100

the bedrock, both at about 2,000 feet up from the mouth and in places in
the upper part, rises steeply almost in the form of a fall 10 to 30 feet high.
Falls or steep downstream slopes in the beds of the old channels rarely
occur except where the streams join the main valleys, but one occurs on
Williams creek below Black Jack canyon and there are probably others.
The materials filling the valley consist of boulder clay at the surface near
the mouth and along the sides of the valley, and glacial gravels and silt
in the bed. Boulder clay, or silty clay containing scattered boulders,
occurs in places beneath gravels in the bed of the creek for about 3,000
feet up from the mouth. Higher up the materials are mainly glacial,
muddy gravels, but in places the clay extends down to bedrock. The creek
was noted for the “bad ground”’ encountered in drifting, and because of the
presence of water and “slum” great difficulty was experienced in running
tunnels and especially in making upraises along the sides. There are a
great many limestone boulders in the valley, apparently because a lime-
stone band trends in the direction of the creek.

Mining on Conklin gulch began a year or two after the discovery of
the rich ground in the lower part of Williams creek, and continued for many
years. The richest claims were near the mouth of the creek and included
the Aurora on a bench on the right side and the Ericsson and Sawmill in
the deep ground alongside. These three claims, according to the estimate
of the production of Williams creek given in the Annual Report of the
Minister of Mines, B.C., for 1896, are credited with a production of
$1,500,000 in gold, and the total production of the creek is given as
$2,265,000. Considerable information regarding the old workings on the
creek is given on Bowman’s map of Williams creek.1. The Conklin Gulch
Company, formed in the seventies, held the ground in the lower part of
the creek—including the Sawmill and Ericsson claims—and carried on
mining work for nearly twenty years both by drifting and by hydraulicking
on a small scale. An hydraulic cut was carried upstream 1,400 feet from
the mouth, but the bedrock was not reached and work was discontinued
about 1890. The Aurora group of claims was opened as an hydraulic in
1881 and hydraulicking was continued for several years. There is a long
stretch on the creek from near the upper end of the old hydraulic pit to
near the upper end of the Cora Company’s ground, which is said not to
have paid for drifting. The Cora Company’s ground extended downstream
for about 1,800 feet from the Proserpine trail crossing. Below it was the
Renfrew ground and above it the Ontario Company’s ground extending
about 1,400 feet to the White Pine ground in the narrow part above the
summit flat. Only a few of the old shafts are shown on Figure 15. There is
a shaft practically every 100 feet on the White Pine ground and for some
distance below it. The old claims were only 100 feet long and here evidently
individual mining was practiced to an extreme, in spite of the fact that it
was recognized as early as 1862 that in mining the deep ground it was
necessaty for companies to be formed in order to make the work pay. On
the White Pine ground the pay was said to have been as high in places as
50 ounces to the set. It was only about one set wide, however, and the
average probably did not exceed 30 ounces, so that each claim could hardly

1 Geol. Surv., Canada, Map 364 (1895).