156

which had been passed over by the old tunnel was mined. The tunnel
(shown on Figure 25) cuts through bedrock for a short distance near the
mouth and then crosses on gravel the deep channel and strikes the bed-
rock again about 400 feet from the mouth of the tunnel. There thus
remains in this part of the creek a short length of the deep channel below
water-level that has not been mined. The work paid at the rate of about
$5 a day to the hand. In October, 1923, a new company composed of
local miners was formed to mine the buried channel which lies on the east
side of the rock canyon and continues a short distance upstream beneath
the tunnel run in 1922-23. A tunnel! was run from the creek bank about 50
feet above the blind shaft on the old tunnel below the canyon and about 47
feet above the level of the old tunnel. The tunnel runs towards the old
channel for 520 feet, at which point bluff rock was struck. A crosscut at an
angle of 45 degrees was then run towards the creek for 115 feet, at which
point a raise of 50 feet to the surface was made for an air shaft. Pay-
gravels were struck near the end of the crosscut and drifting up the channel
was then begun. There is a raise of 6 feet in the crosscut and 6 feet in the
first 50 feet of the channel. The dirt is taken out in cars and washed at
the creek. The channel was drifted three sets wide and up to October,
1924, thirty-five sets with 8-foot caps had been taken out. The ground
averaged 13 ounces to the set or about wages. The length of the channel
from where it was struck at the lower end to where it crosses beneath the
creek above the canyon is about 500 feet.

The gold on Dragon creek is noted for its coarse, nuggety character
and for its fineness or purity. Assay values average about $19. The gold
is evidently local in origin and occurs mostly on bedrock, but some is
found in the gravels for a few feet up from the bedrock. ‘These gravels,
as seen in the tunnel above the canyon, are glacial and clayey with an
occasional large boulder. No evidence was seen of glacial erosion of the
bottom of the valley. The valley bottom may have been protected from
ice erosion because of its narrowness and by deposition of glacial drift in
it, so that the gold may be pre-Glacial in origin, although the discontinuous
character of the pay-streak and the fact that some of the gold is mixed
with the glacial gravels seem to show that the ancient pay-streak was
disturbed and eroded to some extent as the result of glaciation. The buried
rock channel alongside the Recent canyon may be pre-Glacial or possibly
interglacial in age. It is evidently an old channel of Dragon creek and
was formed before the present channel was cut and before the deposition
of the glacial drift that fills it. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that
pay-gravels occur in the bottom of the channel. The work so far done does
not indicate that the values are very great, but better values may be found
higher up. The bedrock valley of Dragon creek, like that of Nelson creek,
is hanging with respect to the bedrock valley of Willow river, that is, the
bedrock gradient suddenly and markedly increases at the junction of the
two valleys. This shows that Willow River valley was probably over-
deepened by ice erosion. The valley is deeply drift-filled, and there is no
reason to suppose that it contains any rich deposits.

1Not shown in Figure 25 as the mapping was done before the tunnel was started.