{"id":7275,"date":"2021-01-11T14:38:23","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=7275"},"modified":"2021-01-11T14:54:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:54:04","slug":"episode-221-yukon-diary-7-dublin-gulch-gold-and-jack-acheson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=7275","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 221 YUKON DIARY 7 DUBLIN GULCH GOLD AND JACK ACHESON"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
EPISODE 221    YUKON DIARY  7   DUBLIN  GULCH GOLD and JACH ACHESON<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
alan skeoch<\/div>\n
jan. 2021<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
I met Jack Acheson several  times but the most memorable was  the day he gave me<\/div>\n
that Mammoth tooth.   It was one of those memorable occasions that get into long<\/div>\n
term storage in  my brain.  A bright sunny Yukon day\u2026blue sky.  A good to be alive day.<\/div>\n
Jack was  a placer gold miner at the Haggart Creek in Dublin Gulch, Yukon.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Sorry, try to ignore my picture\u2026look behind me\u20261) bull dozer tree, 2) hydraulic  hose gushing dirty water, 3) piles of overburden<\/div>\n
4) and on the right, perhaps, the bedrock where the gold has settled  after millions of years\u2026just sitting there waiting for Jack Acheson<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
PLACER  GOLD  AND  LODE GOLD:  WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Gold is gold.   There is no difference in the gold.  The difference is where the<\/div>\n
gold  is found.  Placer gold  is  loose gold  found trapped  in bedrock ripples<\/div>\n
once the overburden is pushed aside and washing happens.  Placer gold was<\/div>\n
once Lode gold.  Gold  trapped in rock.  Lode gold  is difficult to separate from <\/div>\n
rock.  Needs  heavy machinery to crush the rock.  Needs rock  drills  and  explosive<\/div>\n
to get chunks of rock  to the milling machines.   Dublin Gulch  as it turns out<\/div>\n
carried both kinds of gold.  Lots of  placer gold.  And, today, one of the largest<\/div>\n
Canadian  gold mines, the Eagle Mine, is  busy extracting Lode gold.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
JACK ACHESON<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Jack Acheson was the person working Dublin Gulch  in 1962.  There had been many men before him and a couple of women, who<\/div>\n
had found  gold  nuggets in the rubble pushed and ground  by  glaciers in the MacQuesten Valley.  Where did the gold come from?<\/div>\n
Dr. Aho said it percolated up from the molten magma on the crust of  which we live.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
JACK ACHESON,  SUMMER 1962, DUBLIN GULCH<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
When i met Jack, he  was working a  placer gold deposit on Haggart Creek at the mouth of Dublin<\/div>\n
Gulch.  His system was similar to the system  we used when gold planning  earlier.<\/div>\n
Only  he did his search  for placer gold on a grand  scale using a bulldozer, drag line,<\/div>\n
huge hydraulic pump, and an  immense sluice box  with wooden riffles to catch the<\/div>\n
heavy gold as water sluiced over scoop shovels of gravel.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Just to get to this stage.  I mean just to get to the gold bearing gravel, huge mounds <\/div>\n
of overburden had to be cleared\u2026trees, shrubs, boulders, earth\u2026all had to be<\/div>\n
removed just to get close to bedrock  where the placer gold rested\u2026if  it indeed<\/div>\n
did rest in the particular location chosen.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Thousands of tons of rubble had  to be moved just to find  a  few ounces of  gold.<\/div>\n
Occasionally\u2026rarely really\u2026Jack did find big nuggets.   One big one he<\/div>\n
carried in his pocket the day I met him.  It was  oblong.  Fitted in the palm  of his<\/div>\n
hand.   I dimly seem to remember him saying \u2018I keep it as  a knuckle duster in<\/div>\n
case of trouble\u2019 but that may be a bit too imaginative.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
What I remember clearly, as confirmed by some pictures taken at the time, is the total<\/div>\n
devastation of the site.  Just piles and piles of sorted and unsorted gravel.  Boulders rolled aside.<\/div>\n
Rocks hand  picked from the sluice box.<\/div>\n
A drag line with a huge bucket pulling off the overburden.  A bull dozer pushing<\/div>\n
piles  of loose gravel into a great sluice box with a never ending stream of water<\/div>\n
being fed  from a flume bringing water from some place higher up.  <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
And down below, close to the bedrock, Jack had an immense hydraulic hose <\/div>\n
blasting dirty water at the place where he believed  he was  close to the gold<\/div>\n
bearing bottom.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Dublin Gulch and Haggart Creek  were just names as far as  I was  concerned.<\/div>\n
Since that July day  in  1962 I have discovered that those names were and are<\/div>\n
just as  important as  the Klondike in the search for Yukon gold.   <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Before Jack brought in his heavy equipment the area had been worked  over<\/div>\n
many times  by  earlier placer miners.  A lot of  gold had  been found. But the work<\/div>\n
was not easy and the profits were small for the costs were high.  One earlier placer<\/div>\n
miner who tried to do the kind of excavation necessary wasted a lot of time<\/div>\n
taking little bits of gold dust to sell  at Mayo Landing just to buy diesel oil to<\/div>\n
run his  bull dozer.   Eventually losing everything.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Really the stories of Dublin Gulch are stories of dreams  dashed.   A few men<\/div>\n
found big chunks like \u201cJack Acheson\u2019s 7.5 ounce nugget\u201d and another<\/div>\n
nugget weighing 8.5 ounces found by Ed Barker.  Most moving however<\/div>\n
was the 7 ounce nugget found by Smashnut which nicely fitted into the palm<\/div>\n
of his hand. \u201cHe told everyone that the depressions in the nugget were the result<\/div>\n
of him \u201cclutching it so tightly when he found it\u201d.   A few big nugget  stories were<\/div>\n
enough to lure placer miners.   Perhaps the saddest measure of this  trail of<\/div>\n
broken hearts were the derelict wagons and machines we found in places where<\/div>\n
there were no loner roads or even tracks.  But once, long ago, a  dreamer of<\/div>\n
great wealth had carved a road and lugged whatever he could to the site he<\/div>\n
had staked using horses and  mules.  98 horses were kept at Keno Hill by<\/div>\n
