How many people now-a-days have seen a pan that yields 56 1/4 ounces of gold? About a century ago, a number of miners had this experience beside a shaft on the subsequently famous Point Claim situated near Stanley on a back channel of Lightning Creek.

Sam Montgomery, an old sage of the country was taken with the ‘bug’ that was probably the start of the whole thing. He had long suspected that there must be a bench at the upper end of the idle Point Claim. The company working it previously, had drifted out all the deep ground and abandoned it. As time went on, and Sam thought about it more and more, he became even more suspecting. Fireside cronies wintering around the town hooted at him, others smiled condescendingly.

This must have happened once too often, for although Sam was called an old man, in his heart he was just seventy years young. So he decided to sink the shaft himself. His long hours on a supposedly fruitless goal began. His claim was the old Spruce, the west line of which came close to the east line of the Point.

Bucket by bucket, the dirt came out of the shaft, ever so slowly. Tediously Sam would take his bucket down a ladder, fill it, and hoist it up. As the hole got deeper, each journey became longer–taking a greater toll of his courage. All along the way, little flags of faith unfurled and there was an uncanny belief in old Sam’s heart that everything was going to be alright….if he could just make it down to bedrock.

Fourteen feet shallower than the deepest part of the channel, Sam struck the bench. And he didn’t get a prospect. Could it be that they who had told him he would find nothing were right? He remembered some men whom he believed might help him, for the work was heavy now, but the hope was still there.

The men were willing. Working beside old Sam, were Fred Tregillus, George Rankin, Harry Jones, ex-M.L.A. and Joe Spratt. “In a few sets from the shaft,” says Mr. Tregillus, ‘‘we got onto good gold and in a few months took out not quite $20,000.00.” Worth considerably more at today’s prices.

The dream of an old man had proven right. And the pan that made the ground famous ? Well, when Sam Montgomery struck it rich on his Spruce Claim it caused a minor upheaval. Dave Shaw, who had fallen heir to the Point Claim at his father’s death, was not in the country. Bill Fry and Andrew Kelly, the mounties, located him around Dawson. The former two men made him an offer of $500 for his interest in the Point Claim, which he accepted. And almost as quickly, a shaft was begun.

It was up this shaft that a pan of dirt came one day on a bucket of gravel. Bill Fry, who was working at the bottom of the shaft shouted to the top men to get old-timer Jim Innes, the foreman, to wash the pan that he had just taken out of a crevice. As many faces became tense and moved silently closer as Jim Innes washed the pan in the dump-box leaving the gold behind.

“The gold was very coarse,’” remembered Fred Tregillus, who watched the drama that day. There was 56 1/4 ounces in the pan! The output of the Point Claim totaled about twice that of the Spruce placer…and all because old Sam Montgomery pursued his suspicions right down to bedrock.