made up my mind to light out the next day. I climbed to the top of a sharp ridge and looked down into a little canyon or valley about one mile and a half or two miles long, but what struck me as singular, it appeared to have no outlet for the little creek that flowed at the bottom. Afterwards I found the creek entered a ______ and is lost.
After some difficulty I found my way down to the creek. The water was almost white. The formation for the most had been slate and granite but there I found a kind of schist and slate formation. Now comes the interesting part. I had only a small prospecting pan, but I found colors at once right on the surface and such colors they were. I knew then I had struck it rich at last.
In going up stream I came to a place where the bedrock was bare and there you can hardly believe me, but the bedrock was yellow with gold. In a few days I gathered thousands and there were thousands more in sight. Some of the nuggets were as big as walnuts and there were many chunks carrying quartz. After sizing up carefully I saw that there were millions stowed away in the little cracks. On account of the weight I buried part of the gold at the foot of a large tent shaped rock facing the creek. You can’t miss it. There is a mark cut out in it. Taking with me what I supposed to be about $10,000 proved to be over $8,000. After three days of extreme hard traveling it would not be over 2 days of good going but the way was rough and I was not feeling well. I arrived at the lake and while resting there at the Indian Camp was taken sick and have never since been able to return and now I fear I never shall. I am alone in the world. No relations, no one to look to me for anything.
Of course I have never spoken of this find during all this time for fear of it being discovered. It has caused me many anxious hours but the place is so well guarded by surrounding ridges that it should not be found for many years unless someone knew its being there.
Oh, how I wish I could go with you and show you to the wonderful place for I find I can’t give any exact directions and it may take you a year or more to find it but don’t give it up. Keep at it and you will not fail and you will be repaid beyond your wildest dreams.
I believe any further directions only tend to confuse so I will only suggest further that you go alone or at least take one or two Indians to pack food and no one need to know but you were going on a hunting trip until you find the place and get everything fixed up to suit yourself.
When you find it, and I am sure you will, should you care to see me advertize in the “Frisco Examiner” and if I am living I will either come and see you or let you know where to find me but once more I say to you don’t fail to look this great property up and don’t give up till you find it. I am very sorry I can’t give you more definite instructions. Of course I expected to have gone back long since. I have drawn a rough sketch that will help you. Success and happiness.
Yours truly,
W. Jackson

Not much else is known about Jackson. There is another character called Volcanic Brown also known as R.A or “Doc” Brown. Unlike the previous two Volcanic was well known in BC in the early 1900s. Volcanic was a respected healer and prospector with many successes. There is even a ghost town from a mine that was discovered by Brown that is called Volcanic City. He discovered the large scale Copper Mountain mine outside of Princeton that is still operating today. Volcanic Brown is said to have gained a copy of the Jackson letter and started looking for the lost mine in the late 1920s. He would go each summer and stay out there for several months. In 1928 he got frostbite and amputated one of his toes and continued to hike out. I can tell you after hiking this area myself I would not have come back after that.

Volcanic Brown would check in at the small logging community of Alvin at the head of Pitt Lake at the end of his season. In 1931 he did not check in and soon after a search party went out looking for him. The search party trekked over the Stave glacier in November to find Volcanic (no small feat in itself). They didn’t find the man but they are said to have found a collapsible pup tent, some cooking utensils, a double barreled shotgun, a notebook containing herbal remedies, and a glass jar containing eleven ounces of course gold. The gold is said to have contained traces of quartz and was believed to have been hammered out of a solid vein. The rescue attempt was well recorded, it even made the newspaper. So Volcanic Brown definitely found some nice gold out there. His last camp was found in the valley at the beginning of the Stave river near Upper Stave Lake. My expeditions were in a similar area.

The final character is Stu Brown, no relation to Volcanic. For me the Stu Brown story is what made the Slumach legend believable. Brown had several science degrees and was a world war two air force veteran. He apparently used stereoscopic air photos to identify the area described in Jackson’s letter. The area that he identified was inside Garibaldi provincial park. Stu Brown wrote numerous letters to the government asking for permission to claim the site and extract the gold. He was unsuccessful in persuading them to allow him to mine, he even sent a letter to Teck mining corporation.

Stu described a 100′ high natural rock dam blocking a stream where water shoots out of a hole in the dam. He described a pool at the base of the dam that is ankle deep in gold. Stu was never able to give accurate directions to the spot however.

In 2012 I embarked on our first expedition to Terrarosa lake which is at the foot of the Terrarosa glacier and near the Stave glacier. We did some gold panning and sampling in the area of interest. This area was selected because it is near Volcanic’s last camp and vague clues that Stu Brown gave out seemed to fit in this area. The geology of the area is very favourable for epithermal gold as well with a huge fault passing through from Glacier lake marking the boundary between two geological units. In 2014 we reached a lower area in the valley between the Stave and Terrarosa Glaciers. 2012 took us 8 days and 2014 took 9 days of unsupported backpacking and rock climbing in very rugged terrain. My next post will describe the details of the expeditions.