Wernecke for instance until they were replaced by  Holt tracked vehicles.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Aaron Aho writes it best when he  records that these men remain<\/div>\n
\u201conly a record in some obscure ledger.  John Suttles, William Portlock, Albert<\/div>\n
Jahnke, Fred Gill, John ‘Jack\u2019 Maynard, Clarence Kinsey, Bobby Fisher, the<\/div>\n
Cantins ( Frank, Louis, Philias andJoey), Ed Barker and  others less well known<\/div>\n
are all gone,  yet the creek seems to whisper their names. It still rings  with the<\/div>\n
hopes  of those that are gone, and  hidden in its many bends are the rusted  mining<\/div>\n
machines, blacksmith stoves, vehicles, buggies, dog harnesses, sleighs, graders,<\/div>\n
tin cans, drill steels, old maps in cabins, and personal objects they left behind.\u201d (Page 62 <\/div>\n
Hills  of  Silver)<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
I would add Jack Acheson to the list.  Hell, why not add my own name\u2026and Bill Scott and Bill Dunn\u2026.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThe ruins pop up in the most unlikely places\u2026wrecked ore wagons like this.   But there are living reminders present as well because<\/div>\n
some of the horses were turned  loose and thrive in small herds to this day.   The only wilde horses I saw were dating ross  the Mayo<\/div>\n
Landing runway but stories of them were often told.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
HERE is the kind of damage placer gold  mining does to the land surface.  Look at these piles of gravel.   Yes, they do<\/div>\n
still  contain some gold and  modern mining efforts often rework old placer gold fields and  make a profit.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
When I began  to write this Episode,  I decided  to check the internet just<\/div>\n
in case Jack was mentioned.   He was  not.  Then I thought to check  if<\/div>\n
Dr. Aho was mentioned and was startled to discover that Dr. Aaro Aho had written a book<\/div>\n
on mining exploration in the Yukon.  His book, Hills of Silver, The Yukon\u2019s Mighty <\/div>\n
Keno  Hill Mine,  was available on<\/div>\n
Amazon for $35 and with help I got a copy.  A  wonderful  book for me because<\/div>\n
it supports my diary but is more informed  more detailed than anything I have written.<\/div>\n
  But reading the book and  writing an Episode per day<\/div>\n
is  extremely  difficult (added  to the fact that President Trump has gone <\/div>\n
insane jeopardizing our world and distracting everyone from daily routines.).<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
So this  Episode 221 could be much longer\u2026should be much longer\u2026but I<\/div>\n
cannot do that in a single day   Take what I have written\u2026.see the post script<\/div>\n
which  shows  what I intended to write.  Sorry.  Maybe more later.\u2019<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
alan skeoch<\/div>\n
Jan. 2021<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
POST SCRIPT:  HOW I ORIGINALLY PLANNED THE STORY\u2026UNFINISHED<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Thursday July 5, 1962<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
I met Jack Acheson when I got to back to Mayo\u2026he bought<\/div>\n
me a beer in the Chateau Inn.   Nice, but I did not know <\/div>\n
why I deserved some kind  of  special treatment as I had<\/div>\n
only been in the  Yukon for little over a month.  He might need<\/div>\n
our help at his placer mine.  Seismic help.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Who was Jack Acheson?<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
He was a placer miner big time.   Earlier you will remember that<\/div>\n
we found some high grade sand and gravel in a bunch of<\/div>\n
rusty drums.   Following a hunch  we bought two gold pans<\/div>\n
\u2026dumped in a couple handful of the barrel concentrate then<\/div>\n
carefully swished the pans in Haggart Creek\u2026the lighter sand<\/div>\n
and  gravel swished out and the heavier gold specks remained.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Well, Jack and his partners did the same thing only on a<\/div>\n
bigger scale.  They bought a bull dozer from the Outfitters <\/div>\n
store in Mayo\u2026with a downpayment and promise to<\/div>\n
make payments\u2026just like buying a car.  <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Then  they used the dozer and drag line to clear the overburden.  Overburden?<\/div>\n
Yes, that term applies to everything above the bed rock\u2026.shrubs, soil,<\/div>\n
trees, gravel, boulders, mammoth teeth, mammoth tusks\u2026everything.<\/div>\n
When they get close to the bedrock they get careful because there <\/div>\n
may be gold sitting down at the bedrock.  Why?  Because gold is<\/div>\n
heavier  than the overburden.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Let me put this in dialogue form:<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u201cJack, you are making one hell of a mess with that dozer\u2026stripping all that overburden.<\/div>\n
Searching for gold hardly seems worth that effort.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJust the beginning. Sometimes we have to move 30 or 40 feet of overburden with <\/div>\n
the dozer and hose.:\u2019<\/div>\n
\u201cHose?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cBig hydraulic hose blast the loose gravel away when we get the trees and brush<\/div>\n
removed.  Power drive hose.. bigger than a fireman hose.   We had to build a <\/div>\n
sluice to get the water from higher up in the Gulch.  Need lost of  water\u2026tons of<\/div>\n
it\u2026enough to wash away truckloads of  gravel.   Until we get down to pay dirt\u2026<\/div>\n
the heavy  gravel and sand on top of the bed rock.  That\u2019s where the gold is\u2026<\/div>\n
gold dust to gold nuggets like this one.:\u2019<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
“Jack fished our a long gold  nugget from his pants pocket. Weiihs two pounds or more.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cwhy carry it in your pocket\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJust in case some son of a bitch  gets a notion to roll me.  One hits with this<\/div>\n
Knuckle duster will get that idea out of his head fast.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cHow many nuggets\u2026STOP, ALAN, STOP, THIS WILL TAKE TOO  LONG\u2026SO I STOPPED<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
WHY?  WHAT HAD  YOU PLANNED, ALAN.<\/div>\n
\u201cI had hoped to quote RoBert Service\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
THE SHOOTING OF DAN McGREW<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.<\/div>\n

