The best campfire story ever told: A new book revisits the tale of a fabled lost B.C. gold mine

It has inspired articles and books, documentaries and TV shows, a website, and even a podcast. Somewhere hidden in the rough mountainous terrain around Pitt Lake, some 45 kilometers east of Vancouver, it’s believed there is a creek filled with gold nuggets. Myth links the location of this creek to an Indigenous man of Katzie heritage named Slumach, who, legend has it, laid a curse upon the mine to prevent anyone else from finding it.

Now, the tale is being retold in a new book. Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend — and a Curse, now in its third edition, was originally published in 1972.

“We tried to put the whole thing to rest with a little thin 56-page volume, and that did not work. It’s kept on growing ever since,” said co-author Brian Antonson.

The search for gold and quick riches has drawn people to our part of the world for centuries. British Columbia was founded in 1858 during the Fraser River Gold Rush. Decades later, miners would be drawn to the Yukon for the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896.

“We wanted to do another book called We Found Slumach’s Gold. But we have not, and despite endless searches over the last many, many decades, nobody else has found it either,” said Antonson.

“I have told people we have made more money selling books than anybody has actually made finding gold.”

Antonson was just a nine-year-old child around a campfire in 1957 when he first heard the story of Slumach and his fabled lost gold mine.

“This lady was telling us little kids ghost stories and then she said, ‘There’s a lost gold mine up beyond Pitt Lake, but you’ll never find it – and live – because it’s got a curse on it.'”

“Well, how are you not then captivated by something like that for the rest of your life? And here I am, at 76 years of age, and it’s been an ongoing passion for me and my brother and our colleague, Mary Trainer, for all these decades.”

The book goes to great lengths to separate fact from fiction — or mine fact from fiction, if you will.

As Antonson puts it in the book, the Slumach tale is best characterized as “a heap of stories, some true, some not, a host of hints, plenty of theories, a pot load of falsehoods, and a side dish of facts.”

According to legend, Slumach had been hunting deer in rough, mountainous terrain when he stumbled across a creek scattered with gold nuggets. He would bring the nuggets back to New Westminster and buy drinks for everyone at the local saloon and brag about his secret creek. He would disappear for weeks on end, only to return with more gold nuggets.

We do know Slumach was hung for murder in 1891. According to folklore, he uttered a curse from the gallows to protect his secret from future fortune hunters. But there is no actual proof he laid a curse on the gold mine that bears his name.

A revised edition of Slumach’s Gold appeared in 2007. Antonson says they call this latest iteration the capstone edition as this is likely the last word on the subject, at least for him anyway.

“We call it capstone because it really covers everything: all the photographs and the maps, and the thorough interviews with various different people and so on. It’s about as good as it gets.”

Antonson says it’s a story that, once it grabs you, will never let go.

“And it’s just there. It’s a few miles as the crow flies, outside of downtown Vancouver. So, it’s easily accessible. I can get there this afternoon. I’ll charter a boat, and I’ll go up to the head of Pitt Lake. Well, no, it’s not that easy.”

“Everybody loves gold, everybody loves a lost gold mine, and then throw in a curse, and it captivates everybody,” he said.

Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend — and a Curse by Brian Antonson, Mary Trainer, and Rick Antonson is published by Heritage House