Check out part two here:

Part 2: Expeditions

Tulameen Prospecting Trip

PlacerGold History, Trip Reports June 5, 2015ghost town, gold, gold mining, gold mining equipment, gold pan, gold panning, gold rush, Granite City, Kettle Valley, placer, placer claim, pyramid pan, Similkameen, Tulameen, Tunnels 0 Comment

Last weekend I went out to check out some claims on Granite Creek. This creek experienced a significant gold rush in 1885. The ghost town of Granite city is at the mouth of the creek, what’s left of it anyway. Our GPS track is below.

We took Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton then took the backroads through the Tulameen. The first stop was the Granite City ghost town, then up Granite Creek to my claims. Later we drove up through the town of Tulameen up the Forestry roads to see Tulameen falls. We camped nearby and exited the dirt roads at Britton Creek on the Coquihalla highway. We checked out the Othello tunnels on the way home. The whole trip was approximately 470km. My 8 year old son accompanied me on this trip because he had a geography report for school and decided to do it on the history of this area.

We passed through the hamlet of Coalmont on the way to Granite Creek. There’s not much there except for a couple of streets with some old buildings and these funny signs.

I had been waiting a long time to check out the Granite City ghost town. It was quite a large city at the height of the gold rush. There were over two hundred buildings, 13 of which were saloons. The bars in Granite ran flat out 24/7. This was a real frontier town with all the ingredients for a great western movie, gunslingers, gamblers and prospectors. With a population of over two thousand in 1885 Granite City was the third largest city in BC, even larger than Vancouver at the time.

There are many stories about Granite City, such as the lost platinum cache. It is interesting that the tributaries of the Tulameen, including Granite Creek, are one of two places in the world where both platinum and gold are found in the creeks. The other is the Amur river in Russia. At the beginning of the gold rush in this area the miners were collecting platinum in their gold pans and rockers but they didn’t know what it was. Platinum is very dense and will sit in the bottom a gold pan the same way gold does. I have found platinum in my pan before and it took me a couple seconds to realize what it was. Most miners kept their platinum but many threw it away with their black sands.

The lost cache legend states that a prospector named Johannson collected platinum from the miners and build up several tin cans full. He apparently buried his cache within sight of the front door of his cabin with the intention of returning to collect it. He was never heard from again. At any rate there is not much left of this gold rush town today. There are a handful of cabins in various states of decay, a monument and a graveyard.

My claims are about 17 kilometers up the road from the old townsite. We took the Arastra creek forest road up to the confluence of Arastra and Granite creeks. I met a local prospector while we were up there and he told me Arastra creek got its name because the chinese miners built a large water wheel crusher called and Arastra. The claims that I have are not directly on the water so we had to bring our samples to the creek to pan. It was very labor intensive.

One claim was right off the road so we were able to use my truck to drive the buckets of gravel to the creek. The second claim required that we hike along Granite creek on a very old trail. While hiking along the 2km section to my claim one can’t help but imagine what it would have been like out here in the 1880s. There was evidence of old camps and such all along the way. We even found an old miner’s cabin that had long since been deserted.

We managed to get a few samples of 20L each. I concentrated the samples on site with my pyramid pan so I only had to hike out with 1L bags. We did a few test pans around the area and saw some color. No platinum though. After finishing the work on my claims we packed up our camp and headed up the Tulameen to check out an awesome waterfall called Tulameen falls.

The waterfall is located approximately 30km up the river from the townsite of Tulameen. The Similkameen tourist pamphlet that we picked up in Princeton said the waterfall is accessed by a 1km moderate hiking trail with two river crossings. That doesn’t sound too bad. When we got to the trail head it looked like nothing was there it seems that a forestry operation has moved the road an piled banks of large rocks over the old recreation site. We found the trail marked by spray paint on a tree. The first part was not too bad, then we crossed the river in our bare feet to keep our boots dry. There were signs to only cross in low water but it seemed low enough. The water was up to my mid thigh but a lot higher on my son. After that the trail was pretty bad with some sections of no trail at all. It looked like it was a well maintained trail once but must have been hit with a flood or something. The waterfall is amazing, it has over 1400 feet of drop and a lot of water pouring over it.

We found a really nice free camp site a few kilometers up the road from the trailhead. It is called Sutter Creek Recreation Site. After staying the night we headed back to civilization with one more stop on the way. We checked out the Othello tunnels just North of Hope. These tunnels were part of the old Kettle Valley railroad. The KVR was a steam railroad the serviced the region from Hope to present day Kelowna. There are five tunnels close together and several bridges to make it possible to access this section of the Coquihalla canyon. Apparently the lead engineer was a Shakepeare nut and named several of the stations after characters from Shakepeare plays. There were Othello, Romeo, Juliet, Lear, Jessica, Shylock and Portia.

Overall it was a great trip. We did some initial sampling on two claims and saw some cool parts of Southern BC. I have other claims in the area and will be back soon. There’s something about the Tulameen that gives an eerie feeling when you are out there. It could be the remoteness or the history of the area. Maybe its the platinum, whatever it is I like it and can’t wait to explore the region in the future.

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