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
<\/span><\/span>There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.<\/div>\n

There’s men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he’d do,
And I turned my head\u2014and there watching him was the lady that’s known as Lou.<\/div>\n

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
<\/span><\/span>The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands\u2014my God! but that man could play.<\/div>\n

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;<\/i>
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?\u2014
Then you’ve a haunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.<\/div>\n

And hunger not of the belly kind, that’s banished with bacon and beans,
<\/span><\/span>But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman’s love\u2014
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true\u2014
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,\u2014the lady that’s known as Lou.)<\/div>\n

Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil’s lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
‘Twas the crowning cry of a heart’s despair, and it thrilled you through and through\u2014
“I guess I’ll make it a spread misere,” said Dangerous Dan McGrew.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/span><\/span>The music almost died away . . . then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, “Repay, repay,” and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . . then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And “Boys,” says he, “you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke they’re true,
That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew.”<\/div>\n

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,
<\/span><\/span>And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan MGrew<\/span>,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that’s known as Lou.<\/div>\n

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,” and I’m not denying it’s so.
I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two\u2014
The woman that kissed him and\u2014pinched his poke\u2014was the lady that’s known as Lou.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
EARLY GOLD MINERS\u2026PLACER GOLD  MINERS \u2026 IN DUBLIN GULCH<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\"\"<\/div>\n
\n

<\/div>\n
                                                                                                   Government of Canada \u2013 McLean, 1914 plate No. 27<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\n

Dugald MacLachlan (left) and three other unidentified miners at the entrance of an underground mine dug at Olive in 1914. Today, Olive is encompassed by Victoria Gold’s Dublin Gulch property and is one of the sources of ore for Eagle, the largest gold mine <\/p>\n

ever to operate in Canada’s Yukon Territory.<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/div>\n
THE EAGLE MINE IN DUBLIN GULCH TODAY<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\"Dublin<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE 221    YUKON DIARY  7   DUBLIN  GULCH GOLD and JACH ACHESON alan skeoch jan. 2021 I met Jack Acheson several  times but the most memorable was  the day he gave me that Mammoth tooth.   It was one of those memorable occasions that get into long term storage in  my brain.  A bright […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}