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time of the Cassiar excitement in 1874. A long tunnel near the forks of the
creek in the upper part was run by Otto Muller in recent years, but bedrock
was not reached. In the seventies a tunnel was started near the junction
of Dragon creek and Willow river and is said to have been run through
very bad ground for over 1,000 feet up Dragon creek, with the object of
reaching the deep lower part of the creek, but bedrock was not reached.
It was early recognized that a buried channel occurs on the east side of the
rock canyon and in the eighties a tunnel (shown on Figure 25), starting at
the creek bank 800 feet below the foot of the canyon, was run. An air
shaft 350 feet from the mouth of the tunnel is 46 feet deep. Rim-rock
of the valley of Willow river was struck and was drifted along for some
distance, but it proved to be steep, and the old channel was apparently not
found as the tunnel was too low. A shaft was also sunk alongside the
creek near the upper end of the old channel and proved that a deeper
channel than the present one through the rock canyon exists. It could
not be mined from the upper end, however, because of the water pressure.
No further attempts to mine the old channel were made until recently
except that another shaft, said to be 22 feet deep, was put down near the
upper end of the channel where it joins the present work. In 1896, a Seattle
company known as The Dragon Creek Hydraulic Mining Company,
under the management of Gust. Lange, acquired hydraulic leases on the
creek, Hydraulicking was started in 1898 and has been carried on in
most seasons since that time. At the present time the property is owned
by Leo Muller who holds two half-mile leases and one record claim. The
hydraulic pit had been carried upstream 1,400 feet by the end of the 1923
season, the ground in the deepest part of the channel averaging 50 to 60
feet in depth. Water under a head of about 125 feet is obtained from
Nelson creek by a ditch from the dam 930 feet above the head of the
pit. There is an abundance of water for a week to ten days during the
freshet, but during low water the flow of the creek does not exceed 100
miner’s inches. Where the dam is in commission, one to three hours
daily run using a No. 3 monitor can be had throughout the summer except
in very dry years. The material of the bank consists mostly of boulder
clay with some glacial gravels. The boulders are numerous and some
are large. They are removed and piled in the pit by means of a derrick
run by a small, water-driven Pelton wheel operated by a hose take-off
from the pipe-line. There are forty-three sluice boxes laid on a 5-inch
grade. The grade was formerly 44 inches, but was altered to obtain a
better dump, and the old driftings on the west side of the pit near its head
were followed. On the west side, however, the bedrock channel is somewhat
lower, so that the upper ends of the boxes are at least 3 feet above the
lowest part of the bedrock. The deep channel, therefore, cannot be reached
by hydraulicking for some distance above the head of the boxes unless the
grade of all the boxes is lowered. During the past few years, partly because
of the difficulties involved, hydraulicking has been carried on, as a rule,
only during the period of high water and drifting done during the winter
months, by Mr. Muller and his partners. A tunnel about 625 feet long
was run in the winter of 1922-23 by Mr. Muller and the Houser brothers.
It started at the level of the creek just above the canyon and, as it was
run at a lower level than the old tunnel, a part of the bedrock channel