Mineral Exploration is the official publication of the Association of Mineral Exploration British Columbia.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/428696
1961: David Dennis, Dick Hall and Lefty Gardiner. 1914: Dan Haigh, Joe "Kicker" Kelly, and Tom Haigh Photographs : Cour te sy Tony L'Orsa W I N T E R 2 0 1 4 105 A colourful cast of characters Who were the early prospectors and miners in the Bulkley Valley and what was it like? Although many prospectors were mining and gold rush followers who had worked their various ways up from the States and other parts of the world, some were natives born in this area. THE PIONEER PROSPECTOR One of the first prospectors was William Binnie "Tom" Forrest, who died in Hazelton in 1923 at the age of 83. The Interior News of September 26, 1923, described him as "the last remaining mem- ber of the early band of pioneer prospectors in this section" and went on to report that Forrest staked the first mineral claims in the Bulkley Valley, on Hudson Bay Mountain and on Dome Mountain, in 1898. Not only had he lived "an honest and straightforward life," but also, "…today, the intense prospecting and development is carried on with greater ease because of the trails blazed and built by the departed pioneer on Dome Mountain." About 16,800 ounces of gold were recovered from gold veins on Dome Mountain in the early 1990s and the mine is being readied for production again. A WELL-EARNED PAYDAY J.J. Herman was a well-known Smithers businessman who, in 1936, made a deal with Tommy King on the Little Joe prospect in the Babine Mountains. The little mine was well above tree line and the upper part of the trail was cut across a talus slope. Herman mined and sorted ore by hand, seven to eight sacks per day. Joe "Kicker" Kelly (Kelly's Cave), a colourful Smithers prospector, helped sort and bag the ore. Kelly, who had made his way up here from Kentucky about 1914, was a good horse-packer and a cook. "We ate a lot of beans," laughed J.J. Ben Nelson. Emery Tomkins took out the ore with packhorses by way of the trail to Sunny Point and then the Driftwood Creek road to Smithers. The ore then went by rail to the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company smelter at Trail, B.C. But it was late in the season by the time they were ready to ship and they were having some awful snow- storms. Herman had vivid memories of the horses coming up the mountain along the narrow rocky trail in a blizzard, led by an old pinto. When the eight packhorses arrived at the mine, each horse was loaded with two sacks of ore quickly secured with a barrel hitch, and then back down the mountain they went. They came up every other day, so the horses got a rest. The weather got so bad that Herman and Kelly did not know if the horses could get in for the last shipment or not. They were just bagging the last bit of ore when they saw the horses down below, barely visible through the falling snow. "I never saw something that looked so welcome," Herman recalled. When the packers arrived, they all went into the mine, around a corner in the dark, with their miner's lights on. They ate their lunches in a festive mood; it was a little farewell party. Then they went back out to the horses in the snow. Much of the trail was already blown over, and they had old Pinto take the lead. He had a hard job but he was able to nose around, find the trail, and lead them down the mountain and home for the winter. The ore shipment of five tons assayed 320.5 ounces per ton silver, 0.64 ounces per ton gold, 8.7 per cent copper, 3.1 per cent lead and 5.5 per cent zinc. WAR HERO John "Jack" MacKendrick (Mount McKendrick, McKendrick Creek) came from Campbellton, N.B., and worked on his gold quartz claims in the southern Babine Mountains on the mountain that now bears his slightly misspelled name. In February 1916, he joined the 102nd (Comox-Atlin) Battalion of the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in Telkwa and was sent to France. He was killed in action on the first day of the battle for Vimy Ridge. THE SECOND-GENERATION PROSPECTOR AND MINER David Dennis (Dennis Lake) did a lot of packing for various mining companies in the early days and he also was a prospector. When he was a youngster, he went with his father to a locality in the Hudson Bay Mountain area where they dug out small amounts of native (metallic) copper for use as bullets in their muzzle-loader. Dennis remembered that he was 16 years old when he saw his first white man.