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mile lower down on the creek, and the third on Pine creek, flowing nearly
parallel to Summit creek and in a broad, drift-filled valley 2,000 feet west
of Summit creek. The results of the borings showed that the bedrock in the
deep channel is 30 to 40 feet lower at the mine than half a mile downstream,
and on Pine creek is about 75 feet lower than at the mine. It is, therefore,
reasonable to conclude—assuming that the deepest channel was reached in
each case—that the drainage of Little Valley was formerly in a direction
opposite to its present one and that the valley formed one of the main
drainage courses of the region. If the conclusion is a correct one there must
be 400 or 500 feet of drift overlying the bedrock in the valley at the head
of the creek, which thickness appears to be rather excessive for the region,
although thicknessesup to nearly 300 feet are known. It does not appear to
the present writer, however, that the direction of the ancient drainage,
whether it was the opposite of the present or not, has any great significance
as regards the presence or absence of a rich pay-streak in the bedrock
channel of the valley, because it is well established by the results of placer
mining in the region that the gold is mostly local in origin and has not
travelled far downstream, and unless the rocks in the immediate neighbour-
hood of a stream valley were originally gold-bearing to some extent there is
little chance of a rich pay-streak occurring. It is, of course, true that fine
gold and even some fairly coarse gold may be carried considerable distances
downstream or that the gold may have been transported along with the
glacial drift and have been reconcentrated to form payable placers in the
stream bed. Several occurrences of this character are known in the district,
but, as a rule, in such cases the pay-streaks are not on the true bedrock but
on a false bedrock above.

Some gold is said to have been found in the early days on Jubilee creek,
a tributary of Little Valley creek, and two or three shafts were sunk near
the mouth of Little valley and some drifting done with no important results.
It was not until 1895 that attention was especially directed to the creek by
the discovery of placer gold along the right side of the valley, on what was
afterwards known as the Discovery claim. The claim was worked by a
company composed of local miners, including Joseph Wendle, A. Campbell,
and others. The gold occurred in surface gravels resting on boulder clay in
a depression in the glacial drift. A tunnel 390 feet long was run through
boulder clay to the depression, water for hydraulicking was brought on the
ground by a ditch 2 miles long from the upper part of the creek, and the
gravels sluiced through the tunnel. Prospect pits 18 or 19 feet deep were
put down in the pit to the rim rock of the valley. Red gravels were found
beneath the clay, but nearly all the gold was in the surface gravels. The
mining was continued for two or three seasons and although about 200
ounces of gold was recovered the operations are said not to have paid.
The gold-bearing gravels occurred in a pot-hole or undrained basin in the
glacial drift and the occurrence is the only one of its kind known in the
district. The position of the pot-hole along the side of the valley above
the valley flat and the fact that the pot-hole is not due to post-Glacial
erosion suggest that the gold-bearing gravels in the depression were de-
posited by a stream flowing along or beneath the ice at a time when a
glacier partly filled the valley. The source of the gold is unknown.