Misplaced Pages

#385614

47-560: From the late 1850s, with the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo Gold Rushes , British Columbia was dependent upon Californian supplies and ships. To prevent US domination of the colony , Governor James Douglas enacted laws restricting US shipping. As a consequence, Joseph Spratt established the Albion Iron Works on May 4, 1863. Albion Iron Works went through several business changes and merged with Victoria Machinery Depot (VMD), assuming

94-537: A general buoyant feeling of a "free-for-all" in income mobility , in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in the California Dream . Gold rushes helped spur waves of immigration that often led to the permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian and North American frontiers . At

141-456: A gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastra to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore at greater speed. As the miners venture downwards, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals , which will require smelting . If

188-599: A group of rebellious American miners. Governor Douglas placed restrictions on immigration to the new British colony , including the proviso that entry to the territory must be made via Victoria and not overland, but thousands of men still arrived via the Okanagan and Whatcom Trails . Douglas also sought to limit the importation of weapons, one of the reasons for the Victoria-disembarkation requirement, but his lack of resources for oversight meant that overland routes to

235-540: A record for mass movement of mining populations on the North American frontier, even though more men in total were involved in the gold rushes of California and Colorado. By the fall, however, tens of thousands of men who had failed to stake claims or were unable to because of the summer's high water on the river, pronounced the Fraser to be "humbug." Many returned to San Francisco, but a continuing influx of newcomers replaced

282-809: A simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organisation. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations. After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing , hydraulic mining and dredging may be used. Typically

329-456: A time when the world's money supply was based on gold , the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the goldfields, feeding into local and wider economic booms . The Gold Rush was a topic that inspired many TV shows and books considering it was a very important topic at the time. During the time, many books were published including The Call of the Wild , which had much success during

376-516: Is a discovery of gold —sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals —that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia , Greece , New Zealand , Brazil , Chile , South Africa , the United States , and Canada while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere. In the 19th century, the wealth that resulted

423-506: Is often confused with the rig that suffered the blowout resulting in the Ixtoc I oil spill . That was the original Sedco 135 , the first of the series built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in 1965. Sedco 135-F was one of the last seagoing vessels built by VMD. The company turned to pressure vessels and submarines , but the firm closed permanently in 1994, joining the business contractions of that decade. The yards were one of several contractors to

470-602: The British Columbia Interior and North , most famously that in the Cariboo . The rush is credited with instigating European-Canadian settlement on the mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia , the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns. Although the area had been mined for a few years, news of the strike spread to San Francisco when

517-614: The Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, in Nevada , in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado , Idaho , Montana , eastern Oregon , and western New Mexico Territory and along the lower Colorado River . There was a gold rush in Nova Scotia (1861–1876) which produced nearly 210,000 ounces of gold. Resurrection Creek , near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush in

SECTION 10

#1732863161386

564-588: The Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton . The rush overtook the region around the discovery and was centered on the Fraser Canyon from around Hope and Yale to Pavilion and Fountain , just north of Lillooet . Though the rush was largely over by 1927, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout

611-623: The Royal Canadian Navy for ship repair and maintenance. The first shipyard was constructed on Bay Street between Pleasant Street and Turner Street. A second yard was built near what is now Ogden Point Terminal. Fraser Canyon Gold Rush The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush , (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush ) began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with

658-747: The Stikine Gold Rush , which led to the creation of the Stikine Territory to the colony's north. The Fort Colville Gold Rush in Washington Territory was also a spin-off of the Fraser Gold Rush, as many miners from the Fraser headed there once news of the strike in US territory reached the mining camps. Many others moved on to a gold rush in Colorado. Gold rush A gold rush or gold fever

705-716: The British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific." Moody arrived in British Columbia in December 1858, commanding the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment . Moody had hoped to begin immediately the foundation of a capital city, but upon his arrival at Fort Langley he learned of an outbreak of violence at the settlement of Hill's Bar. This led to an incident popularly known as " Ned McGowan's War ", where Moody successfully quashed

752-582: The Fraser at the peak of the gold rush. This estimate was based on the Yale area and did not include the non-mining "hangers-on" population. (The Fraser River Gold Rush started in 1858) When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Richard Clement Moody was hand-picked by the Colonial Office , under Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton , to establish British order and to transform British Columbia into

