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Please Park and Walk in, Wear good shoes, good bug repellent. This is not one for young children.
We are unable to take you to Blackfoot itself yet without crossing private property.
Once you Park - Go through the cattle gate, close it beihind you, Walk along the Deer Trail, then make your way to the river's edge
(Paterson, 1981, p. 8) Some towns slipped from existence so quickly that only an occasional reference in old records marks their passing. Such a town was Blackfoot, on the South Fork of the Smilkameen, about seven miles to the southwest of Princeton, near Allenby. Here, on a flat bordering the river, in the fall of 1860 at least 100 white and Chinese miners established a small community of cabins and shacks. On October 2 the Victoria Colonists’ Similkameen correspondent, who signed himself Argus, made the following report from the “Forks of the Similkameen”:
“A Party of Four men working just below me on the South Fork, in the bed of the stream, which they turned round the side of an Island, are averaging half an ounce a day per man... Mr. Marshall, of New Westminster has also commenced sluicing in the bed of the river, with a party of French Canadians. Mr. Marshall has recorded a claim for two sluice-heads of water to be taken from the river, and intends cutting a ditch and bringing it to a large flat, which prospects tolerably well...
“The miners generally are making preparations for the winter, and there are about a dozen log cabins built or under way on the South Fork. A Mr. Johnson and the late Deputy Sheriff of Fort Hope have just opened a store on the river.
Eight months passed before a direct reference was again made to the mining activity on this stretch of the Similkameen River. I June 1861 it was reported that a trader from Blackfoot Flat who came down by the steamer Otter, reports matters are not very encouraging in that section.
There are about 50 white and a like number of Chinese miners, remaining at Blackfoot. Those having bench claims are doing well, but the high water precludes operations on the lower bars. A company has been formed to sink a shaft at the base of a hill back of Blackwood flat
Princeton, seven miles below Blackfoot, is almost deserted. Blackwood flat and its immediate neighbour, contains 40 houses including miners cabins. The miners, ever fickle, moved on. The short lived Blackfoot rush of 1860-61 was recalled almost six years later when a veteran of this stampede returned to the area in 1860 Jackass John had been one of those who had prospected the Similkameen. In two days he had made $40 after wing –damming a small section of the stream. Then high water had forced him to abandon his claim and, in succeeding years, he had tried his luck in Montana and the Kootenays. In October 1866 John returned to the very spot on which he had dug the gold in 1860. Setting to work at once, unaided and alone, in fourteen days after his arrival, he had taken out $900. He sent for three friends to share in his luck, and the four men are now preparing to turn the river.
The colonist had learned of John’s discovery from a reliable source who claimed to have seen the gold recovered by “the gentleman bearing the asinine sobriquet”
HH Bancroft, in his history of British Columbia mentioned Jackass John and added the further note that the prospector and his three partners sluiced $240 in three days.
Whether the colourful Jackass John made his strike on or near the site of Blackfoot Flat is not recorded. Twenty years later the South Fork of the Similkameen again aroused the interest of miners who were attracted to the region by the rich strikes on granite Creek and on the Tulameen River. The resulting placer activities lasted for a decade before the miners sought fresh diggings.
Forty years ago the Similkameen Star noted that, in September 1935, the site of the former mining camp of Blackfoot was relocated and identified with Kruger’s bar. According to H Jamieson iron spikes in a river boulder indicated until recently where a bridge had crossed to the store and hotel on the south side of the river. Theodore Kruger, who gave his name to the bar, was born I Hanover in 1829 and came to BC in 1858. Like Mr. Allison, who arrived the same year, he had tried mining on the Fraser before coming to Similkameen. Today the old-time mining camp of Blackfoot has all but vanished.
When reflecting on the history in the area it always give me pause to reflect on how quickly what can seem so promising can quickly vanish into nothing but a memory – here we are today 150 years later paying tribute to those few that inhabited the area – and thank the historians who so diligently find these tidbits that could so easily disappear into nothing
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Fghzc/ybt