Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum.
And what, pray tell, occupied the hearts and minds of Porcupine residents during the summer of 1923 – if you answered with a “who cares?”, then don’t bother finishing the article – if you want to know, keep on reading.
This should tell you just how rich the area was when it came to gold: teamsters and labourers working on the road between Timmins and the Paymaster Mine (the Back Road, or Gold Mine Road as we know it today), reported finding excellent samples of high grade gold in the rock they were using from the mine dump as the top dressing for the new road.
The government had struck a deal with the mine to use their waste rock to finish the work; workers were thrilled to find some pretty spectacular samples in their carts and on the road itself.
The editor of the Porcupine Advance quipped: “It is safe to say that this new Paymaster Road is probably the “highest grade” road ever built anywhere in the world as some of the specimens exhibited could reach $10,000 to the ton in gold.
Automobile owners who are driving over this road to the Paymaster Mine are expecting to have “Gold Filled” tires before the summer is over.” Exaggeration? Who knows. Now, shall we take a drive?
For the rest of this column: https://www.timminspress.com/opinion/columnists/porcupine-camp-aimed-to-impress-hosting-1923-mining-engineers-conference