799-505: The UAE with the exports affirmed by the African states. According to Africa's industrial mining firms, they have not exported any amount of gold to the UAE – confirming that the imports come from other, illegal sources. As per customs data, the UAE imported gold worth $ 15.1 billion from Africa in 2016, with a total weight of 446 tons, in variable degrees of purity. Much of the exports were not recorded in

846-790: The United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine . Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–55 in the Sierra Nevada , which captured the popular imagination. The California Gold Rush led to an influx of gold miners and newfound gold wealth, which led to California's rapid industrialization, as businesses sprung up to serve

893-549: The apologies of the Americans who had waged war on the natives. Wanting to make the British military and governmental presence more visible, Douglas appointed justices of the peace and also revised the slapdash mining rules which had emerged along the river. Troops to maintain order, however, were still in short supply. Competition and interracial tensions between European Americans and non-white miners erupted on Christmas Eve 1858, with

940-411: The beating of Isaac Dixon , a freed American black. He was the town barber and in later years was a popular journalist in the Cariboo . Dixon was beaten by two men from Hill's Bar , the other main town in the southern part of the goldfields. The complicated series of events that ensued is known as McGowan's War . Its potential to provoke United States annexation ambitions within the goldfields, prompted

987-754: The disenchanted, with even more men storming the route of the Douglas Road to the upper part of Fraser Canyon around Lillooet ; others got to the upper canyon via the Okanagan Trail and Similkameen Trail , and to the lower Canyon via the Whatcom Trail and the Skagit Trail. All these routes were technically illegal since the Governor required that entry to the colony to be made via Victoria, but thousands came overland anyway. Accurate numbers of miners, especially on

SECTION 20

#1732863161386

1034-474: The focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world's largest copper producer. Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over

1081-459: The gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic metres, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only

1128-471: The gold rush must be understood to be inherently European-ethnic to start with. Anglo-American Southerners (from states such as Missouri and Kentucky), Midwesterners, and New Englanders were well represented. Alfred Waddington, an entrepreneur and pamphleteer of the gold rush later infamous for the disastrous road-building expedition which led to the Chilcotin War of 1864, estimated there were 10,500 miners on

1175-826: The goldfields could not be controlled. During the fall of 1858, tensions increased between miners and the Nlaka'pamux , the First Nations people of the Canyon. This led to the Fraser Canyon War . Miners wary of venturing upriver beyond Yale began to use the Lakes Route to Lillooet instead, prompting Douglas to contract for the building of the Douglas Road , the Mainland Colony's first public works project. The governor arrived in Yale to accept

1222-509: The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island , James Douglas , sent a shipment of ore to that city's mint. People in San Francisco and the California gold fields greeted the news with excitement. Within a month 30,000 men had descended upon Victoria . 4,000 of these Gold Rush pioneers settlers were Chinese. Until that time, the village had had a population of only about 500. This was

1269-409: The governor to send newly appointed Chief Justice Begbie , the colony's chief of police Chartres Brew and a contingent of Royal Engineers and Royal Marines to intervene. They did not need to use force and were able to resolve the matter peacefully. The team also dealt with the corruption of British appointees in the area, which had contributed to the crisis. The Fraser Canyon War did not affect

1316-437: The heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hard rock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of

1363-536: The increased population and financial and political institutions to handle the increased wealth. One of these political institutions was statehood; the need for new laws in a sparsely-governed land led to the state's rapid entry into the Union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849 also stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, leading to further rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America: Fraser Canyon ,

1410-519: The latter's name in 1888. After a fire in 1908 destroyed the plant, the facility was rebuilt. The yard did essential war work in both world wars. Harold Husband purchased the company in 1947 for $ 185,000. A 1954 fire caused $ 100,000 damage to the storage shed on Dallas road. Later, the yard built several BC Ferries vessels. During 1965–1967, it constructed the oil drilling platform Sedco 135-F for exploration by Shell Canada in Hecate Strait . At

