RE: Elbow Turquoise River

Tulameen River in BC

https://discoverprinceton.ca/e/gold-panning

https://bcgoldadventures.com/tulameen-river/

Gold and platinum deposits have been found over the lower 40 kilometres of the Tulameen river.

Most recorded production and exploration has occurred along two stretches. The upper stretch begins about 2 kilometres west of Tulameen and continues up the river for 12 kilometres to the mouth of Champion Creek.

The lower stretch begins at Coalmont, just above the mouth of Granite Creek, and continues southeast for 19 kilometres to Princeton.

Metals found along the Tulameen River tend to occur in old sinuous channels buried deep below glacial gravels, which contain only spotty values.

Gold occurs in rough, angular or slightly flattened and rarely well-flattened nuggets. Some of the nuggets contain abundant white quartz. Platinum forms small rounded grains of uniform size.

They are smaller than the gold nuggets and are commonly pitted. Larger platinum nuggets often have a coating or included crystals of cumulate chromite, sometimes with intergrown magnetite and inclusions of olivine.

The gravels worked along the river also yielded black sands containing fine platinum, in addition to gold. The ratio of gold to platinum recovered in this part of the river is about 4:1, but decreases upstream.

Production of placer gold on the Tulameen River was first reported in 1877, and may have commenced as early as 1860. By 1887, most of the shallower gravel deposits mined along the Tulameen River are reported to be exhausted.

The community of Tulameen and the Tulameen River derive their name from a Thompson Indian word meaning red earth. A steep bank of the Tulameen River four miles north of Princeton was the source of the much-prized red ochre for which the Indians travelled from afar. The settlement of Tulameen was earlier known as Campement des Femmes, or Otter Flat.

The Tulameen River flows northward for 30 kilometres from the Cascade Mountains to Grasshopper Mountain, where it changes course and continues eastward for 10 kilometres to the town of Tulameen. The river then flows southeast for 25 kilometres before entering the Similkameen River at Princeton.