The Rush
By the spring of 1910 the rush was in full swing. Thousands of fortune seekers poured into the area, either in an attempt to stake their own claims, or more and more commonly, looking for work in high paying mining jobs. Towns, often nothing more than tent camps, sprung up along the banks of Porcupine Lake, at that point the terminus of the canoe route into the area. Golden City (later Porcupine) and Pottsville sprung up almost overnight, followed by South Porcupine at the end of the lake, closer to the main mining areas. As the area was quickly explored and staked, the main gold producing area was revealed to be three miles (5 km) wide and five long, running along an east-west axis southwest of the lake. Mines all along the area started production over the next few years, buying plots staked during 1910 and 1911. Seeing the obvious potential of the area the T&NO started construction of a spur line, but was delayed by the constant defection of workers to the goldfields. The province responded by shipping prisoners to work the line, handing secondary duties such as clearing trees and rock. The spur reached Golden City on June 7, 1911, and an official opening followed on July 1. More people poured into the towns, and by the end of the summer there were 8,000 active claims.
Read more about this topic: Porcupine Gold Rush
Famous quotes containing the word rush:
“They seldom looked happy. They passed one another without a word in the elevator, like silent shades in hell, hell-bent on their next look from a handsome stranger. Their next rush from a popper. The next song that turned their bones to jelly and left them all on the dance floor with heads back, eyes nearly closed, in the ecstasy of saints receiving the stigmata.”
—Andrew Holleran (b. 1943)
“These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas.... But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)