R.A. ‘Volcanic’ Brown Was an Unlikely Hero and Legend
Of all the stories of lost treasure in British Columbia the legendary Lost Creek Mine has the most personal meaning for me.
It helped to set me on the path to becoming a lifelong writer/historian. All thanks to my growing up in Victoria in the 1950s on a diet of, first, American comic books, then American magazines, movies and TV.
That's because we Canadians didn’t celebrate our history then, didn’t even teach it in school until Grade 8. Despite this, thanks to my choices of American entertainment fare, I became intrigued by stories of lost treasure—in the United States, of course.
But all that changed dramatically, again thanks to American TV.
I’d become a fan of Bill Burrud's weekly documentary, Lost Treasure. All sites covered were within the United States—until the evening I heard Bill mention a lost murderer's mine in the forbidding mountains beyond New Westminster.
New Westminster! I almost fell out of my chair.
That was almost in my own backyard! The die was cast; I was off to the Provincial Archives to innocently inquire of the ladies on duty if they had anything on file on lost treasures in British Columbia.
Indeed they did, and I've been researching and writing about it ever since.
But what must be British Columbia's most legendary tale of a lost gold mine isn’t the subject of this week’s Chronicles. No, I’m going to tell you about one of the most colourful provincial prospectors of all time who died trying to find it.
R.A. ‘Volcanic’ Brown, the man in question, was the discoverer of one of the richest copper mines in B.C. who became a living legend.
Even though Brown looks old, frail and lame in this photo, that didn’t stop him from braving the Pitt River mountains in search of a legendary lost mine. — https://www.westcoastplacer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/VolcanicBrown.jpg
When, at the age of 82, he vanished while searching for the Lost Creek Mine, he left a mason jar of nuggets and the question that tantalizes many today: did he find Slumach’s mine before falling victim of its curse?
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On the assumption that most Chronicles readers are familiar with the story of the Lost Creek Mine that’s supposed to be in the rugged and mountainous Pitt River country, I’m going to condense even this postage-stamp summary by Wikipedia: “...The area along the east side of [Pitt Lake] is somewhat notorious for being the reputed location of Slumach’s lost gold mine, the location of many failed and sometimes disastrous searches for the alleged murderer's lost gold mine.
“Local historian Bill Barlee has said ‘that this highly colourful and interesting tale, accepted as fact by a host of treasure seekers, probably does not exist’. According to Barlee, by the geological information available it would appear unlikely that a gold deposit would be found in the region of Pitt Lake...”
Despite geologists’ disclaimers that this isn’t a gold producing region, 100s have searched for the Slumach’s gold and many have died in the attempt.
Which brings us back to the most famous searcher of them all, ‘Volcanic’ Brown whom I once described as one of the most colorful prospectors to ever swing a pick or dip a gold pan in British Columbia.
He first came to notice in 1892, in the B.C.’s Boundary Country, where he investigated promising copper showings 12 miles southwest of Princeton on what would become famous as Copper Mountain. He wasn’t the first to do so, the mountain’s mineral potential having achieved official notice by both the Boundary Commission and the Geological Survey of Canada as early as 1859 and 1861.
It wasn’t until October 1884 that a former Kentuckian named James Jameson Sr., while hunting with his son, noticed signs of copper that he thought worthy of filing a claim. But he couldn’t arouse any interest at a time when other miners in the Similkameen were fixated on gold.
Sixteen years later, James Jr.’s son Bob, again hunting in the area, found another outcropping. He described it as being “as naked as a babe, and 10 times as big”. Like his grandfather, he too staked a claim but also failed to find financing.
Enter R.A. ‘Volcanic’ Brown, aka Doc Brown, aka Sunset Brown aka ‘Crazy’ Brown. Also intrigued by the mountain’s mineral signs, he staked several claims in 1892 only to encounter the same lack of interest that had bedeviled two previous generations of Jamesons.
Temporarily stymied, Brown went on his way. But he didn’t forget the “red” mountain.
Four years later, he re-staked his claims and returned with tools and blasting powder to begin working on the ‘Sunset’ claim. Initial assay reports showed an incredible 60 per cent copper content, with some gold and silver as a bonus—sufficient to raise working funds from a Rossland syndicate which incorporated as the Sunset Copper Co.
Their timing was right: copper was the new currency in the newly-born electrical age, and the Great Northern Railway, with all its potential benefit to industry, was advancing on Princeton. These factors and the promising Sunset Mine soon attracted others who staked claims on Copper Mountain and on neighboring Mount Kennedy.
