The Mines · Positions

Send a Position

Know where a BC mine is, or found something left on the ground near one? Send its position as your GPS gives it, with a photograph of what’s there, taken from outside. Frank checks each one against the photograph or track log and the record before it goes on the map.

Taken from outside, checked before it goes on the map.
Openings and ways into the workings are never shown.

The Form

Where a BC Mine Is

The mine, the position as your GPS gives it, what the point marks, and a photograph from outside. The rest is up to you.

Checked first. Each position is checked against the sender’s photograph or track log and the record before it goes on the map. Where the province’s MINFILE record puts the mine somewhere else, the pin’s card says by how much.
For readers on the list. Exact positions are shown to readers who are signed in; everyone else sees the pin at the camp. The card says who sent a position, if they asked to be named.
Some pins stay at the camp. When the land is private, the ground is unsafe, bats winter there, or a family asks. Own the land a mine is on? Say so, and its pin stays at the camp.
Not a mine? Send it if it’s from the mining days. Workings, mills and smelters, tramways, boilers and machinery, cabins and bunkhouses, townsites and cemeteries, wagon roads, rail grades, flumes and dams, claim posts: each gets its own square on the map and a short page, once it’s checked.
What isn’t taken. Places from outside the mining story (fire lookouts, trapline cabins, crash sites); Indigenous heritage sites, which the law protects and whose locations stay private; anything on private land without the owner’s say; and nothing from inside the workings.
Never go into an abandoned mine. A photograph from outside is all the record needs. Frank films so you don’t have to go in.

The Anyox card on the mines map as a reader on the list sees it: a photograph of the old power house below the smelter stack in the forest, Full Record, Anyox Camp, North Coast, worked 1914 to 1935, copper, silver and gold, MINFILE 103P 021, the position taken on site, 55.43867 degrees north, 129.82498 degrees west, UTM 9U 447805 east 6143917 north, WGS 84, MINFILE's Hidden Creek point 80 metres to the north-east of it, Copy and Save to my GPS, and Read the full record — Anyox, as a reader on the list sees it on the map: the position taken on site, how far the province’s point is off, and Copy or Save to my GPS.

Your name

Your email

What are you sending?

A mine on Frank’s record it has its own page on this site A mine or showing on MINFILE one of the province’s X’s on the map, not yet on Frank’s record Something else I found from the mining days a cabin, a boiler, a tramway, an adit with no name

The mine

MINFILE number if you know it

Where it is, as your GPS gives it

Latitude and longitude, or UTM. Say if it isn’t WGS 84. GPS tips ↓

What the point marks

When you were there optional

Month and year is fine.

Photographs, taken from outside optional Choose files, or drop them here Photographs, and a GPX track log if you kept one, up to 10 MB in all.

Frank may put this position on the map once it’s checked

Yes No

Credit you by name?

Yes, by name No, as “a reader”

Frank may publish these photographs with the record optional

You took them, or you have the right to share them. They are credited the way you chose above.

Yes No

Anything else optional

How the position was taken, what else is there, anything Frank should know.

Nothing goes on the map until it’s checked. Openings and ways into the workings are never shown.

GPS Tips

Getting a Good Position

A phone or a handheld GPS is good to about five metres under open sky, and worse beside rock walls, in cuts and under trees. Where you stand and how you take the reading matter more than what you carry. Here is what the record needs, and how to get the best fix.

What the Record Needs

The position, in degrees. Latitude and longitude to five decimals in WGS 84 (49.09292, −118.58558), or UTM with its zone (11U 384245 E 5438996 N).
What the point marks. One point per thing: the portal, the collar, the top of the dump, the boiler. Name each one.
How good it is. The accuracy your device showed (± metres), and whether you averaged.
Two photographs. The thing, from where you stood, and your GPS screen with the numbers on it.
The date. Month and year at least.
Your track log, if you kept one. A GPX file is the best proof there is; the form takes it with the photographs.

A Better Fix

Stand in the open. In front of a portal, not in the cut. Rock walls block satellites and bounce their signals, and that error doesn’t average away. Say where you stood: “5 m in front of the portal.”
Let it settle. Give the GPS a few minutes after you switch it on, longer if you’ve driven far since you last used it.
Average. Garmin’s Average Waypoint, or an app that averages, for two to five minutes. On a phone, keep the screen on and the phone still.
Check the settings. Decimal degrees and the WGS 84 datum. An old map’s datum (NAD 27) can move the same numbers a hundred metres or so.
Come back another day. A second averaged fix, with the satellites somewhere else in the sky, is worth more than an hour more at the first.
No signal needed. A phone’s GPS works without cell service; the first fix just takes longer. Download the map before you go.

The Ten-Minute Question

Does leaving the GPS for ten minutes make it more accurate? Yes, up to a point. Averaging over a few minutes evens out the random scatter, and most of the gain comes early. What it can’t remove is the steady error from signals bouncing off a rock face, a cut or a tin roof: it is the same in every reading at that spot. Where you stand matters more than how long you wait.

Never go in for a better fix. Not into a portal, not onto a collar or the lip of a dump: a position from outside is all the record needs. Read the numbers off a map instead of taking them on site? That’s fine too; just say so. Back to the form ↑

Every mine on record, on one map.

Find a Mine by Area →

Letters from a Retired Madman

Come along. One photograph. One story. Once a month.

That’s the whole deal. Frank picks one photograph out of the archive, tells you the story of the day it was taken, and signs off until next month. A short P.S. points to what’s new on the site, and that’s it.

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