Gold mining in Alaska creeks – Glacier, Nugget and Cottonwood – produced significant gold. The area around Reid Inlet, in modern Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, hosted several hard rock gold prospects, including the LeRoy mine, which exploited quartz veins for about 10,000 ounces of gold production. The district, which includes Skagway and Haines, is bordered to the north and east by Canada. To the west is the Pacific Ocean and the Chichagof District lies to the south. The Discovery Channel series Gold Rush Alaska takes place in this region. In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and
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