With a dozen employees, one of them James Jameson, Brown sank a shaft to the 160-foot level at a cost of $36,000. But with no substantial high-grade ore in sight, the syndicate became impatient. Unaware that Brown had targeted “the very heart of the greatest ore strike in Similkameen history,” they leased the Sunset Mine to Frederick Kaffer.
More than a century later, what became the Copper Mountain Mine is still in operation and produces 100 million pounds of copper annually!
All too late for Volcanic Brown who, out in the cold, again hit the trail on what would become a lifelong, and ultimately life-ending, quest for gold.
By then he’d heard the tales of a murder’s fabulously rich gold mine in the hills beyond New Westminster. In fact, he’d more than just heard the hoary tales that were passed around campfires—he claimed to have met the killer’s granddaughter.
She’d been gravely ill and, in gratitude for his successful prescription of some herbs (he was also known as ‘Doc’ Brown, remember), had told him the site of Slumach’s long-sought mine, which legend long ago painted as being worth $100 million.
(Slumach was long dead by then, having gone to the gallows on the morning of Jan. 16, 1891 for the coldblooded murder of Louis Bee. Legend has it that he had in fact murdered 10 men and nine women.)
This highly suspect photo purporting to be that of Slumach first appeared in the Montreal Standard in November 1939. The peak cap is more suggestive of the 1920s, long after his death by hanging.
Here, I must relate some pertinent details of the Lost Creek Mine saga to explain why a professional, and by then aging, prospector like Volcanic Brown would risk life and limb seeking it...
It’s public record that, while Slumach awaited execution, the sheriff had ordered away several who wished to see him. According to popular accounts, only his son was granted entry, to be told the location of his father’s fantastic gold mine. Although Slumach warned him to seek the fortune “only if times are bad, for that way is death,” the son headed up the Pitt River immediately.
He soon returned, said Chief August Jack Khahtsahlano, with pokes of gold. But the younger Slumach’s days of unlimited wealth were cut short when he took on a partner, who returned alone from their first expedition into the mountains.
This ruthless treasure hunter (here’s where the legend of the Lost Creek Mine kicks into high gear) met his own fate when two white prospectors followed him to a creek “ankle-deep” in gold, shot him and buried his body, a pan of nuggets, an axe and a mining hammer under the tent rock of his camp.
Placing a cross mark on one end of the stone, they left, legend continuing that they carried out $20,000. Only one of them, John Jackson, made it back to civilization and on to San Francisco where he’s supposed to have made a bank deposit of $10,000.
But, his health broken by the ordeal, Jackson supposedly drew two maps, giving one to a nurse who attended him during his final hours, and the second map, with a letter of instruction, to a friend named Shotwell.
Neither was personally interested in seeking their fortunes in the wilderness, each selling their maps to more adventurous parties. In following years dozens of treasure hunters, each claiming to have the authentic map drawn by a dying Jackson, hiked into the forbidding mountains beyond Pitt Lake.
More than one vanished in this deadly region, prompting rumours of a curse. According to one man who returned, empty-handed but alive, his purported copy of Jackson’s letter to Shotwell stated that “the gold is in a place less than 20 miles from the head of the Pitt River, where a stream flows down a canyon and disappears from sight.
Most people treat gold panning is a hobby. For the prospectors of old, like Volcanic Brown, it was their livelihood. — https://www.bcplacer.com/gold_prospecting_in_bc.htm
“The canyon is guarded by three peaks which stand as sentinels. I found the peaks and the canyon, and followed it to another canyon which fits the [letter’s] description. But I couldn’t get down because of ice and snow.”
There have been countless expeditions after Slumach’s legendary hoard over the past 140 years. Which brings us back to Volcanic Brown.
Several years ago, the passing of retired game inspector George Stevenson, at the age of 77, recalled Brown’s disappearance in the mountains at the headwaters of Pitt River. It had been George Stevenson's job to lead the search party looking for him.
Each summer during the 1920’s, Brown had hiked into the rugged Pitt River country. About the middle of September, he’d check into the provincial fish hatchery at the head of Pitt Lake on his way out.
Those who knew the intriguing old prospector were aware that, although he’d never staked a claim in the region, he always came out with gold.
In the fall of 1930, hatchery officials waited in vain for Brown to make his scheduled appearance. Weeks passed without sign of him and, with winter fast approaching, they knew he was in trouble.
Thus it was that Game Warden Stevenson began an ordeal that was to last an agonizing 27 days—and, perhaps, bring him and his companions to within a mile of the Lost Creek Mine.
