178

“No partings are present in the seam, but some wall-rock must be
removed.

“The coal is hauled by truck to Fort St. John over a poor road, a
distance of about 83 miles.’

The Annual Report of the Minister of Mines for British Columbia
(1946, p. 248) states that new mine workings have been opened on what
appears to be the same seam 4 mile north of the old workings and dipping
at an angle of about 48 degrees. The seam is here described as 5 feet thick,
with two rock bands, each about 1 inch thick, in the top 6 inches. This
mine is now operated by Reschke Coal, Limited.

BUTLER RIDGE, BAST SIDE

A few narrow coal seams were observed by Beach and Spivak (1944)
on creeks east of Butler Ridge. One such seam, 14 to 2 feet thick, dipping
18 degrees east, could be traced for 1,200 feet along the middle branch of
Ruddy Creek.

CARBON CREEK COAL BASIN

The Carbon Creek coal basin lies about 20 miles west of the Peace River
Canyon coal area. The coal-bearing and older marine beds (Mathews,
1947) of the Bullhead group are downfolded to forma northwesterly trending
synclinal basin, measuring about 20 miles long and 9 miles wide and
extending from Peace River on the north almost to Moberly River on the
southeast. Carbon Creek flows northwesterly to the Peace, along the axis
of the synclinal basin, and most of the coal seams are exposed along this
stream or at no great distance up its tributaries. As most of the coal
seams occur in the upper parts of the coal-bearing strata, near the axis
of the syncline, they are thought to be within a thousand feet of the surface
in most places and thus favourably situated for future exploration and
development.

Coal was first discovered on Carbon Creek in 1911, when Messrs.
Cowper Rockfort, David Barr, and George McAllister traced coal float
from the mouth of Carbon Creek to its source upstream. In 1923, J. D.
Galloway spent 2 days in examining outcrops of coal along Carbon Creek
and some of its tributaries, and his report (1924) was the first to record the
high quality of the coal beds. W.H. Mathews spent a part of the 1944
and 1945 field seasons in geological mapping of the Carbon Creek basin
and Fisher Creek syncline for the British Columbia Department of Mines,
and his published report and map (1947) give the first comprehensive
description of the nature and extent of this coalfield,

At least ten seams in the Carbon Creek coal basin are more than 4
feet thick, and at least five others range between 3 and 4 feet in thickness.
Very little is known as yet of the variability in thickness of individual coal
seams, as many are known at only one locality and cannot be correlated
with other, nearby exposures. In the Eleven Creek area in the central
part of the Carbon Creek basin, one seam exposed at three points within
a third of a mile ranges from 4 feet to 4 feet 4 inches or possibly 5 feet in
thickness. Another seam varies between 5 feet 7 inches and 6 feet 3 inches
for ¢ mile, and an adjacent seam, including shale partings, from 10 feet 4
inches to 17 feet, but this variation may be due in part to thickening of the
seam at the crest of a fold. Two other seams, each slightly more than 4