Where is slumachs gold

Just before Slumach was hanged, it was rumoured that he muttered a curse on anyone who dared to search for his gold mine: "Nika memloose, mine memloose.

There's little evidence to support any of the story, particularly the curse, but rumours of Slumach's gold began to attract more prospectors to the area. In the s, hundreds of prospectors travelled into the mountains around Pitt Lake every summer in search of the gold, according to Rick Antonson, co-author of the book Slumach's Gold: The Search for a Legend.

Several prospectors have even claimed to have found the gold. In the s, for example, a forest surveyor named Stu Brown said he stumbled onto a stream near Pitt Lake that was ankle-deep with gold nuggets. But Brown was never able to pinpoint the location again. But for all those who believe in Slumach's gold, there are others who think it's just a hoax.

Fred Braches, a local historian who recently published a book titled Searching for Pitt Lake Gold: Facts and Fantasy in the Legend of Slumach, says there's no evidence for most of the story. Slumach was real, Braches says, "but he had nothing to do with gold.

More prospectors meant more jobs for guides and outfitters. People are looking for what they believe is there. But even today, there's still a small community of people searching for the lost mine, sharing trip reports and swapping clues through Facebook and online message boards. For these modern-day searchers, like Palmer, it's not about the money. Not anymore, at least.

Much of the area where Slumach's gold is supposedly hidden is within the boundaries of Pinecone Burke and Golden Ears provincial parks, where mining for gold is prohibited. For Palmer, the search for Slumach's gold is about the thrill of the hunt — trying to solve a mystery that no one else has been able to.

More than that, he says the search for the lost gold — all the dead ends and long days — has been about sharing the adventure with friends, some of whom he does trips with year after year. After our helicopter trip in July, Palmer returned to the cabin site a few weeks later to search for the lost mine.

And that's when he made another surprising discovery: gold. Previous stories about the murder Slumach committed in were all based on the old newspaper stories, but at that time there were no journalist going out into the field to verify facts.

So the news about the murder on the Pitt River depended on gossip and hearsay. In my book, I have instead used legal records, which tell an entirely different sequence of events. It emerged that even the location at which the murder was committed and the weapon used were wrong in the newspapers. There was no shred of evidence to confirm this story, but from there the legend was spun to ever more fantastic proportions.

With the Second World War came the outrageous gothic stories that had nothing to do with that poor Katzie man Slumach. It is important to me as a historian to make sure that, besides the legends, the facts about this old man Slumach was over 70 when he was hanged are also known.

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