Treadwell gold mine trade who had come to Alaska prior to the Klondike Gold Rush. In 1880, prospectors Joseph 'Joe' Juneau and Richard Harris discovered gold in Silver Bow Basin. This brought waves of prospectors to the region, including John Treadwell, whose first move was to purchase a lode claim on Douglas Island from Pierre Joseph Erussard ("French Pete") on 13 Sept. 1881. Treadwell formed a partnership in Sept. 1881 with Erussard de Ville, D.P. Mitchell and Dave Martin under the name of The San Francisco Company. For unknown reasons he later backed out of this, and in early December 1881 he devoted
Pitt Lake's lost gold mine Peter's Cemetery in Sapperton. Slumach is mentioned for the first time as the first discoverer of the legendary gold of Pitt Lake by Wilbur Armstrong, a Washington prospector, in an interview in 1915 article in a Wisconsin newspaper reprinted in the US by other newspapers. In Canada the first mention of Slumach in association with Pitt Lake gold was in a 1926 article saying: “Slumach died and with him died the secret of a great gold mine somewhere up in that wild Pitt Lake country.” Evidently the story of Slumach and Pitt Lake gold was circulating among prospectors at that