Zeballos Gold Rush

Last year, when telling the saga of the Leech River gold rush of 1864, I referred to it as Vancouver Island’s only real gold rush.

By that I meant gold rush in the generally accepted sense of a wild stampede of fortune seekers converging from all directions in a frenzy upon some designated location.

Like the Fraser River and Cariboo gold rushes, for example.

Certainly, the Island’s west coast Zeballos excitement of the 1930s had most of the ingredients of a rush, a stampede. The biggest difference was that, unlike the Leech and Fraser rivers and the Cariboo, which were placer mining (panning, sluicing, dredging gold from rivers and alluvial gravels), Zeballos required hard rock mining—drilling, blasting and tunnelling into solid mountainsides.

This, of course, cost money. It required manpower and expensive materials that exceeded the skills and pocketbooks of the classic lone prospector with his gold pan and burro.

But it was exciting, all the same, as you’ll see in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: ‘Downtown’ Zeballos with its plank main street in the 1930s. —BC Archives