Only the combined experience of the relief party permitted them to pack in in November. But even this didn’t save them from mishap, one man being injured and a second having to be detailed to escort him out.
In worsening weather, Stevenson and Roy McMaster carried on, searching for human signs in a vast hell of glacier and driving show.
Onward they pushed, up to the headwaters of Seven Mile Creek to Homestead Glacier. For five maddening days, the wind shrieked without pause, almost burying their tiny camp beneath an avalanche of flying white. Then the storm eased just enough to permit them to inch forward.
Barely able to determine their bearings, Stevenson and McMaster continued, painful step at a time, across the treacherous ice. On one particularly bitter day, they succeeded only in gaining a pitiful 1,200 feet.
Finally the mile-and-a-half-wide glacier was behind them and, once into Porcupine Valley, they climbed to the timberline to pick their way across seven-mile-wide Slave Glacier. There, where the Slave begins, they found Brown’s last camp.
They wouldn’t have seen his tent, buried in snow, had not quarrelling whisky jacks caught Stevenson’s eye. Of Brown, there was no trace but, probing in the mantel of white, they found his shotgun, cooking utensils and a notebook.
More interesting was a screw-cap jar containing 11 ounces of coarse gold. Closer examination revealed the tantalizing fact that the gold had been chipped from a vein, as traces of quartz remained.
Further search failed to uncover any sign of Brown. Stevenson could only conclude that the hardy old man (who’d once amputated his gangrenous toes with a pen knife), knowing the end of the trail had come at last, had wandered off into the blizzard, or had fallen down one of the many crevasses nearby.
Which poses the inevitable question: Had Volcanic Brown, in fact, located wily Slumach’s lost mine?
News of his death in the rugged mountains recalled an incident of years before, when an aging prospector, exhausted and hungry, had staggered to the hunting cabin of four Nelson businessmen. The old man had been in poor shape but, somewhat revived after a hot dinner and fortifying rum, had regaled his hosts with his tales of his adventures. He told how he’d once nursed Slumach’s granddaughter back to health and she’d told him the mine’s location.
The garrulous old prospector was Volcanic Brown.
With the death of Roy McMaster, George Stevenson’s companion in discovering Brown’s last camp, the game warden became the only man to know Brown’s possible solution to Slumach’s secret.
After 30 years with the provincial game department, Irish-born Stevenson retired to his Victoria home in 1956. Some months later, he reminisced with former deputy commissioner of British Columbia Provincial Police Cecil Clark about the torturous rescue mission of a quarter-century before. The wiry bush veteran conceded with a grin that that trip had been the worst of his career and that, although always a slim man, he’d lost 13 pounds.
Had he ever returned to Volcanic Brown’s tragic campsite? No, he replied, although he said he’d had offers of “substantial financial backing” to lead a party back into the treacherous glacier country. But for reasons he didn’t divulge, he’d turned down all such propositions.
And with George Stevenson’s passing, the secret of Slumach’s gold, and of Volcanic Brown’s rich strike, remains unsolved.
There are those who doubt that Slumach had a gold mine of any value at all, that he simply murdered prospectors for their pokes, that the Pitt River country isn’t gold-bearing. As noted earlier, no less an expert than the late Bill Barlee came to the conclusion, after considerable study, that the Lost Creek Mine “probably does not exist”.
He accepted that Volcanic Brown was no fool, that he wouldn’t have repeatedly risked his life in his old age without good reason.
But—Barlee pointed out that the nuggets recovered from Brown's camp by Stevenson and McMaster likely were from a lode deposit rather than being placer gold—even though, as we’ve seen, the Geological Survey of Canada has dissed the Pitt Lake mountains as being an unlikely area for gold deposits of any kind.
Which brings up another contradiction: Jackson claimed to have found his gold in a creek. Barlee was inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt. It’s established fact that Volcanic Brown, the ultimate professional prospector, made repeated trips up the Pitt River and always returned with gold.
Then there are the nuggets in the jar.
We must assume that he did have a source, one so rich that it drew him back to those wicked mountains again and again. But he took his secret to the grave.
His remains haven’t been found to this day, although his unique set of false teeth—of solid gold!—will readily identify him.
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I think you’ll agree that Volcanic Brown was one of the most colourful of B.C.’s prospectors and a legend in his own lifetime.
But there’s even more to his amazing story: he killed a man. I’ll tell you of that tragic day in 1924 in next week’s Chronicles.
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