The Claim
There’s an area north of Pitt Lake so rich with gold, people have been looking for it for over 100 years.
Gold is something that has always been at the top of the value chain, were as money can lose value or even become worthless in the event of a nations collapse, gold remains forever valuable. This is exactly why when people during the gold rush years hear that magical word they come flocking to the area in search of this precious metal, full of dreams of finding a source rich enough so a few weeks work will see them set for the rest of their lives.
During the Fraser Canyon gold rush of 1857, hundreds of prospectors moved to the area to mine gold out of the Thompson river in British Columbia, and many of these prospectors made maps of where they found gold. Out of the dozens of maps that were made, only 2 of them showed gold in the same place north of Pitt lake, with the words “gold” on one map and “Indian diggings” on the other.
A few years later another map was produced with the words “much gold bearing quartz rock” in the same place the other 2 maps had markers on them. The maker of the map claims that he found high concentrations of gold in a small stream north of Pitt lake.
In 1903 a new Westminster newspaper reported how someone had come back from the Pitt lake area after claiming to have found a rich deposit, and had $1,200 in raw gold to prove it.
A few years after this an Indian reportedly visited the town bank on numerous occasions with over $1000 worth of raw gold, which he exchanged for bank notes. After returning several times over the next few weeks with amounts well over $1000 worth each time, he confessed he had found a rich deposit but refused to say where. After coming down with a terminal illness he apparently told one of his relatives that he’d found a deposit north of Pitt lake.
The next claim of the mine comes from a prospector named Wilbur Armstrong, who gave an interview to a local paper in 1915 and mentioned a man named Walter Jackson, who he claimed found the mine. After spending a few weeks in the Pitt lake area he returned to San Fransisco where he deposited $8,000 worth of raw gold, with records from the United states mint confirming the deposit.
There are several other short stories of how the mine has apparently been found by a few people, but since the source of the gold has never been officially discovered, it seems that no one will know if it ever existed in the first place.
However the chances that it does exist are probably higher than you may think. Gold has been discovered in abundance within every single country on earth, and Canada has the most remote unexplored territory in all of north America. Be careful if your thinking about trying to find it though as over 20 people have died in the attempt since 1901, mostly through dying of accidents or getting caught if extreme weather.
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