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History

Rich with History

Gold fever grips the Kootenay region of British Columbia and the gold rush is on - ‘Pay dirt’ is hit in July 1884 high up in the rugged Columbia Mountains and the Wisconsin & Lucky Strike claims are staked in a lost world amidst a sea of rugged mountain peaks covered in snow for much of the year. More than a century later, nearly all the gold and silver is still lying beneath the ground!

The story of the Wisconsin Mine and these properties starts back during the gold rush to the Kootenay region of British Columbia in the early 1800's … one of the most rugged areas in North America, described by David Thompson the famous map maker who explored the area in 1808 as "Stupendous and solitary wilds covered with eternal snow where mountain is connected to mountain to immense glaciers."

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Nature

Now, this is the territory of the grizzly bear - with the nearest neighbor some 40-miles distant - a setting where time has little meaning - a place far removed from the madding crowd. British Columbia has the world’s only temperate inland rainforest, all of which is found in the Columbia Mountain ranges (Purcell, Selkirk, Cariboo, and Monashee).
 
Western hemlock, Western red cedar, Engelmann spruce, pine and subalpine fir dominate the landscape. A great variety of wildflowers bloom in the meadows of the sub-alpine including Indian paintbrush, glacier lily, fireweed and spring beauty.
 
Most of the Wisconsin site is forested with lodgepole pine, spruce and hemlock, apart from an area adjacent to the mine site due to a forest fire back in the late 1930’s. In fall the forest understory takes on the appearance of a glorious rich checkered carpet with every imaginable color - red, bronze, yellow - a site to behold. In late summer bears feast on the wild huckleberries.
 
The old mine buildings, squeezed against the mountainside, have stood for almost a century of watching the snows of winter gild the peaks of the surrounding mountains - the warm winds of spring lick them bare again. With the coming of each summer her hopes for survival diminished; her golden past became a little more forgotten, until she finally became a ghost.

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