One mountain south of Topley dominates much of the upper Bulkley Valley. The remnants of a prehistoric lava flow, it rises from the boreal forest like a volcanic ramp to heaven, terminating abruptly in a dramatic thirteen-hundred-foot fissured cliff that is home to sure-footed mountain goats.
A brooding crag shrouded in mystery, it has captured the imagination of men for at least six thousand years. To the local Witsuwit鈥檈n people, it is Tse Zul (鈥渟hale rock鈥� or 鈥渞ock neck鈥�), but the area鈥檚 most recent inhabitants know it simply as China Nose.
How did this enigmatic geographic feature get its name? Most people believe the appellation refers specifically to the mountain鈥檚 appearance; when viewed in profile from Highway 16, the face of China Nose bears an uncanny resemblance to the head of an old man at rest. Yet some maps and historical documents dating back to the early 1900s refer to it as 鈥淐hina Knows.鈥�
Newcomers to the region might find this duality confusing, but there is little doubt in the minds of some old-timers as to which spelling is correct. They steadfastly maintain that it is the latter鈥攁nd their explanation of how the mountain got its name is the stuff of legend.
The story starts not in Topley, nor even the Bulkley Valley, but in the tiny Hudson鈥檚 Bay Company post of Hazelton, late in the nineteenth century. At that time, the remote village was the upriver terminus for flat-bottom sternwheelers that plied the turbulent Skeena River. The supply centre for much of Northwestern British Columbia, Hazelton became the jumping-off point for prospectors, fur traders, and homesteaders heading east into the trackless wilderness.
One such adventurer, according to a Lakes District pioneer long dead, was an elderly Chinese man whose name has been lost over time. Arriving by riverboat each spring with a pick, pan, and shovel, the man would purchase supplies before heading east. Every fall, before winter shut down navigation on the Skeena, he would return to Hazelton, his pack empty but for a canvas bag bearing several pounds of fine gold.
Locals tried to learn the location of his claim. Some even went so far as to follow him, but always lost his trail along the upper reaches of the Bulkley River.
The pattern repeated for several years. Then winter arrived early one year, bringing with it brutal cold and several feet of snow. It was rumoured that the Chinese miner had perished, but just when everyone in Hazelton had given him up for dead, he staggered into the trading post with his footwear in tatters and his face badly frostbitten. Dropping his poke on the counter, he managed to whisper one word鈥斺�渄octor鈥濃�攂efore collapsing.
The establishment鈥檚 manager, with assistance from several customers, carried the man to Hazelton鈥檚 rudimentary clinic. The local physician鈥檚 verdict was grim: the aged prospector had advanced pneumonia and was unlikely to live.
Several men鈥攁nd even a few women, according to the old-timer who told us the story鈥攓uestioned the ailing man to learn the source of his wealth. Wracked by fever, barely able to breathe, his reply was 鈥渙nly China knows.鈥�
He died without ever revealing the location of his mine.
Two decades after the prospector鈥檚 death, residents of the region continued to speculate on the whereabouts of the lost 鈥淐hina Knows鈥� mine. Many maintained it was somewhere at the base of Tse Zul, while others said it lay farther east, near the headwaters of the Bulkley River. Treasure-seekers continued to scour the area until 1922, when heat from a forest fire allegedly caused an enormous rockfall that obliterated any evidence of the Chinese man鈥檚 activities.
Since that time, the geological colossus south of Topley has been known locally as China Knows (or 鈥淣ose鈥�) Mountain.
Most Bulkley Valley residents now dismiss the story as folklore, wishful thinking on the part of early settlers. Yet even the most hardened skeptics admit that it could, like tales of the sasquatch, have a basis in fact.
Treasure hunters note, for example, that the area south of Topley and the Bulkley River has a wealth of mineral reserves. There are oral accounts of Chinese prospectors working hard rock deposits in the Owen Lake area southwest of China Nose Mountain as early as 1880, and documentary evidence that they were trying their luck near Houston around 1912.
The area鈥檚 earliest recorded mining claims were staked approximately forty kilometres southwest of Topley around 1910, and were said to be rich in silver, copper, lead, zinc, and gold. Over the years, hundreds of other mineral titles have been filed in the region. Today, according to the provincial government, there are dozens of hard rock claims near China Nose Mountain, though most are unproven.
Could one man have developed and worked a hard rock claim along the upper Bulkley River in the late nineteenth century? At that time, operations of this type generally required the energy and financial resources of several partners, though there have been exceptions. In the 1920s, Ootsa Lake pioneer George Seel worked a claim on Swing Peak far to the south of China Nose, and allegedly carried out several hundred pounds of ore for assaying. The samples, when tested, suggested that sections of his mine would yield 162 ounces of silver to the tonne, along with lead, zinc, and trace amounts of gold.
Seel鈥檚 case, however, is the exception rather than the rule. If the legend of China Knows is true, it is far more likely that the secretive prospector wrestled his gold from a placer claim. Yet despite its history of hard rock mining, the Bulkley Valley is not known for its placer deposits. There are, however, two streams in the region whose gravels produce placer gold, albeit in minute amounts鈥攁nd both lie within twenty kilometres of China Nose Mountain.
According to historic mining reports, prospectors found placer gold in the gravel of Bob Creek (a tributary of Buck Creek east of Houston) early in the twentieth century. Foxy Creek, located southwest of 亚洲天堂 Lake, has been a favourite haunt of recreational panners for decades. Its headwaters lie in the highlands just north of what was once the Equity Silver Mine, an open-pit operation that produced more than 2.22 million kilograms of silver and 15.8 thousand kilograms of gold between 1981 and 1994.
Over the eons, both wild rivers have cut deep canyons through the hills surrounding China Nose Mountain, and few people have explored them in their entirety. Could one of these areas have been the site of the Chinese prospector鈥檚 lost mine? Are there untold riches lying just beneath the surface of some remote sandbar, waiting for another intrepid explorer with a shovel and gold pan?
Only China knows.
