Gold Mining on the Fraser

BC Archives # C-01201

BC Archives # A-03535

These two pictures illustrate the economic extremes of the placer gold mining business.  At left, taken in the 1870s, hand-operated sluices run by back-breaking labour and worked by their owners.  At right, an industrial-strength mining dredge typical of big business mining; this photo was taken in 1903, when placer mining interest in the area increased in the wake of the Golden Cache rush of 1898; very similar heavy equipment was in use in the Klondike Gold Rush much farther north, although there the dredges were equipped with steam drills for mining through permafrost, instead of through the icy sands of the Fraser bars.  Despite intensive activity on the wide bars and sandy banks in the broad curve of the Fraser in front of Lillooet, not much gold is said to have been found there - less than a couple of million.  But that didn't stop anyone from trying, as some are still today.  Of course it's not possible to discuss this one famous riverbank activity here without mentioning its impact on the other - the salmon fishery.  Miners had laughed at natives trying to chase them away from riverbeds during the Gold Rush; sure enough, however, the riverbed and sandbar displacements did in fact have major negative impacts on the fishery for years afterwards, and therefore implicitly on the welfare of the native population.  See the story of the Six Mile Rapids for more on the local fishery and its tenuous relationship with other industries.

The Gold Dredges

BC Archives # A-03535

Hydraulic Mining

Photo: Mike Cleven

Another form of placer mining that figured prominently in the history of the Lillooet goldfield country was hydraulic mining.  Like sluice and dredge mining, water was used to sift through surface deposits.  But hydraulic mining also brings the water to the deposits, and on a large scale, often causing massive erosion and leaving distinctive scars on the landscape.  The lower valley of the Bridge River, from Moha downstream, was extensively hydraulic-mined in the 1860s and '70s, although in this particular case actually at the instigation and with the licensing and permission of the then-chief of the Bridge River people, who are known by the St'at'imcets name of that river, 'Xwisten.  Many of the open gravel banks lining this stretch of the river, some coloured blue by molybdenum and other ores, are actually old hydraulic mines; as is the spectacular Horseshoe Wash pictured above, which ate away at a whole section of former benchland.  Obviously hydraulic mining was every bit as devastating to water quality and other aspects of fish habitat as placer mining - if not moreso.