Niagara deposit, Fisherman Creek, Grand Forks, Greenwood Mining Division, British Columbia, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Niagara deposit	Deposit
Fisherman Creek	Creek
Grand Forks	- not defined -
Greenwood Mining Division	Division
British Columbia	Province
Canada	Country

Giles Peatfield comments:
The Niagara (Lot 1356) is located immediately west of the Granby (or North Fork of the Kettle) River at the mouth of Fisherman Creek. The only official record of activity here is in the Annual Report of the British Columbia Minister of Mines for 1901, where Almond (1902), describing several mineral claims in the area, added the comment that “. . . the Niagara, on Fisherman Creek, has 46 feet of tunneling and shafting.” There is no more recent mention of the occurrence in British Columbia “Minfile”.

A complication is that Lot 1356 is not a mineral claim lot, but a surveyed lot of probably 160 acres filed for agricultural use – whether or not it carried mineral rights is not clear. Further adding to the confusion is the fact that a surveyed mineral claim, the Monte Christo, is shown adjacent to the south-west corner of Lot 1356, on the British Columbia Department of Lands “Mineral Reference Map” of 1932.

There is more uncertainty here, because this property (Monte Christo) is also not listed in the Minfile records, and the claim, although surveyed, does not appear to have been Crown Granted (roughly equivalent to a patented claim in the USA).

Of historical interest, Niagara was also a short-lived “town” during the construction of the C & W (Columbia and Western railroad, later acquired by Canadian Pacific) Railway. This "town" was constructed on a small part (40 acres) of land subdivided from a larger package (320? acres) of agricultural land (Lot 1261, adjoining Lot 1356 to the east. For a colourful history of this town, see Basque (1999), and refer also to Wikipedia (“Niagara, British Columbia”).

The Boundary District was divided in the early days into several “camps” – the Niagara area area was within what was known as “Brown’s Camp”, named after the (in)famous R. A. ‘Volcanic’ Brown (see Wikipedia “Robert Allan Brown” and “Volcanic City”).

The locational data given above appears to be for the general centre of Lot 1356. The actual location of the occurrence mentioned by Almond (1902) is not known. Additional clues are provided by a map in the MSc Thesis of Reinsbakken (1970), which showed an outcrop area on the Monte Christo claim with two adit symbols and a notation “py” (pyrite). This may suggest that the Monte Christo is in fact what was referred to by Almond (1902) as the Niagara. Reinsbakken (1970) also noted, in a railway cutting immediately to the north and within Lot 1356, an occurrence of “Py, cpy [chalcopyrite] (minor)” apparently in limestone. One last point of interest is that Brock (1906) commented that “Some of the crystalline limestones [in the Boundary District] are sufficiently massive and pure to make ornamental stone, but they are not always accessible. Many are also suitable for burning into lime.”, and on a map to accompany Brock's report he showed an occurrence of limestone on the railway cutting mentioned above.

Note also that the Niagara property was originally listed as being in the Grand Forks Mining Division – this division was later subsumed into the Greenwood Mining Division.

The rocks in the property area include sedimentary strata of the Late Triassic Brooklyn Formation and later, probably Jurassic, andesitic volcanic rocks. This sequence is, incidentally, overturned in this area (Peatfield, 1978). Rock types encountered within the package are: marble, skarn, tuffaceous limestone, and ‘sharpstone conglomerate’ in the Triassic sequence; andesite and andesitic fragmental rocks in the Jurassic(?) unit. Argillite, chert(?) and quartzite(?) occur in an older (pre-Triassic) package, in apparent fault contact with the Triassic/Jurassic rocks. These older rocks are apparently the host for the pyrite mineralization on the Monte Christo claims. Details of rock types are taken from mapping by Reinsbakken in Newell (1970).

One further caveat is that the Boundary District remains an area of on-going exploration work, and it may well be that there is more information to be had. This summary is intended to be a historical summary, from a personal perspective.

Giles Peatfield
BASc . (Geological Engineering) University of British Columbia 1966.
PhD Queen's University at Kingston 1978.
Worked for Texas Gulf Sulphur / Texasgulf Inc. / Kidd Creek Mines - 1966 to 1985.
Consultant 1985 to 2016

Other Databases

Link to British Columbia Minfile:	082ESE 065

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References