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CHAPTER III

ECONOMIC GEOLOGY
PLACER MINING

MINING METHODS AND COSTS

In the early days of mining, the claims were only 100 feet long and
the necessity of forming “companies” to work the ground was recognized
even during the first year of active mining and especially after the dis-
covery, late in the autumn of 1861, that the main pay-streak in the lower
part of Williams creek was deeply buried and could be mined only by
sinking shafts through the overburden. The shallow ground on Antler
creek and in the upper part of Williams creek was mined by open-cut
work, and the gravels were washed with rockers and sluice-boxes. On
Williams creek there were at work in 1862, one hundred and sixty-nine
companies owning seven hundred and twenty-seven claims.! By June 10,
1863, the number of claims was three thousand and seventy-one. The
mining population in 1862 was about twenty-five hundred and about four
thousand in 1863. Peter O’Reilly, Gold Commissioner in Cariboo 1862-63,
reported? that the Hard Curry (Diller) claim, consisting of three full
interests (300 feet) on Williams creek below the canyon, produced from
February 19, 1863, to May 9, 1863, $170,448 in gold, the total cost for
mining and development work having been $34,472. Two shafts were
sunk to a depth of 60 feet at an aggregate cost of $7,724. He reported
also that the Grier claim—also on Williams creek but above the can-
yon—consisting of five full interests, produced from May 24, 1862, to
October 24, 1862, $100,111 at a cost of $28,366.

In the early sixties wages amounted to $10 to $16 a day and board
was $35 a week. The cost of supplies in general was very high, as the
freight rate from Yale was $1 a pound. When the wagon road was com-
pleted to Barkerville in 1865 the freight rate was reduced from 75 cents
to 15 cents a pound. In the seventies wages fell to $5 to $7, and that of
Chinese labour to $3 a day, and the freight rate averaged 9 cents a pound.’
Drift mining in the early days was not profitable unless the ground—that is
the 5 to 10 feet of gravels on bedrock—had an average gold content of
at least $4 or $5 a cubic yard. The gold values found in the old work-
ings are usually reported as so-many ounces to the set. The size of the
sets varied according to the length of the cap and unless this was stated
there is no way of telling how many cubic yards a set contained. The

1Trimble, William J.: ‘‘The Mining Advance into the Inland Empire’’; Bull. of the Univ. of Wisconsin, No. 628,
p. 48 (1914).

2Tbid, p. 49.

Dawson, G. M.: Geol. Surv. Canada, Rept. of Prog. 1876-77, p. 113.