Holloway Bar Placer Mine - Picture of the Week

The Holloway Bar location on McDame Creek has been home to many different placer mining operations over the decades. The search for gold here began back in the 1870's with Henry McDame and his colleagues digging in some of the easier-to-get-to spots. After the first wave of westerners had gone, the Chinese miners moved in and worked the land by digging a huge network of waterways to move the water from the high country to the lower benches to feed their sluiceboxes - all with hand tools. It's said that one old Chinese miner stayed here into the 1920's - and we have found remants of an old sluicebox on the property that could have been his. Many waves of modern miners have been here as well - Christina and Scott have been the primary miners since 1997, but have allowed others to dig here occasionally as well. Bob Wilms, a previous property owner, indicated that some 44,000 ounces of gold came from these valley bottoms over the years in his Appendix A to this Newmont Silver Mines report with more undiscovered - so that will keep future generations busy looking for what we, and the other oldtimers, missed!

Most pilots are lucky enough to be able to fuel up their airplane, do their pre-flight check, climb into the left seat reserved for the "captain", and turn the key to start the engine. Those flying some vintage aircraft like this WWII-era PT-17 Stearman aren't so lucky. There's no battery or main electrical system so there are only two ways to start this plane - by hand-cranking the propeller until the engine catches, or by using the inertial starter. To use the latter, a crank is fitted onto a special shaft hooked up to a heavy flywheel and the pilot, who usually flies the Stearman from the back seat, turns the crank as quickly as he can. Once the flywheel is spinning fast enough, he releases its energy through a clutch to spin the propeller, creating a spark and igniting the fuel in at least a couple of the seven cylinders bringing the 220 hp Continental radial engine to life. This 1942 Stearman was built for use as a pilot trainer - even though biplanes were not really used as a fighter in WWII, the flight characteristics of this plane made it an ideal trainer for those expecting to fly into battle in more powerful and deadly aircraft. Crank it up and let's go for a ride!

Many Northern gold plants are "home-built" and are designed to meet the mining method favoured by the designer. This Dawson City gold plant was built a few years ago with a few different features that set it apart from The Wizard, Holloway Bar's gold plant. This floating plant is built on a couple of steel pontoons to allow it to "float" in the pools of water that sometimes form when mining the flats in the Dawson Area, a concept borrowed from the famous floating gold dredges of the old timers. It also sports an oscillating table that was originally constructed for use in extracting asbestos in the Cassiar mine ( as seen in the Cassiar Road video). A 30 hp motor drives a hydraulic system that shakes and wiggles the deck, sorting out the material dumped in the top hopper. The deck's large punch plate drilled full of many tapered holes attracts the smaller, heaver material and sends it to one of the two side sluiceboxes, while moving the larger material over the surface and out the tailings conveyer. It's quite effective on the finer Dawson City gold. If you want to build your own, there are still a handful of these rare ex-Cassiar oscillating tables around - email Scott from the contact page for more information.

Placer miners are getting anxious this time of the year. The snow is melting in the low lying areas of the North and the water is slowly starting to flow with the temperatures sometimes reaching into "double digits" during the warm spring days. At the first sign of dirt, some miners are scrambling for their shovels to start another season of digging in the search for gold. However, it's sometimes not a great idea to push the season. Placer mines, particularly the Holloway Bar operation, are dependent on liquid water. It's obvious that a lot of water is pumped through the gold plants during the summer to help separate the gold from the clay and gravel found in the valley bottoms, but water drives so much more than just mining at Holloway Bar. It's really the lifeblood of the operation, and life is a huge struggle until water comes to camp. Usually in late May, the snow and ice up high is starting to loosen up a little bit. One of Scott's first tasks each spring is to spend a day or two chopping and clearing enough ice to start water flowing downhill to camp to run the micro-hydro power system to generate power and supply cool, clean water for drinking and washing up. Only then can the mining start...