More about lost treasures, large and small, in British Columbia

Speaking of lost treasure, as I did last week, sent me into my voluminous files to find an article I originally wrote for The Islander, the Sunday magazine of The Daily Colonist, way back in 1964 (when I was still a twinkle in my father’s eye).

There’s something about lost treasure that has universal appeal no matter how slight the foundation on which some legends are based. Then again, maybe credibility isn’t the real issue, that it’s more a matter of just reading a great story in the comfort of an armchair than ever walking the talk and actually looking for it.

Whatever the case, herewith some more yarns to set your juices flowing…

For all of British Columbia’s exciting history of lost treasures, the official record of treasures that have been found is rather slim. In fact, other than scattered news reports over the years, many of them more tantalizing than revealing, it’s virtually non-existent.

Why? Apparently the fortunate finder’s first concern is beating Canada Revenue, at which the odds are heavily in his favour.

Or, in some cases, it’s a matter of not wanting to risk losing possession or to have to split the pot with the owner of the property on which it was found.

No Acts of the Parliament of Canada deal with treasure trove as it’s considered to be in the provincial domain. British Columbia’s laws on the subject were clarified in the Lord Hailsham Edition of Halsbury’s Laws of England at the Court House Library.

Even smaller treasures have their appeal
Setting aside, if we will, such well-known tales as that of the Lost Creek Mine, there are other, smaller hoards which would be much safer goals for the amateur treasure hunter.

Some of them, mind you, are real long shots. Feeling lucky?

Deep in the mud of Nanaimo Harbour there’s a metal box contaIning about $3000 in cash and jewellery. It’s the last link in a brutal kidnapping and murder that occurred in 1887. Just before their arrest, the culprits threw the incriminatiang chest into the murky waters near the old Vancouver Coal Company’s wharf. Today, Cameron Island has been joined to downtown Nanaimo by in-fill; the VCC wharf, fortunately, was on the seaward side of the island.

Something for adventurous, not to mention optimistic, skin-divers to think about.

Some Scuba divers have turned their talents to prospecting. In operations called “sniping,” they seek some of the wealth left untouched by conventional placer mining methods in the province’s rivers and creeks. Even some veteran placer miners have taken to this “high-tech” practice.

For a real long shot try this one!
More than $300,000 in gold dust and nuggets is believed buried somewhere between Cache Creek and Ashcroft. According to the legend, a miner who’d struck paydirt at Barkerville was murdered and robbed near 150-Mile House. Shortly afterward, a neighbour who’d heard of the slaying, spotted the killer and a gunfight ensued. But the bandit managed to escape into the dense brush. Weeks later, his horse was found on the opposite side of the Thompson River. Bloodstains on the saddle indicated that the robber had been badly wounded and had fallen from his hosrse, dragging the valuable saddlebags with him. His skeleton and the gold may somewhere in the locality today… (Good luck with this one!)

It’s also local legend that the infamous cannibal-murderer Boone Helm, who operated for a short time in the Cariboo, buried $30,000 in the Quesnel Forks country. A hangman’s rope in Virginia City prevented his recovering it.

Treasure of a very different but not disagreeable nature was buried near Jasper about 1909. An American freighter who’d already been busted once for smuggling liquor gambled on concealing his cargo in flour barrels and bribing other freighters to haul them for him.

One day, he hired a youthful muleskinner to take three barrels of ‘flour’ through the checkpoints. The wagoneers travelled miles without incident until a teamster coming from the opposite direction warned him that the police were suspicious and were double-checking all wagons.

Uh, oh, the police were on the job
Worse still, they’d set up a checkpoint 10 miles down the road.

The harried smuggler decided to hide two barrels of whisky and chance getting the third one through. With the help of the driver, the smuggler buried the liquor barrels in a shallow canyon beside the road. They so obliterated all traces of their activity that they worried lest they not be able to find the site again.

To mark the spot they hung a short length of chain in a large spruce tree about 600 feet from the cache, and wedged a pickhead between two rocks near the road.

But the Mounties’ search uncovered the real contents of the third barrel and our smuggler was deported, the young teamster let off with a stern warning.

He, in following months, thought a great deal about the buried barrels of booze but didn’t dare attempt their recovery. Within a year, he’d married and settled down in Alberta.

Thirty years later,
while on a vacation with his family in Vancouver, he detoured to Jasper. Locating the vicinity where he thought the ‘flour’ had been buried, he searched for two hours and finally found the pickhead. But the years had made changes in the land and he couldn’t find the piece of chain or the cache and, running out of time, went on his way.

Too bad those barrels will have long rotted, releasing their precious contents!

It’s still rumoured in Victoria that 1200 cases liquor packed in salmon cases remain hidden on Vancouver Island’s famous Long Beach.

One of the more favoured spots for rumrunning during the U.S. Prohibition era was Sooke, where numerous lonely inlets assured little interference by police. When fishing wtth a companion for the government relief camp at Otter Point during the Depression, Adam Hutchison uncovered a cache of whisky in the bush. He immediately reported his find but whether authorities or fellow workers got their first isn’t known.

Years later, workmen bulldozing the site of guest cabins on Salt Spring Island uncovered two bottles of wine. The dirt-encrusted bottles bore Australian labels and were believed to be part of a cache left by rumrunners when the Gulf Islands were also used for smuggling. One bottle was kept for posterity but the other—!