Unique Gold Mine

Wright standing in the old whitepine shaft 1865,

excavated from the surface on the upper Williams creek /Conklin Gulch mine circa1990.

Pete Wright, owner and operator of Devlins Bench Mine company, worked for his entire adult life specializing in the Placer gold mining field. Born and raised in Whitehorse Yukon, growing up and working in the Atlin Goldfields in Northern BC near the Yukon Border.
Wright worked in all of the major mining operations in and around Atlin for his junior years starting at the age of 12, raking rocks for Ben Able in the Blue Canyon mine on upper Spruce creek, 15km west of Atlin BC.
Wright began work in Dawson City Yukon in 1982, working in these goldfields for a few years before returning to Atlin and starting a mobile repair and service bussiness for all of the largest mines in this area.Wright's mobile trucks specialized in the building and design of placer recovery equipment and wash plnats for the Atlin Goldfields.
One unique principle Wright learned from all of his years in the Northern Goldfields; let the tens of thousands of prospectors who flooded these goldfields during the 1860-1898 gold rushes do the prospecting!
All of the sucessful modern placer mines of the Atlin area, found that when working in and following the deep l898 diggings of the oldtime underground miners, produced fabulously rich results. Some days processing gravels from around these old shafts and tunnels from 1898 the gold recovery boxes (sluice boxes) would turn absolutely yellow with gold.
We maintained this result with most of the big mines in Atlin BC, With this in mind we processed several thousand ounces a year from these old worked mine sites.The Atlin area, from the 1980 goldrush to the present, has had all of it's major creeks worked out with this one principle in mind, follow the oldtime gold miners from the past gold rush. If these miners and prospectors did not find gold they perished, that is good incentive for a prospector.The shear number of men exploring these hills digging shafts and prospecting would be like hiring a work force of 20,000 desperate geologists and prospectors in modern times.

Sheepshead shaft williams creek Cariboo

The Atlin area has produced several hundred thousand ounces from these open pit mines of the 1980's to present, most following this basic lesson.
Wright moved south in 1987 with this very principle in mind.
After researching the most famous targets in the Barkerville goldfields, he purchased the Crown Grant 17F, Conklin GulchPicture above), in the cariboo gold fields ,Upper Williams creek near Barkerville BC.

Barkerville has an exceptional location for operating any type of Industrial business, with the surounding Industrial mill towns of Prince George and Quesnel BC.

These Towns have one of the best industrial supply and service bases of any Northern region.

After mining for several years on this claim, Wright decided with the Bull gold markets of the last years to expand his operations and go for some of the most famous Targets of the Cariboo/Barkerville Goldfields, see http://www.barkerville.ca/ .
Two targets come up in the history books of this famous goldfield which produced a calculated estimate of $35,000,000 in gold in a 261 square mile area.

The largest and richest of all the creeks, Williams Creek, produced a whopping $19,320,000. It is important to mention that these figures are all for the period 1874 to 1923, when the average gold prices with a gold purity average of .822 were calculated at $12 dollars per ounce. Simple calculations $19,320,000 divided by $12 per ounce (aprox) totalize a significant amount of gold, 1.6 million ounces off Williams creek and it's tributaries.

With Gold at an all time high on World Markets at $1040 US per ounce, 1.6 million ounces represent an amazing amount of placer gold, mostly produced by hand in deep underground shafts, deep under the present ground level on these old creek beds.
With this historical research in hand and the bullish gold markets of the 2009 markets, Wright started a new large operation on Williams creek, on the famous Devlins Bench group of claims, that has produced so handsomely during the 1860-1952 period.

Wright spent most of the 2009 season doing bulk exploration and bulk yardage testing, with the Orange scrubber screen plant in the pictures below. After an intensive project, building a new $350,000 dollar plant that came into operation at the end of August 2009, Wright began making regular shipments of raw bullion to Vancouver BC gold buyers.

The first shipment totaled 72 ounces, August 30th 2009, and the second shipment of 103 ounces was made on September 15th 2009.
These shipments represent the proof of a theory that has been proven in the Atlin, Dawson and gold fields all over the world; remine the turn of the century gold fields with modern technology and the operation is sure to be a sucess.
Please keep in touch with this web site for updates on a small privately owned project that will be sure to be a leader in the gold industry for the Cariboo goldfields in the years to come.