1457-667: The mid–1890s. Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome , Fairbanks , and the Fortymile River . One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory (1896–99). This gold rush is featured in the novels of Jack London , and Charlie Chaplin 's film The Gold Rush . Robert William Service depicted in his poetries the Gold Rush, especially in the book The Trail of '98 . The main goldfield

Victoria Machinery Depot - Misplaced Pages Continue

1504-693: The miners had either drifted back to the U.S. or dispersed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of unstaked riches. Other gold rushes proliferated around the colony, with notable gold rushes at Rock Creek , the Similkameen , Wild Horse Creek and the Big Bend of the Columbia River spinning immediately off the Fraser rush, and gold exploration soon after led to the Omineca Gold Rush and

1551-610: The new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming. Gold rushes happened at or around: In New Zealand the Otago gold rush from 1861 attracted prospectors from the California gold rush and the Victorian gold rush and many moved on to the West Coast gold rush from 1864. The first significant gold rush in

1598-465: The ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining . Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve,

1645-457: The period. Gold rushes occurred as early as the times of ancient Greece , whose gold mining was described by Diodarus Sicules and Pliny the Elder . Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. A rush typically begins with the discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first

1692-644: The region. The gold deposits in this area are identified as one of the largest in the world. In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers as well as the Chinese miners. South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At

1739-537: The second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the New South Wales gold rush and Victorian gold rush in 1851, and the Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought many immigrants, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support

1786-520: The smuggling of billions of dollars' worth of gold out of Africa through the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East , which further acts as a gateway to the markets in the United States , Europe and more. The news agency evaluated the worth and magnitude of illegal gold trade occurring in African nations like Ghana , Tanzania , and Zambia , by comparing the total gold imports recorded into

1833-546: The time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process , of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore. The gold mine at El Callao (Venezuela), started in 1871, was for a time one of the richest in the world, and the goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883. The gold mining

1880-708: The time, Sedco 135-F was the largest semi-submersible platform in the world and was the first platform constructed in BC. Before submersion, the CA$ 10 million rig rose 50 metres (160 ft) above the waterline at the VMD docks. After the 1967 launch and three years of exploration off the British Columbia coast, it was towed to oilfields in New Zealand, the North Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. Sedco 135-F

1927-874: The upper Fraser, are therefore difficult to reckon. During the gold rush tens of thousands of prospectors from California flooded into the newly declared Colony of British Columbia and disrupted the established balance between the Hudson's Bay Company 's fur traders and indigenous peoples . The influx of prospectors included numerous European Americans and African Americans , Britons , Germans , English Canadians , Maritimers , French Canadians , Scandinavians , Italians , Belgians and French , and other European ethnicities , Hawaiians , Chinese , Mexicans , West Indians , and others. Many of those first-arrived of European and British origin were Californian by culture, and this included Maritimers such as Amor De Cosmos and others. The numbers of "Americans" associated with

Victoria Machinery Depot - Misplaced Pages Continue

1974-478: The upper reaches of the goldfields, in the area of Lillooet, and the short-lived popularity of the Douglas Road caused the town to be designated "the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago ", with an estimated population of 16,000. This title was also briefly held by Port Douglas , Yale, and later on by Barkerville . By 1860, however, the gold-bearing sandbars of the Fraser were depleted. Many of

2021-575: The world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 million artisanal miners in Democratic Republic of Congo , 350,000 to 650,000 in Sierra Leone , and 150,000 to 250,000 in Ghana , with millions more across Africa. In an exclusive report, Reuters accounted

2068-707: Was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River near what was to become Dawson City in Yukon Territory, but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement, and promoted the discovery of other gold finds. The most successful of the North American gold rushes was the Porcupine Gold Rush in Timmins, Ontario area. This gold rush

2115-534: Was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself proved unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the mass migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes. Gold rushes were typically marked by

2162-494: Was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory. Between 1883 and 1906 Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting many Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago. The gold rush began in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of the French steamship Arctique near Cape Virgenes . There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around

2209-436: Was unique compared to others by the method of extraction of the gold. Placer mining techniques were not able to be used to access the gold in the area due to it being embedded into the Canadian Shield , so larger mining operations involving significantly more expensive equipment was required. While this gold rush peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, it is still active today with over 200 million ounces of gold having been produced from

#385614