British Columbia Gold Rushes - Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, 1850

Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, 1850

Gold was first formally discovered by non-indigenous people at Gold Harbour on the west coast of Moresby Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands, near the Haida village of Tasu on Mitchell Inlet, an arm of Gold Harbour (which is part of Tasu Sound). A brief gold rush - the Queen Charlottes Gold Rush - ensued in the following year, leading to the declaration of the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands to prevent the archipelago from being overrun by Americans and so claimed by the United States. The extent of the ore body proved superficial, and there are various stories of American prospecting parties harassed by the Haida people, who were still very numerous and powerful. In later times, Gold Harbour and Mitchell Inlet became the location of a modern mining operation, also called Tasoo or Tasu, but for iron rather than gold. In 1969, a local logger, Efrem Specogna and his brother-in-law, John Trinco made the initial gold discovery of the Specogna (Babe) Gold deposit west of Port Clements, B.C. on Graham Island. By 1979, a 2 million ounce gold deposit was defined by exploratory drilling by major mining companies, Cominco, Kennco Explorations (a subsidiary of Kennecott) and Quintana Minerals. A junior exploration company continued drilling the project and a gold rush ensued from 1979-1981. The Specogna gold deposit remains an unmined deposit with over 3 million ounces of gold and is categorized as an epithermal type gold deposit.