Personal note; to all my friends and heliski goldnugget customers in Atlin, I hope you enjoyed this website we put together, this will give you a view or at least an idea of the painstaking process we go through to find those unique amazing nuggets we pull out of the gravels in the Canadian mountains.
Please enjoy your gold nugget souvenir and I am looking forward to skiing with you at Klondike Heliskiing http://www.atlinheliski.com/, and panning for nuggets at -30 in a warm dry bar at the Atlin Inn Lodge!!
Whitegold in the winter and yellow in the summer!!All the best from Barkerville BC,for more information on the area and the Wells Bc 1930'3 Hardrock goldmining town, http://www.wellsbc.com/

For Devlin Bench gold mine tour information http://www.whitegold.ca/,

Environment Concerns

Mining is well known to have significant negative impact on the environment. At Devlin's Bench Mining Ltd we are aware of this problem and we take every step possible to minimize the impact. We are proud of our mercury free gold recovery process and we welcome any comments or visits from Government Agencies such as Ministry of Environment and Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Because of our high environmental standards, Devlin's Bench is regularly shown to visitors and tourists as an environment friendly mine site. (See White Gold mine tours Wells, BC http://www.whitegold.ca/, go to gold tours.)


The Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Environment have strict regulations to protect British Columbia’s Environment. Devlin's Bench follows these regulations closely. Because the mine operations is located beside a fragile wetland and on the way to the well known Bowron Lake Provincial Park, we must ensure our activities will not permanently affect our surrounding. Beaver, muskrats and even moose frequent the riparian zone 10 meters from our mine site. These animals have become totally accustomed to our presence, they are not scared by our machines, only when we walk towards them do they dive or run. We have a small female moose that has been living below our watchmans trailer for the entire 2009 season.

Noise is another issue that we are trying hard to combat, all of the generators like the 2007 John Deere are in silent enclosures, mufflers are the newest and best quality on all of our machines.

The one problem we are having trouble with is the constant banging of the larger rocks in our large steel scrubber drums as they rotate the gravels around and around for the washing process. This turning motion is needed to break up the gravels and clay balls that are so commonly found in the gold bearing gravels.

Our only answer so far was to close down the night shift at 11:00pm and not start at 6 am as we did in August.This at least gives the campgrounds and surrounding residents a break during the evening hours.

At Devlins, we are striving to fix this problem and are looking into rubber wear plates and other methods inside these drums to silence our operation a little more.

Fuel and all other hydrocarbons are used under strict regulations. All oils taken on the site are used (ie engine oils), then returned to Petro Can recycling depot in Quesnel. Proper precautions are undertaken to insure there is absolutely no water or ground contamination with spill kits at every gen set fueling station.
Large 8d and 4d size equipment batteries are used in our machines, sometimes they do fail and when replaced the old units are all returned for recycling in Quesnel

Double walls fuel tank with spill kit

Streams and wetlands surround the mine operations, riparian buffers are left untouched to protect those fragile ecosystems. Only small portable water pumps are used in the 10 metres riparian buffer zone. These pumps are being replaced with electric submersible units so as to reduce the noise and exhaust for the beaver and moose occupying the water way beside the mine. When this update is complete we will have only an electrical cord and a hum from the pump motor. All pumps are surrounded by fishery spec screens so not to disturb any juvenile fish in the water way.

Green strip is the riparian zone, note the brown swamp water from all the algae bloom and beaver feces and water fowl presence

The mine recirculates his water in the first settling pond. This significantly reduces the amount of water with elevated level of suspended sediments that needs to be treated. Most of the sediments sink to the bottom of this settling pond and do not even reach the second settling pond.


Water seeps through the ground from the first settling pond to the second settling pond. The second settling pond is necessary to make sure the water quality is equal or better than the water above the mine when it returns to the natural surrounding drainage.

Clear water pond at mine outflow

The water seeps through the ground again, which acts as a filter for sediment, from the second settling pond back into the natural water drainage below the mine. Water testing are made regularly and show perfect water quality. Some of the workers at the mine fill their water bottles at the mine discharge. The water entering the mine is highly affected by beaver and algae from above the mine, which make the water undrinkable, our natural filtering system seem to purified the water to a degree that is drinkable.

Water run off from the mine as seen throughout the 2009 season

Water is tested regulary by Julie Cossette, Cariboo enviromental services for oxygen and ph levels, temperature and suspended sediment levels.

