Queen Charlottes Gold Rush Queen Charlottes Gold Rush The Queen Charlottes Gold Rush was a gold rush in the southern Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) of what is now the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 1851. The rush was touched off in March 1851 when a Haida man sold a 27-ounce nugget in Fort Victoria for 1,500 blankets. The crew of the Hudson's Bay Company vessel "Una" were the first to mine, discovering a vein 6.5" wide, 80' long at 25% gold content. As the crew began blasting, Haida would rush into the blast site to gather gold, competing with the crew.
Queen Charlottes Gold Rush the dollar equivalent in blankets). The vessel could not be saved because the Masset looted and destroyed her. The total value of gold recovered from the Queen Charlottes Rush was reckoned to be in the range of three hundred dollars. The rush was complicated by the fact that in 1851 the Queen Charlotte archipelago, though recognized by treaty as British, was as yet unincorporated as a formal possession or colony. With American ships converging on Mitchell Harbour (Mitchell Inlet) on Moresby Island, which was the main port for rush activity, the islands came to the attention of the British Colonial