Digital Bob Archive

NOVEMBER 2, 1880-Call it the grapevine of the moccasin telegraph or what you will, word of a new gold find soon gets around. Dick Harris and Joe Juneau, who made the Gold Creek discoveries, left here about October 20 and already a small stampede has started. Yesterday two parties of prospectors, totaling eleven men, arrived on the shore of Miners Cove.

First to get here were Stillman Lewis, John McKenzie, Daniel Foster, James Bokar, Henry Coons and Donald McDonald. They came up from Sumdum where they had been prospecting. They found the stakes of the Harrisburgh townsite claimed by Harris and Juneau, and McDonald, Lewis and Foster promptly staked lots. The six men went up Gold Creek to a point just below Silver Bow Basin and staked six placer claims, calling themselves the Big Falls Discovery Company. Then, expressing some doubt that the mining district organized by Harris and Juneau is legal, they held their own miners? meeting and named the district Takou Mining District and recorded their claims. They also announced that when Harris returns they will re-record them with him.

In the meanwhile, the second party from the Windham-Sumdum area had arrived, having first lost their way and landed at the Native village at Auke Bay. This group consists of Walter Pierce, Hugh Campbell, O. M. Cole, John Dix and William Hicks. They are oldtimers from the Cassiar District of British Columbia and earlier this year. Pierce had been prospecting for George Pilz. He joined the other four at Shuck River, Windham Bay.

The five men hiked up Gold Creek and located claims on the creek just below the claims of the Big Falls Discovery Company, measuring off 200 feet along for each claim. Since it is already snowing in the basin, the men assert that there is no chance of working the claims this fall. They will camp in this vicinity, do some hunting and generally pass time until Dick Harris returns with the recording book so their claims can be officially entered.