The Devlin's Bench Mine property have been developed for over 150 years. Because mining regulations were almost nonexistent in those earlier days, the current operator is cleaning old equipment and building that were left on site.

Old 1952 Dragline removed from mine site

We are aware of the scar on the land we are creating at the moment, we have a GIC saving account of $10,000 which has the Ministry of Mines hold back to insure that the property is reclaims properly. Most mine operators mine very far away from their home, but in Devlin's case the owner lives less than one kilometer from the mine and is conscious of the land appearance. Wright's home overlooks the valley of Williams creek.

We plan on returning the land to a natural state with self sustaining vegetation, with a combination of grass and planted trees, native to this area. We at Devlin's ltd are striving to be the most enviromentally aware operation in the Placer mining industry. The site currently has an additional $10,000 bond to reclaim the site. Discussions with ministry of mines have concluded that before the start of the 2010 season an additional $10,000 bond should be placed in a GIC account for the remediation of this site.

We are all in agreemnet that any placer production in this Valley must take enviroment concerns as a top priority because of the high tourist flow through our area.

after a couple of meetings with Calib Higgins of the BC Parks Forest Rose campground 200 meters from our mine site we have established a working relationship in which he is taking his customers and informing of our Devlin's search for gold and the long history of this area. Any campers seem to be more interested in our quest than the noise that we are producing washing the rocks.

As manager and owner of Devlins Mine I hope we can work together with the local tourist bussiness's to benefit the valley and its commerce (ie whitegold mine tours). This is a remote and economically depressed area and any form of entertainment for its visitors will be a benefit. The reason people are drawn to Barkerville is for it's gold history, this modern mining is the final chapter!!We at Devlins are keeping all the old artifacts found in the area, hoping to one day in the near future build a small cabin to house these old tools and machines from our diggings.

We hope to work together with the Barkerville curratorial staff to have these artifacts properly housed and recorded.

What better than a working gold mine on one of the oldest historic creeks in the cariboo goldfields, Thank you for reading our site any questions or concerns regarding this operation should be directed to wrightcontractingltd@gmail.com, Regards Peter Wright

Intr oduction and 2009 Season

Aerial view of the Devlin's Bench Mine during an helicopter flight in the summer of 2009.

Devlin's Bench Mining Ltd is located in the Cariboo gold fields District of British Columbia, an area of aproximately 400km in size, the center of the district is Williams Creek and the famous gold mining town of Barkerville, http://www.barkerville.ca/ . Historically Williams Creek was the largest producer of bullion in the Cariboo District and the third highest producer of placer gold of any creek in North America. Only to be outdone by two creeks in The Klondike goldfields, Bonanza and Eldorado.

Devlins Bench is a historic group of claims, on a high bench of Williams Creek, located at the lower end of the Williams Creek drainage. This group of claims has not been put together as one unit since the turn of the century. Devlins Ltd has succeeded in putting together the whole of Devlins Bench under one owner after over 100 years of property disputes and fractioned claim titles.

Devlin's Bench Ltd, a new company formed in August of 2009, conducts a Placer Gold Mining operation on Williams Creek and provides employment to local residents, between 12 and 15 this season. Providing much needed economical boost for a remote area and town with the injection of hundreds of thousand dollars in the local economy, with the use of as many local bussines's as possible in the town of Wells and Quesnel BC.

The mining season usually starts around May 1 and extends until the end of October each year, with winter months reserved for equipment repairs and maintenance.

The mine is located within the cool temperate climatic zone in the Cariboo Mountains at an elevation of 4000 feet. Winters are significantly long and heavy snow loads are present every year. The picture above shows the mine at the beginning of the 2009 season. At that time, the mine only had one bulk testing plant, which is seen here without the new white 60ft stacking conveyor belt installed in September 2009.



The trommel-scrubber screener is fed by an excavator, 6 days a week from 7:00 am to midnight. The trommel scrubs and classifies the placer gravels, the heavy materials are pushed by water along the bottom of the recovery boxes, until they are trapped in various gold stopping devices commonly called sluice boxes. The sluice boxes and boiler traps produce a "concentrate" which contain gold, heavy mineralized magnetic black sands, natural lead and pyrite particles.


