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rock basins formed by ice-erosion. In the lower part the valley bottom is
filled with glacial drift and alluvial deposits to a depth of about 50 feet
below the creek level. A ridge of morainic deposits 40 feet high occurs on
the west side, in the lower part where the valley widens. It extends up-
stream for 1,000 feet and the deep channel of the creek is beneath this ridge.
The valley, although narrow, was widened and deepened—if not largely
formed—by a valley glacier. This is evident from the extensive morainic
deposits, composed mostly of angular fragments of rock similar to that
forming the sides of the valley that occur at the mouth and extend nearly
across, and for some distance down, Slough Creek valley. These deposits
are amoung the latest of the glacial deposits and, therefore, were formed
during the closing stages of glaciation. The volume of the deposits is
sufficiently great to fill a considerable part of the valley.

Gold was found in the early days only at a few places high up along the
sides of the creek, on bedrock which outcrops below the road near the
junction of Slough creek, and in the surface gravels near the mouth of
the creek. Several tunnels were run beneath the morainic ridge and at
other places near the mouth of the creek. About 1910 H. H. Jones and
H. Foster put down a shaft on the bench, on the left side at the mouth
(Figure 21), for the purpose of mining the deep channel. The shaft had
two compartments, one with a 12-inch Cornish pump. Two boilers, one
obtained from Slough Creek mine, were used. The shaft is 95 feet deep,
the collar being 45 feet above the level of the creek. Some drifting was
done from the bottom of the shaft, but, apparently, little or no gold was
obtained. In 1898 and 1899 the Devils Lake Gold Mining Company
ran a tunnel about 400 feet long, in an attempt to reach and mine the deep
channel beneath the lowest lake in the upper part of the valley. The
tunnel was partly in bedrock. When it broke out from the bedrock the
deepest part of the channel was not reached, and as the tunnel would have
had to be considerably extended to reach the lowest part, the work was
abandoned. Recently somewhat similar attempts to mine the deep channel
beneath the upper lake have been made. The fact that the valley, especi-
ally in its upper part, was formed in part by valley glacier erosion, does not
favour the view that payable deposits of placer gold occur on bedrock in
the valley bottom; for even if gold were released from the bedrock, by the
ice grinding up and plucking out masses of it, there could have been little
or no chance for concentration of the gold into pay-streaks by water action,
except by erosion of the drift deposits at the surface. No gold-bearing
veins from which the placer gold may have come are known to occur in the
basin of the creek, but they may occur, for the rock is exposed only in
places. The gold found in the bed of the creek near the mouth was probably
derived by stream erosion of the drift. The gold found high up on the
benches may have been transported along with the glacial drift and con-
centrated by streams flowing along or from the ice.

The Ketch hydraulic mine is located on the right bank of Devils
Lake creek near its mouth. The property is owned by the Houser brothers.
Tunnels run into the bank 50 feet above the level of the creek showed some
gold on bedrock, and in 1921 the property was opened up as an hydraulic
mine. Hydraulicking has since been carried on each season. Water is