Now Opening the Heron Channel! - Grouse Creek

The Heron Channel on Grouse Creek is one of the last great treasure hunts in Canada.
Geologists report, "An estimated 64,435 oz. of placer gold was produced from
various hydraulic and underground workings at Grouse Creek. Of this total, 45,000 oz. was recovered on Crown Grant claim # 13F. This portion of Grouse Creek's gold production came from a bedrock gutter measuring 3m across, 3m deep, and 60m long." This gutter has lain dormant for 100 years with only two significant attempts made to re-tunnel into the flooded portions of the claim(one attempt in the 1930's by hydraulic, and one in the 1960's by retunnelling). Both attempts failed to reach the target. Now, Devlin's Bench Mining Ltd has begun the process of removal of overburden to open up this famous gutter with modern machinery. To read more about this staggering treasure, have a look at the pdf "Grouse Creek Prospectus" at http://www.williamscreekgoldfields.ca/links_devlin.html
We've just uploaded a video as well, of the beginning of the stripping program. Snow flies early in the Cariboo, so we're going full steam to capture this prize by mid-october. That will open up the claim for further developments in the new year. The Heron Channel produced fantastic amounts of gold, but all of the surrounding pay layers are also high producers. Even as we dig to the target we are uncovering pockets of high paying gravels that we are stashing to the side as we set our sights on the main target! To see the latest video visit http://tinyurl.com/13f-opening-video

Revisiting old Mine Methods

After finishing our exploration of the main pit, we moved back up the canyon for one more look at the workings of the old miners.

It wasn't long before we broke into a huge underground room, directly underneath a surface hydraulic sluice. The accompanying photos clearly show the sluice emerging from the old surface tailings. Coming out of the puddle are posts from the old chamber. As we extracted more material huge roof beams emerged....Imagine the weight of these logs when they were first lowered down the shafts and dragged along the drifts to this location.

Cleanup from this area was the most difficult we've ever experienced. Over 40 ounces of fine gold was recovered from this area, but it was completely covered in Mercury, so it ran silver instead of gold on the wave table. If we hadn't been familiar with the action of the material and the performance of the table we would have thought we had been skunked, just looking for colour! The old-timers used mercury to 'soak up' fine gold, and then panned it out, and burned it off in what can only be considered an extremely hazardous situation. In the process of hydraulic mining, sometimes the mercury was poured right into the sluice boxes and that is clearly what happened here, with large quantities of it being sloshed out of the box and 'contaminating' the gold in the surrounding soils.

Bedrock Struck at 35f

Bedrock was struck in the St. George Pit on the weekend. This marks the end of a long journey down through geological history. Everything you've ever read about undergound mining in the cariboo; the blue clay, the limestone bedrock, the pay layers, the weeping groundwater, the tremendous struggle to raise the gold to the surface, the gold, the employment, the risk, is all being played out right now at our mine. We've practically held hands with miners from 150 years ago, and we're now in the place they've all dreamed of being.

It is quite a scene, with pay layers heaving across the profile of the wall, the Blue Clay layer which even fooled us for a while, imitating bedrock, and then the limestone bedrock itself. Where we've touched it, the bedrock tips steeply downward, while the blue clay ramps steeply upward. This indicates that we have plunked ourselves directly onto the old pay channel.

Gravels are showing good coarse gold in the boxes....As we dig up the floor of the pit and keep going down on the deeper side, using the bedrock as a handrail, we'll soon reveal the channel and the secrets it holds. To see the whole development of this pit to date, visit http://www.williamscreekgoldfields.ca/photos_devlin.html and watch the slide show called 35f Virgin Channel.

Gold Mining Movie Captures our work!

A small film company, http://jpsmediaworks.com/Home.html , has taken on an ambitious project. From making Tourism documentaries they were smitten by the gold bug and began to film a piece about the Gold Rush. However, through the alignment of the stars, they have come to us to and been transformed by the relationship between the early attempts to get gold and the ongoing development of mining in the Cariboo. They are doing an excellent job of putting together the pieces and showing the relationship between the drive and allure for gold that existed in the 1800's with the current situation. Frankly I thought we were immune from the kind of passionate gold fever that existed then, but when I see how they've woven the story together, I see I was wrong!

In addition to our work at 35f, they've begun to capture the reopening of the greatest treasure hunt in the Cariboo, the completion of the Heron Lead on Grouse Creek. That property has been the subject of a small 'war', owned by the most prestigous historical figures of the Cariboo goldfields and still holds the mystery of the missing section of lead, packed with nuggets, but cut off by water! We're so happy to have this development documented as there is so much more to mining than moving rock!

Just to pique our interest, the boys at jps whipped up this preliminary teaser. Although it is a work in progress, it gets to the heart of the matter in an instant. If you want to see it too, go to http://www.williamscreekgoldfields.ca/photos_devlin.html scroll to the bottom of the page and select Wilds to Riches

2010 - New Directions

This season, we've partnered with our neighbours on Crown Grant 35f to dig down onto the Williams Creek Channel directly upstream from Devlins Bench, on property that abuts our claims.

The goal is two pronged....explore the channel that the miners of the 1860s were working and see what they missed. Secondly, dig deep and reach the remaining virgin Channel of Williams creek that has never been mined due to depth and water problems.

The first goal was accomplished in the first months of the season. We uncovered drifts from the 1860's that were set down and refilled with Cobble by the original miners of the area. What a great feeling to reach into the past and pick up a rock that had so carefully been placed by a miner 150 years earlier. He was working by the light of his tallow candle, chipping away at the hardened gravels, wondering if he was going make it out of that deep dark hole, and if there was enough gold to pay his wages.....Other than the deep dark hole and substituting a giant ripping excavator for a pick axe...the problem remains the same!

Obviously, the early miners did well, because they had bothered to build their drifts three sets wide, a sure indication that they were on good paying ground. As often happens, though they were primitive in their technology, they were efficient in their methods. In one side channel, a beautifully carved gothic arch, unsupported with timbers, still had the marks on the floor from the broom!

Too see more pictures of this find visit http://www.williamscreekgoldfields.ca/photos_devlin.html

Although we got good pay from fine gold in this upper channel, we did not discover any errors in their ways, and as the big prize/mystery lay below, we concentrated our efforts there.

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