This concentrate requires subsequent processing to eliminate the magnetics and other heavy minerals to produce gold that is clean enough to be melted into bars.This is a long and involved process that is performed by an entirley other group of machines at the cleanup facility.



During the 2009 season, Devlin's Bench not only developed a producing gold mine, but did extensive permit completions, cleanup the mine site, undertook reclamation activities, setup the site for future mining activities, did some exploration, bulk testing and the built and installed a new larger trommel (scrubber/screener plant).
This trommel was completed on August 19, 2009 and was put to work immediately after. The trommel processes 800 to 1200 cubic yards of dirt every day it is operating. This trommel is fed by an excavator or a frontend loader, the loader also forwards dirt closer to the excavator from the payface and moves the coarse tailings away from the plant. We will be adding a stacking conveyor to handle the coarse tailings next year, followed by a gravel pump to transport the fine tailings away from the processing plant therefore eliminating the need for another operator and an expensive frontend loader.


John Deere excavator loading the new plant.

The construction of the new plant required extensive work and expertise. Wright owned and operated two service trucks in the Atlin Goldfields during the 1980's, specializing in placer gold plant design and fabrication of gold washing and recovery equipment.

The picture above shows the welding of anti wear plates in the new scrubber plant in August 2009, note the 250 d4 cat pads in the beginning of barrel welded in by Wright to provide flipper bars and wear plates.
The new plant "feed hopper" was built from scratch to operate under several loading capacities. A new drive system "Radicon" was installed on the new trommel.

The mine requires the use of generators for power. Several generators provide power for the numerous water pumps, trommels and lights for night operations. We have on site 3 - 100kw plus units and 4 small light tower kubotas and deutz sets.

The new trommel receives its water from the new Magnum pump as seen on picture below and several add on pumps on site one Yanmar high head and a fleet of electric pumps.

Gold Clean Up
Gold is significantly heavier than other minerals and is trapped by the sluice boxes and in the boiler traps of the washing plant. The upper traps containing 90% of the gold are emptied daily after each shift and the lower riffles are cleaned once a week on each trommel/washplant.

Cleaning Sluice Boxes.

Wright cleaning gold recovery traps and mats. Note the Yukon boiler box below Wright's knee, with the agitation pressure pipes plumbed through the box.

The pictures above show the first gold clean up of the new system and lower screens and a regular recovery test on the new yellow wash plants recovery systems. This is the most important aspect of any modern placer gold operation, a systematic test from the bottom end to the top of the sluices to determine how far the fine gold particles are travelling down the sluice boxes, so as to assess the recovery and feed rate of the washing plant.

The concentrate, which is mostly made of a mix of gravels, heavy minerals (pyrites and lead) and black magnetic sands, these gravels need to go through several other cleaning processes, classification washing and sorting. Therefore, the gold needs to be sorted a second time, quite often by hand. The concentrate is brought to the “Green Machine” which is the first step of the cleanup process. The Green Machine is a vibrating screen with a live bottom rubber pulsating sluice.

The Green Machine produces a high grade concentrate which is sent to the gold clean up lab also located at the mine site. At the exception of the green machine, the gold cleanup is effectuated inside the lab, where the small pieces of equipment are protected. Inside the heated gold cleanup lab, we house a various assortment of cleanup tools such as magnets, screens, hot plates, fume hoods, melt ovens, gold wheels, wave tables, scales and a large variety of traditional gold pans.

October of 2009, the instalation of two electric water pumps in the clean water intake of Williams Creek simplified the cleanup areas water system. Also, with the installation of a 20kw camp gen set, and replacement of three honda engines, allowed us to put all operations together including pumps on the new generator set, effectively cutting the use of hydro carbons in the riparian zone (waterway containing fish and wildlife). Not to mention electric pumps have a self draining ability for late season freezing problems.

We also removed the honda engine from the green machine installing a 3 hp electric unit running off the one gen set.

Wright and Mine manager, Dave Bjorgenson, performing gold cleanup sept 2009

The larger coarse nuggets are hand picked by the staff inside the lab as seen in the picture below.

Dave, the mine manager, running the gold wheel in the lab. The gold wheel is used to separate finer gold from other heavy minerals.

Final Product

The gold is also melted into bars on site inside the gold clean up lab, 30 oz bar in gold pan next to 1-2oz slugs recovered from Devlins Bench. Gold assay is averaging .822