gold | Stoness Travel Blog

Barkerville’s Waterwheel Show

British Columbia has many reasons for you to visit, and one worth paying attention to is a visit to the Historic Town of Barkerville. When great finds of gold happened in the west, Barkerville was at the forefront.

You can tell that this fellow never does anything wrong.

Gold was being rooted out of the streams all along the Fraser River. When Billy Barker arrived at Williams Creek, 1862, he found miners already abandoning claims and heading for new areas. They had panned the surface gold, and even dug down a few feet, and finding nothing, they had had enough and were ready to move on. Barker staked land along Williams Creek, perhaps even bought a few claims from those leaving the area,

and he started to dig down. There was an abundance of scoffers about his great digs, and with good reason. He dug several pits, and found nothing, and that’s what everyone had told him. “You are wasting your time. Move on to some new areas before all the good claims are gone.”
It must be realized that digging a pit down through accumulated river sediments was not a simple task. You needed to build a solid wood frame on the sides of your pit to prevent a cave-in from

burying the digging crew. Also, the lower you went, the wetter the digging, and there was even more potential of cave-ins. You had to send up the muck, sand, and rocks in buckets pulled up using a type of tripod and pulley. The object of the pit was to dig to bedrock in an old river channel, and see if gold might be located in the crevices and adjacent sand or clay. Once at the bottom you would explore sideways along the solid rock by building a tunnel. This is not work for the claustrophobic.

Winch for Lifting Bucket of Gravel, and people

In late summer of 1862 they were down 52 feet when they saw the glint of gold. Their digging had landed them right on top of a rich gold lead. This rich lead was extremely rich. One day they recovered as much as 50 ounces of gold in a pail full of sand and clay. The gold bearing zone was thick and estimates the eventually over 2 billion dollars of gold in today’s prices, came out of the streambed.
Removing the paydirt was made easier using the Cornish Waterwheel. At Barkerville there is a tremendously popular skit between a worker, and a manager, showing how the waterwheel worked. The role of the miner is well done by a man who has been doing it for several years, and he has his actions and facial expressions down pat.

He shows how the waterwheel powers the cable that holds the bucket that brings up the paydirt. It was also used to move the miners up and down from their moist and dripping work area. It also passed water over the sluice box that contained the pay dirt, separating the gravel and sand from the gold which collected in places along the bottom of the sluice box.
Make plans for next year, and be one of the more than 60,000 visitors to the Historic Town of Barkerville.

Happy RVing!
For more than four decades James Stoness has travelled the roads of North America, photographing and writing about what he has seen. His travel articles and beautiful pictures have been published in several magazines and newspapers. He is also the author of five western novels. Visit his website at: www.stonesstravelguides.com

Historic Hat Creek Ranch

Way back in the mid 1800’s travellers seeking gold flocked into the Cariboo and Chilcotin Plateaus of British Columbia. The building of the Cariboo Wagon Road provided an easier way of getting to the gold fields than crawling over the individual animal trails over the canyons and hills.
The road ran from Lillooet (Mile 0) to Barkerville. Local homes, ranches, and road houses provided lodging and refreshment for the tired potential miners. Today we still see towns named after the stopping points, such as 50-mile house, 100 mile-house, and several others. The Hat Creek Ranch Roadhouse was one of the popular places to stop and rest.

Today, a visit to the Historic Hat Creek Ranch will take you back into a different era. As you join your guide, who is dressed in the clothing of the day, you will be taken through the old Roadhouse, dating back to 1860. The rooms look as if they’d be very inviting to a weary traveller. You can visualize them sitting around the tables in the barroom, warmed by the old box stove, quietly sipping a libation, or more likely having a noisy reunion.

The beds look more comfortable than sleeping on the ground and there was wall paper to brighten up the room, and to cover the cracks to keep out the drafts. The wall paper is still there, although much the worse for the wear of the intervening years.

Stagecoach takes you on a portion of the Cariboo Road.

Outside, you can hitch a ride on a stagecoach, and actually ride down a portion of the old Cariboo Waggon Road. You might stroll through the apple orchard and over to the display of antique machinery.

Enjoy and old rocking chair on the veranda.

The present day ranch caters to groups who want to come and celebrate some event, such as a wedding. Their 75 seat restaurant is ready for present day travellers, and if visitors want to stay over, there are cabins, a Tee Pee, and several campsites available.
For a pleasant, and unusual trip into the past, you won’t find any place that is better.

Gold in the Yukon

Gold in the Yukon! Those words echoed around the world and like a magnet they attracted people by the thousands. Of the approximately 100,000 who set off for the Yukon, only a puny 25,000 made it. Some of the dreamers were miners, others were people in other walks of life who suddenly saw a pot of riches at the end of a rainbow.

Many of the potential miners, called Stampeders, took a ship up the west coast to Skagway, Alaska, and then hiked up the 50 kilometre Chilcoot Trail. This was not a route for the faint hearted. It consisted of a perilous climb over Chilcoot Pass to Bennett Lake.

The Canadian government required miners to have about 1 tonne of supplies before they could enter Canada. Since the climb was too steep for horses, they had to pack the material to the top on their backs. Some 3000 horses and other pack animals died, leaving their bones to litter the canyon floor below. Stampeders left items they didn’t need along the trail realizing that they had purchased more than they could carry.

Frequently this trip was done in the winter and once they reached Bennett Lake, they spent the winter cutting timber to build boats and rafts to complete the next 500 miles on the Yukon River and reach Dawson City. Many died when their makeshift rafts and boats disintegrated in the turbulent rapids.

Some people travelled on a trip that took over a year going across the rugged country north of Edmonton. Yet, no matter how they travelled, there was no easy access to the Yukon in 1897.

Life wasn’t easy when they finally reached Dawson City either. Gold was not sitting around just waiting to be picked up. The easy sites had already been staked when these late comers got there. If a person were lucky he might find a job shoveling gravel for someone else, or in constructing buildings for the miners. Jobs were scarce and when their supplies ran out these new arrivals became hungry and depressed, and they returned to where they had come from in droves.

When you visit Dawson City you can drive to the gold fields. In fact you don’t have to go far before you begin to see the damage to the streams caused by the mining dredges when they took over.

Happy RVing