When the stock market crashed in 1929, it sent a cloud of hunger mushrooming across the Dominion. Jobs disappeared and money was scarce. If a man were able to provide his own work, he was fortunate.
British Columbia offered that opportunity to the ones that were energetic. Her little valleys throughout the interior held several hundred gold-bearing creeks virtually forgotten since the 1890’s. There were still colors in those creeks that nobody cared about. Hardy old miners and eager novices who would rather pan a creek for a dollar a day instead of going on relief went back to the hills. Prospectors descended on all the old placer creeks in the province, and discovered some new ones.
One such creek to thrive again was Tranquille, a stream 10 miles west of Kamloops which gets its name from an Indian chief Sanquil who lived there in the 1830’s. The creek tumbles 30 miles through the pines and rolling sagebrush country to Kamloops Lake. With the exception of that part of the Fraser River which flows through the Kamloops Mining Division, it has produced more gold than any other creek in the area. Its known yield from 1874 to 1945 being 2,392 ounces worth almost 6.5 million dollars today.
Placer mining was simple, and little equipment was needed. A shovel, a pan, and a bit of money for grub. Build a sluice box and you were in business. Placer mining methods hadn’t changed from the early years, although now sluices are no longer allowed. The tactics for making a dishonest dollar hadn’t changed much either. Fred “Shorty” Gilderdale, a former resident of Tranquille creek, learned this the hard way.
In 1931 he had just lost his job in a coal mine in Alberta and since he was 52 at the time, the future didn’t look exactly rosy. However shortly afterward in Edmonton he saw an advertisement for experienced timber men and placer miners. Shorty went to the hotel listed in the advertisement and soon found himself talking mining to a young man whose first name was Eric.
It turned out that Eric had just returned to Edmonton from Kamloops, where he had staked the “rich” Rattlesnake Claim on Tranquille Creek and formed a company to develop it. Shares were $100 each, and buyers were guaranteed 90 cents worth of gold a yard and $3.50 a day for putting up timbers, plus a share in the profits. Gilderdale was green to gold, and cautious. “No, no, I’m not buying a pig in the poke,” he said. “I’ll give you $50 down and if I like it when I get there I’ll send you the other $50.”
When he got there he found two other share owners working the claim. They were getting only 25 cents a yard and the company was non-existent. Gilderdale was flustered but there was little he could do. Eric had long since checked out of his hotel room office. Short of money, but mostly angry, Gilderdale decided to stay and took possession of the claim, re-naming it Coronation. He stayed there ever since. “I was supposed to get a fortune,” Gilderdale muses. “I got a fortune, it was a misfortune. But never mind, I’ve gotten over it.”
Shorty went to work on his re-named claim and toiled eight years. With a partner, Harvey Sederland, they dug out $850 one year. Gilderdale quickly learned why the claim wasn’t as rich as it was supposed to be. Prior to the Rattlesnake Claim, it was held by a Chinese outfit in 1928 and the owner had 45 men working for him paying them $1.50 a day. When a Frenchman decided to go to Vancouver and abandoned the neighboring claim, Gilderdale sold the Coronation and moved onto it.
Gilderdale was a firm believer in the creek’s potential. “There’s gold in that creek,” he says, “But when you get to be 80 you’re too old to get it. I can do a day’s work yet but I don’t like digging all the time.” His claim is dotted with holes. He’ll point to one pit five or six feet deep and explain, “We got only four pennyweight out of this. The digging was too hard.” ($1.40 a pennyweight, 20 pennyweight to an ounce.) On occasion he would make $7.00 a day, (about 1.25 ounces) but not often.
His most challenging experience on the creek came in July of 1935 when heavy rains and melting snow smashed two dams, which nearby Tranquille TB Sanitorium had built for water storage. Gilderdale was in such a deep sleep that he didn’t wake up until 3 a.m. with water lapping all about him. He pushed shingles through the roof of his cabin and squatted on the roof until rescued at 7:30.
What the early gold yield of the creek was is difficult to determine. In 1859, a year after its discovery, five men were said to be making $300 a day with sluice boxes, and others took out $10 to $12 a day with the rocker. In 1861, there were 150 miners averaging $16 a day in the vicinity of the creek. Two hundred Chinese worked it in the early 1900’s. That money isn’t there today. But still the old prospectors remained, living on the banks of the beloved creek that kept them eating in the hungry thirties.
On the creek they found freedom and independence that enabled them to live in contentment with themselves and their fellow man. In this day and age, these are qualities that many people far richer than the prospectors of Tranquille Creek cannot find.
