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CHAPTER VI

ECONOMIC GEOLOGY
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

Placer gold has been found in many gravel deposits along Parsnip,
Finlay, and Peace Rivers, and in places is associated with a little placer
platinum. The gold is generally in very fine particles or ‘colours’, and in
part may be classified as ‘flour gold’. The fine gold obtained from the bars
along Peace Riveris not thought to have been derivedfrom a local source, that
is from the underlying Schooler Creek or Bullhead formations, but to have
come from schists and other older rocks within the mountains to the west.
It was transported by glacial action in Pleistocene time and by normal
fluviatile agencies in both Pleistocene and Recent times. Sorting and con-
centration of the fine gold are continually in progress along the larger
streams, particularly during stages of flood, when the sand, gravel, and
boulder clay deposits of the stream beds are under most active attack. The
gold generally tends to concentrate at or near the surface of the flats and bars,
but may be found anywhere throughout the reworked sand and gravel
deposits where there has been a momentary slowing of the water.

On Peace River, placer gold is known to occur as far downstream as the
mouth of Battle River. McConnell (1893) tested a mile-long gravel bar 3
miles above the mouth of Battle River, and obtained fifteen to twenty
colours of fine gold by washing a few handfuls of the mixed gravel and sand
in an ordinary frying pan. ‘Twelve miles farther up the river, another bar
yielded from twenty to forty colours to the pan. McConnell believed that
the presence of fine gold in some quantity in these bars was due to the
diminution in the strength of the Peace River current, which takes place
here, and its consequent loss of transporting power. This fact is shown in
the gradual substitution of sand bars for gravel bars.

Colours of gold occur in the gravel bars along the Liard all the way down
to its mouth, but no deposits of economic value are known below the Devil’s
Portage (McConnell, 1891). A number of bars were worked between this
portage and the mouth of Dease River for several years after the discovery
of gold on the Liard, by Messrs. McCulloch and Thibert in 1872, but no
records of the quality of gold recovered are available. There was some
successful ‘sniping’ for placer gold along the Liard in the vicinity of con-
struction camps when the Alaska Highway was being built.

The Annual Report of the Minister of Mines of British Columbia for
1947 gives the total production of placer gold for Peace River division
during the period 1900 to 1947 as 4,116 ounces, valued at $94,977.

Lode deposits are not known to occur in the Rocky Mountain Foothills,
and so far as known are rare in the Rocky Mountains. The Foothills and

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