Klondike Goldfields

Eldorado Road
Km 16 - Lowe's Fraction

Miners were only allowed to stake one claim per mining district, although they could buy or lease others. The first person to prospect a creek staked a discovery claim, which was twice the length of a standard claim. Subsequent claims on a creek were numbered up (Above) and down (Below) from discovery.

Although prospectors were supposed to mark the four boundaries of their claim clearly, surveyor and, later, Commissioner William Ogilvie estimated that only 25 percent of claims were staked "anywhere near" legally. Mining regulations were complex and poorly understood. They changed five times between May and August of 1897, a period when most of the richest ground was being staked, and 20 times between December 1894 and July 1905.

Prospectors would attempt to measure the length allowed to them by pacing and following – not always successfully – the curving course of the creek through the trees and brush. Ogilvie, who surveyed the first claims on Bonanza and Eldorado in 1897, found that one locator "had so meandered that his lower stake was actually twelve feet farther up the valley than his upper one, that is, he had actually staked twelve feet less than nothing."

When Bonanza and Eldorado were legally surveyed in 1897, a small piece of ground was severed from an adjoining claim and turned out to be larger than the regulations allowed. Dick Lowe, Ogilvie's chainman, staked the 86-foot fraction claim, which turned out to be one of the richest sections of ground in the gold fields. The tiny claim produced half a million dollars in gold.

Next Bonanza Creek Road Km. 17 - Grand Forks
Previous Bonanza Creek Road Km. 15.5 - Discovery Claim