Many areas in BC were first settled by Europeans because of mining or the fur trade. The Okanagan is an exception. Although the fur trade brought the first Europeans through the valley, it was mission work which brought Father Pandosy to live here and agricultural possibilities that attracted those Europeans who followed him. After the few wandering prospectors and trappers had passed through Joe Rich Valley, it also developed as agricultural homesteads. Later, logging became a more important vocation for its residents.

Mining was never a major factor in Joe Rich development, but it was present. Joe Rich himself was probably a prospector/miner after he left this valley and went to the Cariboo. He may have done some prospecting here. There is a shallow mine hole on Preston Mountain on the east side of Highway 33 above Joe Rich Valley. No one knows who dug it. At the end of Philpott Valley not far from Silver Creek are four horizontal shafts or ‘drifts’ extending into the western mountainside of the valley. Monti Philpott has been told that these were dug in a search for gold on or very near to the Mills property, but they were abandoned before anyone living can remember.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2005 An old Joe Rich mine hole, now a pack rat home

Jim Weddell remembers as a boy working with his father in the lettuce field when an old man came down Preston Mountain and began talking to them. He told them that he had slipped on the moss which had peeled off as he walked down the mountain and that when he had picked himself up and looked down he had seen “pure gold” exposed where the moss had slid away. Unfortunately, Jim hasn’t been able to find just where that gold was.

Gold has been found in Mission Creek and in very small quantities even in Belgo Creek. It was first discovered in Mission Creek in 1861, the same year the Cariboo Gold Rush began and just two years after Father Pandosy settled in Kelowna. Placer mining began then and was still taking place just below Gallagher’s Canyon when Dr. George Dawson, the provincial geologist passed through Kelowna in 1877. Many of the miners were Chinese. They lived in the bottom of the canyon and cooked in the water-worn rock depressions at the end of the canyon. Smoke stains on the rock are still visible from their fires. They reportedly were able to take out two or three ounces of gold a day.

Dan Gallagher, whose name is now attached to the canyon, settled in the canyon near the end of Gallagher Road which we pass each day on our drive to Kelowna. For years, he placer mined the area, but never became rich. He lived an eccentric bachelor life. He apparently sometimes rode his horse wearing nothing but a loin-cloth. He entertained his neighbours by playing the fiddle at dances up until the 1930s. A friend of Monti Philpott’s, Harold Malik who logged with him used to move his loader down to a point just above the canyon, below where Penny lives now, during the spring break-up when he couldn’t work in the woods. He would wash through gravel for gold and get enough to pay his wages. His work was not ecologically friendly and wouldn’t be allowed today. No one seems to look for gold in Mission Creek now.

Other types of mines have been developed around Joe Rich. Beaverdell had the Highland Bell Silver Mine which also produced lead, zinc, copper, cadmium and gold from Wallace Mountain until 1991 when it closed. It was one of the longest running silver mines in North America and honey combed the mountain with shafts.

Uranium has been found in the Beaverdell area, but there has been a provincial moratorium on uranium exploration and mining since 1970.

Brenda Mine across the lake has yielded molybdenum and copper.

Today, sand and gravel are the most important items mined in the Kelowna area. The city has a great need for these materials which it is using in vast quantities for construction. A possible source for them is Black Mountain at the base of Goudie Road, where the south-easterly drift of the Fraser Glacier produced a great deposit of crushed rock and gravel, but at the present time the requirements for extracting this have not been met by the prospective developer.