If you've ever studied gold mining in BC, you're sure to have heard of McDame Creek. It's where BC's largest nugget was found, back in 1877.
This sign, about 10 km northeast of Holloway Bar, is located on the side of highway 37 (called the "Stewart-Cassiar highway by locals) just above Centerville, which is where the big nugget came from.
Holloway Bar and the McDame Creek valley was home to some 300 Chinese gold miners back in the 1870's. Most of the old timers had left by the turn of the century, but one old Chinese prospector was still here as recently as the 1930's. Gold mining in various forms has been going on in this valley for almost 140 years now.
McDame Creek is still producing gold to this day. Christina and Scott dug this beauty out of the ground in their first season operating the mine. It's some 4.6 ounces - about 140 grams (for those of you trying to figure the value out, it's probably worth a couple of thousand dollars - pieces this big are hard to come by!).
Don't go getting any ideas about "mining the miners", though - this nugget's locked away safe and sound and only comes out for special occasions!
The gold found here in the McDame Creek valley is quite coarse and good for making jewelry. This one's a little big for that - but a 5-gram nugget looks very nice hanging from a chain around your neck...
These miners worked hard in the summer months (it's too cold here in the winters for the water needed for placer gold mining to flow), and battled mosquitos, bears, and generally tough conditions. They were a long way from home - and many never made it back there!
There are still signs of the early miners. A network of hand-dug trenches still criss-cross the property, and Scott's found other things here as well - like the old opium pipe he picked up on a walkabout one afternoon. There are even the remnants of some of some of the old claim posts from the early miners. When you walk through the old mining areas on the upper benches, you'll find remnants of some of the old sluiceboxes as well.
Scott recently took a walk around the upper bench to see how the old timers mined back in the 1870's. He discovered a series of trenches with walls hand-built above ground level, and found the remnants of one of the earliest wooden sluiceboxes, complete with the old square nails used back then. He also found what looks like the sluicebox left by the last Chinese miner in the 1930's.
