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the water from the Gold Fields ditch leading to Stouts gulch from the
upper part of Lightning creek and from Groundhog lake, with the water
from the upper part of Williams creek, may be used. The ground on the
creek is generally considered to be the most favourable ground in the area
for hydraulic mining on a large scale if sufficient water for the purpose
can be made available at a reasonable cost.

Walker Creek

Walker creek flows into Williams creek at the abandoned town of
Richfield. Hydraulic mining on the creek near the head of the old work-
ings has been done on a small scale during the past few years by George
Moore, Joel Stevens, and the Houser brothers. Although only a small
amount of ground has been mined, owing to the small supply of water
available, considerable gold has been recovered, in spite of the fact that
part of the ground has been pretty thoroughly drifted. Water is obtained
from the Gold Fields ditch at times when the water is not being used at
Lowhee mine, and a small supply is available from the creek itself. The
work has shown that bedrock benches occur along the creek and that gold
occurs on them or in the glacial gravels covering them. One bench has
been exposed by hydraulicking just below the old dam, but its full width
has not been determined. There may be other benches above and higher
up the creek and the discovery raises the question whether there may not
be sufficient ground on the creek or above and below it on the west side of
Williams Creek valley to pay for hydraulicking on a fairly large scale,
although the area has generally been considered as pretty well prospected
and the rich pay-streaks mined out.

Lowhee Creek

Lowhee creek was discovered to be gold-bearing by Richard Willoughby
in 1861 and was named by him in honour of the ‘Great Lowhee,”’ a secret
society among the early miners at Yale, B.C. The upper part of the creek
above the head of the hydraulic pit, where mining is being carried on, and
the upper part of Stouts gulch, are shown on Figure 16. The creek is about
13 miles long and drains into the meadows at the lower end of Jack of Clubs
lake. At the head of the creek there is a drift-filled channel which continues
to the head of Stouts gulch. Watsons gulch forms the main headwaters
of the creek. The rock valley of the creek is narrow and V-shaped and the
part that has been hydraulicked out, except near the lower end, was filled
with glacial drift to an average depth of nearly 150 feet. In a few places
there are rock benches on the sides of the valley and these together with the
shape of the bedrock valley show that it was formed by stream erosion and
has been modified only slightly by ice erosion, although it was filled with
glacial drift. In places near the upper end of the part that is hydraulicked
out the bedrock in the bottom of the channel is badly disintegrated and is
altered to red and grey residual clay to a depth of 2 or 3 feet and for a width
of 20 to 30 feet. The occurrence is an unusual one and is difficult to explain.
Weathering of the rock at or near the surface is the most reasonable explana-
tion, but no weathering could have taken place since the deposition of the