The Winter finally drove us out as you can see from the top photo. We managed to uncover a fabulous piece of history and we can do nothing but stand in awe of the work of early turn of the century miners who burrowed through this property with nothing to orient themselves! Drifts, adits, air shafts, tunnels honeycombed our workings and stood as a testament to the incredible resourcefulness of these miners. Every roll of the bedrock that we uncovered, we hoped for a mistake by those early miners, but each time, a beautiful drift was set down on the rock, timbered with still strong beams and sometimes reaching up to 30 feet wide.
It's a testament to modern mining technology that, despite the thorough workings of portions of this ground we can still show up the gold. Here are some shots from one of our cleanups and both the gold in the box and then, in the pan, the cleaned up remains of the days take.
It's not just luck that produces these kinds of results. It's also to the credit of brilliant leadership, combined with the excited commitment of a team of up to 20 guys who made this project successful for 2010, and set it up for 2011. In only 6 weeks we shifted over a quarter of a million cu metres of ground to uncover these historic riches.
In addition to the gold, there are also a variety of artifacts down there. In this same cleanup that is photographed a brass button showed up in the 'boil box'. The button was stamped with JCW Drummond, Cockersmouth, England. I did a little research and found out that this button came from a fine tailer and clothing store in the north of the English lakes District. How did a button from a fine clothing store, in a remote corner of Cumbria, make it all the way across the ocean to British Columbia and get lost 300 feet up a drift, 80 feet underground? Did it snag off the coat of a rich mine owner as he inspected the workings? or belong to an itinerant miner, who's worn fine travel clothes were only fit for 'work clothes' as they aged? It's little gifts like these that make placer mining more than a search for gold and turn it into a real and vital connection with the past and all of man's search for work and wealth.
To see more of these photos, I've also posted an album at http://picasaweb.google.com/109755961285514000452/GrouseOctober28th#
1 comment:
Fascinating!
I understand my grandfather went to Canada goldmining at that time, with his brother, before returning to Cockermouth. He later had a shop in Station Street Cockermouth.
It could be his!
:o)
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