BC
Placer

Home Placer Mining Law in BC MTO System Free Data

Placer Mining in BC

Information and Resources

Welcome to BC Placer

The BC Placer website provides information about "placer" gold mining - finding and mining gold that has been deposited by moving water - in BC (British Columbia, Canada). This website is not about "hard rock" mining - mining veins in solid rock.

At its simplest, a placer miner is someone with a shovel and a gold pan working in a creek channel. At the other end of the spectrum are large and sophisticated open pit and underground mining operations.

BC Placer is primarily aimed at placer mining (including prospecting and exploration) from the hobby level up to medium-sized mining operations - one to several people doing machine digging (usually with a hydraulic excavator) and a wash-plant to recover gold.

This Website

This website currently has four major sections
(see Select Details in the menu to the left).

An introduction to Placer Mining in general.

Placer mining Law in BC, including pages about obtaining permits, plus a few special topics that the government website does not cover clearly.

An introduction to the Ministry's MTO System (Mineral Titles Online), from which you can see existing placer claims, get information about them and their owners, acquire placer claims, and much more.

Free Data for placer miners.

About the Owner

BC Placer is owned by Brian Marshall, Free Miner Certificate number 116897 (issued in the 1980s). My experience is limited, but I have picked up a lot of information over the years.

I bought a couple of claims and staked a couple of claims in the mid-1980s (yeah, the old way, with wood stakes made from logs and metal tags) when my brother and I spent 6 weeks in the Cariboo over two summers. (These claims are too old to be in the MTO system.) Since then...

I acquired a couple of claims in the Omineca but didn't get a chance to explore them.

I almost bought a claim on the Fraser River. I obtained a permit to do machine digging on a bar and on a bench, but I backed out at the last minute when my son and I inspected the claim. It was harder to get to and was going to take more time and money than I was expecting.

I acquired a couple of claims in the Vowel Creek area and my son and I did some exploring but the results were disappointing.

In any case, I continue to learn and continue to love placer mining.

About the Web Address

This website can be reached at: www.bcplacer.com.

This website is hosted in the owner's webspace, at:
www.agt.net/public/bmarshal/bcplacer
(or sometimes other names for this server) which is where a search engine will generally find it; this address will show up in the address box of your web-browser.

Either way works. It's just easier to remember: www.bcplacer.com.

Notice

I am not a lawyer and I do not claim to be an expert on the laws governing placer mining in BC. I just have some experience and have done some research. The information provided by this website is not guaranteed to be accurate or up to date - use it at your own risk.

ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THIS WEBSITE OR ITS OWNER, BRIAN MARSHALL, IN RELATION TO PLACER MINING, IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF ACCURACY, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL BRIAN MARSHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THIS WEBSITE OR BY HIM IN RELATION TO PLACER MINING.

Images on this website are copyrighted by their owners, and they may not be downloaded for other than personal use - republication, retransmission, reproduction or other use is prohibited.