W inte r 20 17 57
Washington and California. Those coming
from Vancouver and New Westminster
travelled by train or steamship to Hope.
There, they purchased supplies and trudged
four to five days along the Dewdney and
Hope trails to Princeton, and then a half-day
trip to Granite Creek. Construction crews
working on the Canadian Pacific Railway
seized the opportunity to make a fortune
and arrived at Granite Creek with great
anticipation. However, with no placer mining
experience, their dreams were dashed when
they discovered they were only qualified to
work for day wages with established miners.
Granite Creek rapidly became a hive
of activity as the miners established
their claims along the five-mile stretch
of prospective gold-bearing creek beds
and banks. South of this stretch, the
creek forks into two tributaries. There
were many development challenges
because the productive section of the
creek is carved out as a deep V-shaped
gorge through which water flow can
reach devastating flood stages from
sudden rainfalls and during the spring
runoœ. These floods can wash out flumes,
wingdams and sluices. Also, parts of the
banks were so steep that some miners
built their cabins as much as 600 feet
upslope from their claims, and scaled up
and down the embankment by ropes.
By October 31, 1885, less than four
months after Chance's discovery, 34
companies and teams of miners were
successfully recovering gold, and another
28 groups were at various stages of
developing their claims. At this stage,
approximately 5,400 ounces of gold valued
at $90,000 were reported as recovered.
This total was surely very conservative,
as the Chinese miners were notorious for
not reporting their actual gold recoveries.
There were reports of several bonanza
gold recoveries –¡one miner recovered
24 ounces in one afternoon with a rocker,
then an eight-man crew washed 45
ounces in four hours. Working on his
Discovery claim, Chance recovered almost
48 ounces in one day. Meanwhile, there
were reports of new discoveries along
the upper reaches of Granite Creek.
KitimatStikine_Digest.indd 1 2017-10-20 1:26 PM
James Hume / Lloyd Hume / Hector De Los Santos Toll free 1-877-942-5551 sales@eaglemapping.com
Eagle Mapping.indd 1 2017-02-02 3:19 PM
