Bralorne, British Columbia

Bralorne is an historic Canadian gold mining community in the Bridge River District, some eighty dirt road miles west of the town of Lillooet.

Gold has been the central element in the area's history going back to the 1858-1860 Fraser River Gold Rush. Miners rushed to the Cayoosh and Bridge River areas looking for placer deposits, One named Cadwallader looked for the outcroppings on the creek that is now named for him and turned out later to be the site of the richest hard-rock veins in the region. Early exploratory parties of Chinese and Italians in the upper Bridge River basin were driven out by Chief Hunter Jack, who himself had a secret placer mine somewhere in the region, believed to be in upper Tyaughton Creek. and whose big-game hunting territory this also was. During the 1870s Hunter Jack began to invite chosen prospectors into the valley, and ran a ferry across the Bridge River that virtually all entering the region had to cross. Among these were those who would eventually discover the hard rock lodes on Cadwallader Creek. Though styled the Bridge River Gold Rush, in this early period there were so few who had made it into the district that there were only forty residents during the 1890 Census, prompting the naming of one of the claims "Forty Thieves".

In the 1890s intrepid prospectors searched for the underground source of that gold in the mountains. William Allen prospected the area in 1897, and his claim took the name from his hotel—the Pioneer—in Lillooet. A small mill was imported from California, and later Welshman John Williams, who had worked the California goldfields, built an arrastra or Mexican rock mill, which became a symbol of the Bridge River mines and remained in service into the heavy-production years of the mines.

Again in 1897, three men hiked in from Lillooet to Cadwallader Creek looking for gold. They made three claims—the Lorne, Marquis, and the Golden King. These would form the core of the complex of claims which became the Bralorne Mine. Arthur Noel bought the claims and worked them sporadically, holding on in bad times, waiting for the good.. He installed a 12 stamp mill. Unfortunately, the mine became tied up in litigation and stood idle for a dozen years.. By 1914 Pioneer Gold Mines was set up with more industrial equipment, boilers and modern rock mill. The site worked through the 1920s and the profitable King vein exploited. But it was the collapse of world markets and the solid price of gold in the Depression, when the mines really took off; when men and investment ramped up production. The district was one of the few bright lights in the BC economy during the Depression - in a seven-year period in the 1930s, the mines of the Bridge River produced $370,000,000 in gold. Taylor installed a 100-ton a day capacity mill but under the direction of M. O'Brian, output increased fivefold.

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