56

lower end the valley flat is about 400 feet wide and is floored with glacial
drift and Recent alluvial deposits. Coarse gravels and boulders form the
surface deposits near the lower end. At 1,200 feet up bedrock outcrops
in the valley flat at the left side and the alluvial flat is narrowed to about
100 feet. It widens again above, but gradually narrows towards the head.
Bedrock also outcrops near the cabins at the junction of Sawmill Flat
creek and Antler creek and in the bed of Antler creek a short distance below
the junction. It is, therefore, probable that the depth to bedrock in the flat
is not great, though it is possible that glacially eroded rock basins occur
and that the ground is deep in places. A little gold is said to have been
found in a shaft sunk by Jim Adams many years ago near the head of the
flat, but no important deposits have been found. In 1902 Henry Boursin
put down, by means of a horsepower drilling rig, a cross-section of three
bore-holes on Swift river about one-half mile from Littler’s cabin. The
depths of the holes to bedrock were 31 feet 4 inches, 52 feet 7 inches, and
72 feet. He reported! that gold was found in all the holes, but not
sufficient to pay for mining.

Antler creek immediately above Sawmill flat (Figure 7) flows for
500 feet in a narrow rock canyon. The valley then widens, but 400 feet
above again contracts to a narrow rock canyon at the head of which is a
fall of about 10 feet over a hard rock ledge. Above the falls an alluvial
flat of 100 to 200 feet wide, known as Maloney flat, extends to the mouth
of Groundhog creek coming in from the south. Along this stretch of the
creek considerable prospecting and mining development work has been
done during the past twenty-five years. “Ten dollars diggings’ were
reported? to have been found in 1860 at Maloney flat. There is evidence
of old surface workings on the lower part of Groundhog creek and along
Antler creek for about one-half mile above the mouth of Groundhog
creek. The narrow rock canyons with steep gradients through which the
present creek flows, and the fact that the stream valley above and below
the canyons is wider and flatter bottomed, indicated to the prospectors
that an older channel, buried beneath glacial drift, occurs alongside the
canyons and this was definitely proved by shaft sinking and tunnelling.
Although the gold which had been found on the creek was mostly in the
surface gravels resting on glacial clay and not in a definite pay-streak on
or near the true bedrock, it was believed that a rich pay-streak would be
found in the deep buried channel. The deep channel apparently crosses
beneath the present creek opposite the small hydraulic pit on the left
bank and extends upstream nearly parallel to the present stream for
about 600 feet. Its course downstream from the hydraulic pit is not
definitely known. In 1898 a company known as the Bradford, Cariboo,
and Yukon Gold Fields, Limited, formed to prospect on Upper Antler
creek and Nugget gulch, ran a tunnel 150 feet long on Antler creek, below
the falls, at right angles to the present stream. The tunnel is the second
one on the right bank above the hydraulic pit (Figure 2). At 20 feet from
the mouth of the tunnel a blind shaft was sunk 4 feet to bedrock. At
117 feet, another shaft was sunk 47 feet to bedrock, the last 17 feet of
which was in gravel in which a prospect of gold was obtained. At the

1Geol. Surv., Canada, Map 366 (1895).
*Ann. Rept., Minister of Mines, B.C., 1902, p. 118.