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THE OLD WISCONSIN GOLD MINE
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A lost-world covered in snow for much of the year
Loading-up supplies for the Wisconsin. The main attraction of the 105-acre site today is not so much in the value of its precious metals, but the spectacular scenery and wilderness setting.
This is the territory of the grizzly bear - an undisturbed location with the nearest neighbor some 40-miles distant - a setting where time has little meaning - a place far removed from the madding crowd. British Columbia has the world’s only temperate inland rainforest, all of which is found in the Columbia Mountain ranges (Purcell, Selkirk, Cariboo, and Monashee).
Most of the Wisconsin site is forested with lodgepole pine, spruce and hemlock, apart from an area adjacent to the mine site due to a forest fire back in the late 1930’s (One miner was unfortunately killed by a falling tree while fighting the fire). In fall the forest understory takes on the appearance of a glorious rich chequered carpet with every imaginable color - red, bronze, yellow - a site to behold. In late summer bears feast on the wild huckleberries.
It is not safe to enter the old mine workings today. The main adit, shown here, opens up after 100-yards or so into an enormous chamber carved out of the rock. High up here, in what resembles a bell-tower, still hangs the original pulley that lowered the miners down a shaft to workings on a lower level - this shaft is now flooded, as it often was. When looking at the tunnels and crosscuts today it's hard to imagine the vast amount of work then went into boring these - originally with just a hand-steel - and the conditions that the men had to work under.
“Each evening we put sticks of dynamite in the holes we had drilled, lit the fuses and clambered away, slipping and tumbling in our efforts to escape from the sizzling fuse wires and take cover. “The explosions echoed through the mountains, as the rocks crashed down. When all was over and we had counted the scheduled number of bangs, we’d hurry back to see if a gold vein had been exposed.”
"Sleeping under the stars on a bed of pine needles amidst the smell of the fresh outdoors, panning for gold in a wild, remote creek - a great way to be free from the constraints of what is commonly known as civilization." THE GOLDEN YEARS: In Dawson City a local bon vivant held up a restaurant hoping to get enough chocolates to turn the head of his sweetheart, Nellie the Pig. Alas, while there was plenty of gold for the taking, the chocolates were locked up in the safe. |
“They
were carefree days, far removed from the seething of humanity and constant noise
of traffic. Days that cannot be bought with money. Days when I, like my
companions, was king of all I surveyed.”
Western
hemlock, Western red cedar, Engelmann spruce, pine and subalpine fir dominate
the landscape. A great variety of wildflowers bloom in the meadows of the
sub-alpine including Indian paintbrush, glacier lily, fireweed and spring
beauty.
Here
the old mine buildings, squeezed against the mountainside, have stood for almost
a century of watching the snows of winter gild the peaks of the surrounding
mountains - the warm winds of spring lick them bare again. With the coming of
each summer her hopes for survival diminished, her golden past became a little
more forgotten, until she finally became a ghost.
1935
…” Work went on week after week. There was always the clatter of rock
drills, the throbbing of the compressor and shouting of men.
Picture:
John Howard diamond/gold prospecting in British Guiana/Brazil in 1964. Comment:
“Looks more like an old sourdough now!” (NB: British Guiana became the
Republic of Guyana in 1970).