The People of the Cariboo Gold Rush

Michael Costin Brown

Michael Costin Brown
Michael Costin
Brown
What do you do after you've struck gold? Some, like Billy Barker, spend all the money and end up back where they started. Not Michael Brown from Ireland (1839-1914). He was managing a hotel in San Francisco when he heard about gold in the Cariboo. Brown headed up to the Cariboo and kept prospecting month after month even when things looked bleak. He put up with cold, hunger, and the lack of shoes and other basic supplies.

Brown was one of the first prospectors to find gold at William's Creek. After making the strike with his partners in the winter of 1860, he had to hike as fast as he could the 60 miles to Williams Lake, to register the claim with the gold commissioner.

Within a few months Brown sold his shares and bought a pack train to supply provisions to the growing hordes of miners - he knew from his own experience how badly supplies were needed in the Cariboo. Then he lost 42 horses in a snowstorm. Next Brown built a store on William's Creek, which he later sold in 1864.

Brown kept searching for more gold, and was later said to have prospected at every mining camp in British Columbia. Eventually he moved to Victoria and open the Adelphi Hotel. When the Klondike gold rush started he left - not to prospect but to run a hotel in the Yukon! Brown eventually retired to Victoria.

 

        




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