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W I N T E R 2 0 1 4 Photograph : Government of British Columbia
discoveries of small veins containing
copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold, that
there were large and rich ore deposits
to be found. As British journalist F.A.
Talbot put it in 1911, the area offered "a
first-rate sporting chance" of hosting
economic mineral deposits.
Hazelton, ser ved by sternwheel
steamboats on the Skeena River from
1891 until the completion of the rail-
road to New Hazelton in 1912, was the
administrative and main supply centre
in the early years and many prospec-
tors were based there. When a couple of
saloon-hotels and a store were opened at
Aldermere about 1904, and Telkwa was
founded in 1907, some settled in that
general area. A few started small farms
and went prospecting after haying was
over – there was a good demand for
horse hay in those days, when pack trains
were still the main carriers of supplies.
Smithers was founded in 1913, when the
railway arrived in the Bulkley Valley.
The prospectors were not entirely on
their own because some technical and
other assistance was provided by the fed-
eral and provincial governments.
The Provincial Mineralogist, Fleet
Robertson, came through the valley on
horseback in 1905, assessing the poten-
tial of coal prospects on and near the
Telkwa River and of mineral claims in
the Telkwa and Babine mountains and
near Hudson Bay Mountain. He gath-
ered valuable geological, agricultural,
historical and climatic information about
the region at a time when there was "nei-
ther waggon nor waggon road between
Hazelton and Quesnel," as he wrote.
W.W. Leach, of the Geological
Survey of Canada, spent much of the
summers of 1906 to 1908 in the Bulkley
