1939, was either ground-sluicing or booming in the creek-bot-
tom, or hand-shovelling of the gravel beside the creek.

S. C. Barrington and associates acquired lease No. 345 in the
autumn of 1938, and in the following year they installed a
drag-line shovel and moveable sluice-box which enable them

to work the gravel beneath the creek. Gold was then recov-
ered from the interglacial channel beneath Wheaton Creek (see
Fig. 5) from the top of the bedded clay lying on bed-rock,
and in the clayey gravel directly above the clay. The gold
is erratic and does not seem to follow any well-defined pay
streak. Most of it, however, appears to be on the eastern
side of the channel, parallel to the low-lying benches. Bed-
rock beneath the clay was never reached and whether or not
there is gold on it, is unknown.

J. Wheaton worked short stretches along Wheaton Creek on
leases Nos. 402 and 302, and recovered placer-gold below creek-
level in the lower canyon of Wheaton Creek. The gold is on
bed-rock in and beneath as much as 8 feet of Recent gravel.

In the autumn of 1939 several men, under a lay-agreement with
Wheaton, were working on lease No. 402, above creek-level on
the eastern side, and were recovering gold from gravel above
bed-rock at the northern end of the dry gulley opposite Wheat-
on's camp. Work was started where the dry gulley enters the
canyon of Wheaton Creek and an open-cut was advanced south-
ward along it. The gravel was sufficiently rich to make 4
hand-shovelling operation profitable.

Although considerable prospecting and development work
has been done on placer leases on Wheaton Creek south of lease
No. 545, no pay-gravel has yet been found. F. Bobner sank a
26-foot shaft about 300 feet south of the No. 1 post of the
Roosevelt lease (No. 336) but did not reach bed-rock beneath
the creek. The overlying gravel when panned yielded some
black sand and only a few small specks of gold. Previously,
Bobner had found a few pieces of coarse gold on sloping bed-
rock on the side of his ground-sluice cut.

On the Alice lease (No. 332), V. Shea put in a booming-
dam and cleaned out a ground-sluice cut, but, because of the
depth of: gravel and the low creek grade, could not reach bed-
rock beneath the creek. A small amount of gold was likewise
recovered from sloping bed-rock on the side of the cut, but
none in paying quantity. A booming-dam was built on the
Amanda lease (No. 348), and a ground-sluice cut cleaned out.
Again, it was impossible to reach bed-rock beneath the creek
and it is understood that no gold was recovered. Very little
work has been done on the leases south of No. 348 and no pay-
gravel found.

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