Lightning Creek
Along with Williams Creek, Lightning Creek was one of the major creeks that drained the gold bearing mountains around Barkerville. As such it had a long and complex geological history changing course depending on the level and location of glaciers but the oldest streams, closest to bedrock tended to be the ones to clean out most of the "loose" gold from the original deposits.
Lightning creek is still an active gold mining area to this day and well into the 1930s the creek and its surrounding areas were worked by a succession of prospectors.
The junction of Lightning Creek and Swift River creates the Cottonwood river and so the Cottonwood also contained placer gold which was worked thoroughly by the Chinese miners long after the "gold rush" had moved on to other locations like the Klondike. You will find especially in the Coldspring House ledgers a large amount of business done with Chinese miners, teamsters and businessmen. You can equally as well track the yearly spring influx of Chinese miners and their fall retreat back to the coast or Quesnel Forks.
Lightning Creek also proved to be the location of John Boyd's longest involvement in mining with the Big Bonanza Mining Company. Their claim was located at Wingdam which is closer to Barkerville and about 2 miles from today's Troll ski hill. For over 3 decades John Boyd participated in efforts to pull the known gold from this deposit, each effort always failing because the tunnels could not be kept open. No matter what techniques were tried, including diverting Lightning creek (hence the name Wingdam), any tunnels filled with a gooey, thick mud too thick to pump.
It may be that the Big Bonanza Mine was part of the reason for the erosion of the value of John Boyd's estate. While for most of his life his enterprise presented a picture of prosperity in spite of the ups and downs of the economy, when he died in 1909 without a will the final settling of his estate left little but the land to his family.
