Digital Bob Archive

In the lexicon of the old-time prospectors, a stampede was a minor local gold rush, and often one that produced more hype than gold. Juneau was a hub for a good many stampedes, some of which did produce very well as, for example, the one to the Porcupine country, upriver from Haines. It, like most of the others, followed a discovery of placer gold, but the 1920's stampede up the Taku River was wholly a search for lodes; that is, for gold and other minerals bound up in hard rock.

There is a vast difference, for the individual prospector, between a placer and a lode discovery. If he finds placer ground, he gets out his gold pan or builds a sluice box, washes the sand and gravel and pours the recovered nuggets and dust into his poke. But the development of a lode mine, of whatever mineral, requires more capital than the average prospector can muster. Thus having found the mineral, he must next convince a mining company that his claim is worth buying.

Virtually all of the mineral discoveries that were made in the Taku district were on the Canadian side of the line, and the greatest influx of prospectors was in 1929. A Seattle paper reported in August of that year: \"The Taku District is a mecca for old prospectors and William Strong is leaving Juneau with his boat for the river every third day with passengers and supplies.\" By September of that year it was reported that 400 claims had been staked in what the Americans called the Taku District, but which was officially in the Cassiar District of British Columbia. Many of the claims were in or close to the valley of the Tulsequah River.

At that time few people had heard of the Tulsequah River but the name was to become very familiar in Juneau during succeeding decades as mines were developed there. This description of the river and its valley was written by the late M.L. \"Molly\" MacSpadden in the 1950s, about the time he was serving as Juneau's mayor:

\"The Tulsequah flows into the Taku River from the northwest, just east of the Canadian boundary. It is a wild, turbulent stream, 12 to 14 miles in length, having its main source in Tulsequah Glacier.

\"The Tulsequah Valley is a flat, cone-shaped area, completely underlaid with gravel and glacial silt. In addition to the usual periods of high and low water, the Tulsequah is subject to 'blow-out' floods which are peculiar to several glacier-born streams of the North. Approximately a mile back of its face, Tulsequah Glacier blocks off a long, narrow, steep-sided valley which houses Tulsequah Lake. Rain and melting snows fill this huge reservoir until the pressure is so great that the lake breaks through under the glacier and spews out in the Tulsequah Valley with such volume and force as to flood the entire valley, often damaging the camp roads, bridges and air strip of the Consolidated Mining Company.\"

It wasn't the kind of place a prudent person would choose for a mining operation, but that was where the gold and other minerals were found.