Bill Brown of Barkerville — British Columbia Chronicles

April 1925 marked the highlight of a lifetime for 86-year-old prospector Bill Brown of Barkerville.

A group of “oldtimers” pose for posterity in Barkerville in 1907. Was Bill Brown one of them? —*BC Archives*

On his first visit ‘outside’ in 53 years, he saw his first moving picture show in Quesnel. “The actors and actresses were there on the stage,” Bill marvelled, “just as if they were there in real life, only they were not there at all.”

The guest of longtime Cariboo resident and historian Louis Labourdais, Brown said that he hadn’t realized such a thing was possible.

For more than half a century he’d been all but out of touch with the world beyond Barkerville and vicinity. Ever since his arrival in the spring of 1872, the six-foot tall, white-haired miner had picked and panned his living from the Cariboo’s once-rich gold creeks.

There have been 10s of 1000s of men like him in B.C.’s history.

Pioneers who, unknown to us today, helped to lay the foundation for those who followed. We’ll never know their stories, even their names. But, every so often, one of them—in this case prospector Bill Brown—escapes obscurity if only momentarily from old newspaper clippings.

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He’d first arrived in Quesnel by canoe, he told Labourdais, then walked the remaining 60 miles to Barkerville. A veteran of the Skeena and Omineca diggings, the Ontario native was content to spend the rest of his days working creeks around Barkerville.

Actually, he’d ventured ‘outside’ once before, shortly after the turn of the century, as far as the Australian Ranch, 21 miles below Quesnel. The stretches of open country there had reminded him "how like old Ontario the country looked, so different to the hills and mountains around Barkerville".

And that, apparently, was as close to becoming homesick as he ever became.

To supplement his income as a prospector, Bill served for many years as canyon tender in the Devil's Canyon, keeping the road clear of snow. It was said that, in the 40 winters men had been stationed there, there had been "none to equal him”. In fact, Bill Brown was a one-man road-clearing crew, almost a human snowplow; with his custom-made shovel, he was said to have resembled a “steam rotary in action”.

One winter, he kept his stretch of road between Cottonwood House and Barkerville clear by driving from one snow drift to the next by his horse-drawn sleigh, and levelling them with his customized shovel.

Despite his ‘John Henry’ efforts, however, progress in the form of Harry Moffett ultimately won the snow-clearing contract with a snow roller, and Bill retired to prospect full time.

Such was the hardy individualist who spurned the efforts of civilization and who didn't see his first movie until 1925 when he was 86-years-old. With Louis Labourdais, he strolled into Elliott's Theatre in Quesnel, attracting the notice of all present. "All eyes were upon him,” Labourdais told the Vancouver Province, "for he is a splendid figure of a man, straight, broad-shoulder, standing almost six feet and with his flowing white beard reaching far down upon his chest.”

During the movie, a young school teacher seated ahead of him wept during a tender scene of The Light That Failed. Brown laughed, but not in ridicule; as his host pointed out, “he is not built that way ". Rather, he laughed from sheer enjoyment.

Afterwards, the old prospector sincerely thanked his host for the evening: “I'll not forget your kindness for a long time and this will give me something to think of for years. I fancy I will not sleep much tonight.”

Early the next morning, Brown headed for Barkerville—on foot, having declined to take the stage. By the time the bus reached Beaver Pass, at noon on the second day, he’d been there an hour. On the third morning, well before sunrise, he resumed his journey on snowshoes by cutting cross-country before Dragon Creek Mountain to his cabin on New Creek, where he worked alone on a tunnel he’d started the year before.

Earlier, he’d declined an invitation to attend the Pioneers Reunion in Vancouver as he didn't have the time. As he explained, “You see, I thought I was only 82-years-old, but last summer I got a letter from my sister in Westport and she tells me I'm four years older than that, so I have to hurry now in order to get my work done while I am able.”

Although his prospecting and roadwork had enabled him to retire in modest comfort, Brown couldn't quit the “splendid air and climate of the B.C. Interior, coupled with hard work," which, he said, had kept him feeling young. That’s why he continued to live near Barkerville where he was guaranteed “an abundance of both”.

Seven years later, the ancient miner again made news: “Bill Brown, 88 [sic], Barkerville's oldest working prospector, a resident there since 1872, is recuperating from the effects of injuries received when snow and ice from his cabin roof, on Jack-of- Clubs Creek, fell on him,” reported the Victoria Colonist.

“Unable to stand upright, owing to injury to his back, he lay on the cabin floor for a week before anyone became aware that he was in distress..."

A passing neighbour, while packing into his own cabin became intrigued by the cabin’s silence and investigated. Inside, he found Brown “gathering fuel on his hands and knees. For a week he had lived on a diet consisting chiefly of sugar. A rust-eaten stovepipe prevented the stove from drawing, and he had been unable to prepare proper food.

“The cabin was filled with smoke, Bill's eyes were bloodshot, his long, white beard was smoke-stained, and his skin was the colour of Indian-cured buckskin’. [But] he claimed to be none the worst for his week-long ordeal and announced his intention to resume working his claim when the snow melted away.

