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low gravel benches that form the north shore of Finlay River for several
miles downstream from the mouth of Bower Creek to justify serious
Investigation. He reports that although the gravels are scarcely rich
enough to permit of being worked by hand, in so remote a district, they
present distinct possibilities for dredging, or steam shovel work, when,
at some future time, the district becomes more accessible.

W. Fleet Robertson (1909) describes Pete Toy’s bar on Finlay River
as not properly a ‘bar’ at all, but a low gravel bench on the right side of
the river, some 6 or 8 feet above high water. It showed evidence (1908)

of having been extensively worked by shallow workings not more than
about 5 feet deep.

Douglas Lay, in the Annual Report of the British Columbia Minister
of Mines for 1928, states that Finlay River Mining Company Limited
employed five men to test Pete Toy’s bar during the summer of 1928. About
8 inches of the upper part of the bar gravels were shovelled into the sluice
flume, and the material caught by the riffles was tabled and the black sand
concentrate saved; 971 pounds of black sand concentrates shipped to
Goldsmith Bros. Smelting and Refining Company, Chicago, contained
21-362 ounces gold and 0-971 ounce platinum.

The Peace River Gold Dredging Company was engaged in testing
Branham Flat, 26 miles above the head of Peace River Canyon, in 1923.
J. D. Galloway (1924) describes this flat as extending about 2 miles back
from the river for a length of 2 miles. Fine gold and platinum were found
in the first 25 feet from the surface, but no testing had been done below
that depth. It was reported that a large area of gravels on the flat
would run about 50 cents a cubic yard. In 1922, the Company tested
various bars on Peace River near the site of Old Fort St. John, with a single-
bucket type of dredge. It is reported that the work done was not particu-
larly successful.

The January number of the ‘B.C. Miner’ for 1934 states that during
the previous summer thirty individual and group placer operations were
in progress along stretches of both Parsnip and Peace Rivers, and that
most of these were ‘making wages”. The difficulties of saving the fine
gold has discouraged placer mining along these streams in recent years,
but there is generally, nevertheless, a small annual production.

The region west of Finlay River produced placer gold in some quantity
for many years, but as it is beyond the scope of this report to deal with
mineral occurrences lying west of the Rocky Mountain Trench, it will be
sufficient only to mention that gold was discovered on Silver, Vital, and
Germansen Creeks, tributaries of the Omineca, in 1868, 1869, and 1870,
respectively; on Manson and Slate Creeks, tributaries of Manson River, in
1871; and on Tom Creek, tributary of the Omineca, in 1889. These creeks
have produced gold valued at nearly $1,500,000. Much of this was mined
before 1890, but the district has been productive each year since. Memoir
252 by J. E. Armstrong (1949) includes a description of the geology and
mineral resources of the greater part of that region, and descriptions of
the mineral occurrences in the more northerly Aiken Lake area are con-
tained in Paper 48-5 by J. E. Armstrong and E. F. Roots (1948).