84

the old channel practically coincides with the present channel and here the
ground was mined out from the surface down to bedrock. A tunnel or
incline known as the Jimmie Allen tunnel was also run into the old channel
at the creek-level at a point about 250 feet below the Heron incline. It is
marked by an old log shack. Allen was foreman for the Heron Company
and is said to have mined $750,000 in gold from 400 feet of the old channel.
The rock channel was so narrow and steep-sided that an 8-foot cap reached
from one rim to the other. The gold occurred on a “‘hard-pan” layer about
18 inches above bedrock and some sets are said to have produced as much
as 500 ounces. Although these reported yields are possibly exaggerated it
seems probable that the channel was one of the richest—if not the richest—
for its size ever found in Cariboo. A tunnel which runs into the bank a few
feet vertically above the Heron incline is known as the Ralph tunnel. It is
open for about 150 feet, and was run about twenty years ago for the purpose
of determining whether a channel higher than Heron channel existed
beneath the high clay bank on the hill-side, but apparently no channel was
found.

About 500 feet upstream from the Heron incline two tunnels were run
into the right bank. One, known as Gad’s tunnel, is mostly in bedrock and
ended in bedrock, and was run on the supposition that the bedrock was
rimrock and that by cutting through it a channel would be found. The
other, which is nearer the creek level and about 150 feet upstream, is known
as the Jarvis tunnel or Jarvis “pot-hole”’ and was run by Jarvis, McAlinden,
and Company, in 1898. A depression in the bedrock about 30 by 24 feet
was found, the bottom of it being at about the level of the creek and the
ground about 20 feet deep. The small depression was mined by drifting and
produced about $4,000 in gold.1_ The gold is said to have been partly
distributed through the gravel filling the depression and was partly on
bedrock in the bottom. Similar occurrences are very rare in the district,
most of the pot-holes or irregular depressions in the bedrock being barren of
gold. It is not clear whether the depression is a true pot-hole formed by
stream erosion or an irregular depression formed by glacial erosion, but it is
probably the former. In either case the deposition of gold in it was evid-
ently due to its proximity to a gold-bearing stream channel and to the fact
that the channel shifted and deposition took the place of erosion. The
mining work showed pretty definitely that a rich buried channel existed
under the bank on the right side of the creek on the Heron ground and that
there was no higher channel on that side of the creek. The Heron channel
is said to have been mined out down to a point 96 feet above the Hard-up
line where there was a steep gradient in the channel and the ground was
difficult to mine because of the presence of water and slum and because
the drifts were being extended downstream.

Mining on the Hard-up ground was carried on in the early days and
from 1902 to 1905 by the United Mining Company, who held the Hard-up
real estate claim and a lease of the ground above. The old Hard-up tunnel
is 200 feet below the falls and runs into the right bank from near the creek
level for 110 feet to a working chamber, where a blind shaft was sunk 18
feet to bedrock. The company had a water-wheel on the creek and hoisted

1Ann. Rept., Minister of Mines, B.C., 1899, p. 274.