Nevertheless, a party of miners snowshoed into his lonely cabin and hauled him out on a hand sleigh. Twice, during the next four years, Bill experienced fires in his stovepipes; not until he installed a new quote Klondike chimney was he able to enjoy a full night's sleep in his bed. Afraid of fire, he’d fully slept for two years in an old chair made of planks rather than chance being caught in bed in his underwear.

Far more deadly than fire, he declared, were the newfangled ‘gas-buggies’ which had made their appearance in the Barkerville area. During his rare visits to town he preferred to navigate the back alleys rather than chance encountering a murderous car.

“Partly from fear of being run down by autos, and also because he considers he can best conserve his strength...by staying close to his cabin,” Bill didn't enjoy his 1935 Christmas dinner in Kelly's Hotel for the first time in 60 years. “But he didn't go without his turkey and trimmings, as friends and neighbours delivered these to his cabin.”

Three years later, at the golden age of 99, Bill Brown, Barkerville's oldest working prospector, crossed the Gravel Bar and was history.

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But for a newspaper article we’d never know that such a truly remarkable man ever existed. But Bill Brown wasn’t the only one. For example, you won’t have heard of another miner named A.L.Marsh, unless you read what I wrote about him, 25 years ago.

How remarkable was Marsh? For 12 years, he, single-handed, bored his way—half a mile—to bedrock!

A miner’s lot, like that of a policeman, was not an easy one in the so-called good old days, and in an industry that has known 1000 busts for every boom, countless dreams have been shattered in the quest for riches.

A prime example is that provided by A.L. Marsh who invested 25 years of backbreaking labour to prove his claim in the Okanagan's Cherry Creek district. Gold Commissioner L. Norris, writing his annual report for 1913, described Marsh's lonely battle against the odds; in so doing, he wrote an encapsulated history of the B.C. mining industry.

“Over the hill and east from the Monashee mill-house lies the placer ground where A.L. Marsh drove, single-handed, 2500 feet of tunnel in a vain attempt to reach bedrock in the bottom of the gulch. A practical miner, and a man much above the average, mentally and physically," Marsh came to B.C. in 1883 from San Francisco where he’d lost the fortune he’d previously acquired in mining in Nevada.

Convinced that a second bonanza awaited him in the Okanagan if he could reach bedrock, but having no funds and being unable to interest capital in the project, he set out to work his Okanagan claim by himself. Commencing in 1889, he carried on, unassisted, for 12 years. Then he found that the timbers he first put in were beginning to rot and fall in, and he had to abandon his tunnel which, by this time, was almost half a mile long.

“His actual achievement,” Norris continued, “if encountered in the pages of a novel, would be deemed incredible, and had he been successful many would have heard of it, but as it is the story of his pluck will probably never be told.

“Mr Marsh is now 70 years of age and still has unbounded faith in the ground...” At last report, he was hard at work on his new mine shaft.

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Another Nevada veteran who courted Dame Fortune was H.C. Pollock who’d tired of the heat and dust of the Nevada silver rush and had worked his way northward, through the stampedes of Oregon and Washington. In 1898, rather than follow the wheel of fortune to the Klondike, he opted for B.C.

A mining crew at work on Nickel Plate Mountain. Hedley would become one of the greatest producers in the province.—*BC Archives*

After trying his luck in Arrow Lakes and West Kootenay districts, he moved to the Similkameen, camped on the future site of Hedley, and explored Nickel Plate Mountain, soon to become one of the province’s richest gold producers. His investigation had led him to believe that the pay streak extended two miles upstream and, near the mouth of Sterling Creek, he found evidence of gold and silver bearing ore.

He had to suspend operations for the winter but, come the spring and summer, he staked the Maple Leaf, Martin, Daisy, Pine Knot and Minnehaha claims, and set to work to expose the veins. Upon finding promising indications of ore throughout, Pollock began the age-old miners’ quest for capital. Like 1000s before and since, he found financiers to be extremely reluctant to gamble. They insisted that he prove his claims first.

Because, to quote an old record, Pollock’s own capital consisted of nothing more than a strong back and a stout heart, he continued to seek money. Finally, he interested C.E. Oliver in bonding his properties.

A shaft was sunk on the Martin and Maple Leaf leads. Immediate results were encouraging and further work exposed more ore, ranging in value from $15 to $59 to the tonne. This was sufficient to warrant serious development and Pollock Mines Ltd. was organized and promoted shares on the open market.

Another claim named Minnehaha, this one on Mosquito Creek. —*BC Archives*

Throughout, Pollock had refused to sell his own interest. After years of unremitting work and unbounded faith in himself and his claims, he’d brought them to the production stage. In 1905, it was reported that prominent mining engineers had praised his mine’s potential: “With careful and economical management, ample funds for development and the installation of the necessary machinery, the Pollock mine... gives great promise of a successful career.”

W.C. Pollock, it seemed, finally had the world by the tail. But it was not to be.

Three years later, the Department of Mines Annual Report listed him as supervisor of the Kingston properties for Kingston Gold Copper Mining Co. Typically, he worked hard, Gold Commissioner James Brown commenting on the amount of work accomplished under his direction.

Assay reports as high as $35 to the tonne attracted renewed interest in the old Pollock group in 1927, and sporadic attempts were made until the late ‘30s to make the Maple Leaf and adjoining claims a paying proposition.

But it no longer mattered to H.C. Pollock who’d would finally become discouraged and let these properties pass from his ownership.