Cayoosh Gold Rush

Gold Mining Canyon

Cayoosh Creek, BC, the site of the Cayoosh Gold Rush

The Cayoosh Gold Rush was one of several in the history of the region surrounding Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. If estimates of its yield are true, it would be one of the richest single finds in the gold mining history of that province.

Cayoosh Creek is a relatively major tributary of the Fraser River, merging with the outflow from Seton Lake before joining the larger river at Lillooet. Six miles (9.5km) upstream from that confluence was a large waterfall, Cayoosh Falls (now inundated by a private estate's small hydroelectric dam and powerplant). In early 1884 staking of gold claims on Cayoosh Creek between the falls and the Fraser began and by the end of the year there were 600 men working that section of the creek - all of which had been fully staked by the end of the year.

What distinguishes the mining activity on Cayoosh Creek from other mining operations at that time was that all of the 300 claimholders were Chinese, word-of-mouth having spread through their community throughout the Fraser Canyon and the Cariboo of the find such that all claims were staked by the time any non-Chinese found about it. Local government agent and claims recorder Caspar Phair, who presided over the issuing of claims, in 1887 estimated C$6-7 million in gold had been taken out, in a decade when the official total gold revenue for the entire province was only about C$1.5 million.

By the end of the decade the claims were exhausted but the renewed interest in the Lillooet region helped spur a wave of new exploration in the area, which had been bypassed for the most part during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush a few decades earlier. The discovery of the famous (but largely worthless) Golden Cache Mine farther up Cayoosh Creek, the various mines of Bridge River goldfields and a profitable mine at McGillivray Falls on Anderson Lake, to the west of Seton Lake, are all the result of the Cayoosh Gold Rush.

## Sources

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* Short Portage to Lillooet, Irene Edwards, self-published, Lillooet, various editions, out of print.
* Halfway to the Goldfields, Lorraine Harris, Sunfire Books, one edition, out of print.
* The Great Years, Lewis Green, Tricouni Books Vancouver 2001
* Bridge River Gold, Emma de Hullu and others, self-published, 1971, out of print.

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Gold rushes of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries

United States|

* Carolina (1800s)
* Georgia (1829)
* California (1848)
* Pike's Peak (1858)
* Black Hills (1876)
* Nome (1899)
* Fairbanks (1902)

Canada|

* Queen Charlottes (1851)
* Fraser Canyon (1858–1860)
* Rock Creek (1860)
* Similkameen (1860)
* Stikine (1861–1862)
* Cariboo (1861–1866)
* Nova Scotia (1861–1874, 1896–1903, 1932–1942)
* Wild Horse Creek (1863–1865)
* Leechtown (1864–1865)
* Big Bend (1865)
* Omineca (1869)
* Cassiar (1871–?)
* Cayoosh (1884)
* Klondike (1897–1903)
* Porcupine (1911)

Australia|

* Victorian (1851)
* New South Wales (1851)
* Western Australian (1880s–1890s)

New Zealand|

* Otago (1861–1863)
* West Coast (1864–1867)
* Coromandel (1860s–1870s)

Latin America|

* Ouro Preto, Brazil (1750)
* Tierra del Fuego (Chile-Argentina) (1883)
* Serra Pelada, Brazil (1980)

Europe|

* Wicklow, Ireland (1795)
* Kildonan, Scotland (1869)
* Lapland, Finland (1870)

Africa|

* Witwatersrand, South Africa (1886)
* Kakamega, Kenya (1930s)

Part of a series on Gold mining

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1840–1870|

* Railway Mania (c. 1840–c. 1850)
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* Queen Charlottes Gold Rush (1851)
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* Otago gold rush (1861–1864)
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* First Nova Scotia Gold Rush (1861–1874)
* West Coast gold rush (1864–1867)
* Big Bend Gold Rush (c. 1865)
* Vermilion Lake gold rush (1865–1867)
* Kildonan Gold Rush (1869)
* Omineca Gold Rush (1869)

2nd Industrial Revolution
(1870–1914)|

* 1870s Lapland gold rush
* Coromandel Gold Rushes (c. 1870–c. 1890)
* Cassiar Gold Rush (c. 1870–c. 1890)
* Black Hills gold rush (1874–1880)
* Colorado Silver Boom (1879–1893)
* Western Australian gold rushes (c. 1880–c. 1900)
* Indiana gas boom (c. 1880–1903)
* Ohio oil rush (c. 1880–c. 1930)
* Tierra del Fuego gold rush (1883–1906)
* Cayoosh Gold Rush (1884)
* Witwatersrand Gold Rush (1886)
* Encilhamento (1886–1890)
* Cripple Creek Gold Rush (c. 1890–c. 1910)
* Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1899)
* Second Nova Scotia Gold Rush (1896–1903)
* Kobuk River Stampede (1897–1899)
* Mount Baker gold rush (1897–c. 1925)
* Nome Gold Rush (1899–1909)
* Fairbanks Gold Rush (c. 1900–1918)
* Texas oil boom (1901–1918)
* Cobalt silver rush (1903–1918)
* Porcupine Gold Rush (1909–1918)

Interwar period
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* 1920s Florida land boom (c. 1920–1925)
* Fairbanks Gold Rush (1918–c. 1930)
* Texas oil boom (1918–1945)
* Cobalt silver rush (1918–c. 1930)
* Porcupine Gold Rush (1918–1945)
* 1930s Kakamega gold rush
* Third Nova Scotia Gold Rush (1932–1942)

Post–WWII expansion
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* Texas oil boom (1945–c. 1950)
* Porcupine Gold Rush (1945–c. 1960)
* Poseidon bubble (1969–1970)

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