Description of Historic Place

Rip van Winkle Flats is one of two placer mining sites formally recognized by the Province of BC for their importance to Chinese Canadian history.
Browning's Flat and Rip Van Winkle Flats are exemplary illustrations of the many sites showing evidence of placer gold mining, most notably by Chinese Canadian and First Nations miners, distributed along five hundred kilometres of the Fraser River between Hope and Quesnel in British Columbia. The two sites are located in Nlaka'pamux traditional territory on the banks of the Fraser River. Browning's Flat, the larger of the two, is located on the west side of the river, approximately midway between Lytton and Lillooet. It extends more than one kilometre above the river on a series of terraces. The smaller Rip van Winkle Flats is a terraced landscape located to the north and west of Lytton, on the west side of the Fraser River. Both sites include rock water channels and piles of washed and stacked rock, surface artifacts, evidence of settlement sites, trails, and other signs of land use and occupation associated with hand gold mining as practiced on the banks, bars and riverbed of the Fraser River.

Heritage Value

Created between c.1880 and 1910, these two mining landscapes are excellent examples of the several hundred historical sites that make up the placer mining landscapes of the Fraser River corridor. Together, they superbly illustrate the extensive history of First Nations and Chinese Canadian gold mining on the Fraser River during the active mining period, 1857 to 1910.

These are among the largest and finest examples of landscapes created by 19th century Chinese miners found anywhere in the world. Meticulously hand built over years of continuous work, these sites powerfully reflect the social circumstances and technological ingenuity of Chinese Canadians working in the Fraser River gold rush.

Social, cultural and spiritual values are embodied in these landscapes through their representation of the close and long-standing historical relationships between Chinese Canadians and First Nations in B.C.

Chinese migrants have been arriving in the First Nations territories now known as British Columbia since the late 1780s, the same time period as the earliest European migrations. The two groups established stable partnerships through economic ties, marriage and family. Lytton First Nation stories recall the placer mining work of the Chinese immigrants and childhood exploration of the resulting rock formations.

The two sites illustrate the multi-ethnic nature of the placer mining industry, contributing to a broader understanding of ethnic relationships and multiculturalism throughout the province, in particular the substantive Chinese Canadian presence along the Fraser River for over two centuries. Today, these sites are places of memory and storytelling. They evoke a current wish to create a more inclusive history of B.C. that reflects all of its ethnic diversity.

Often difficult to access except by water or air, these landscapes are significant unspoiled archaeological features that illustrate the major role of placer mining in the settlement and economic development of the B.C. interior by Chinese, European and other immigrant communities. These placer landscapes also contributed to agricultural development through the re-use of abandoned ditches, flumes, reservoirs and drainage channels for irrigation works in this semi-arid region.

These labour-intensive landscape features are evidence of a work force organization developed by the Chinese and First Nations miners. They illustrate the planning and coordination needed to implement ground-sluicing and other complex mining techniques. The spectacular manufactured landscapes are characteristic of the work of organized teams of ten to twenty Chinese miners who worked together, and, rather than searching for the next gold strike or leaving the gold fields altogether, returned to work the same sites year after year.

The sites illustrate technological mining innovations practiced by Chinese and First Nations miners and others. The ground-sluicing technique channelled running water to move gold-laden gravel through ditches, gullies and sluice boxes where the gold was collected. Impressive hydraulic works were constructed to harness water from the many streams draining into the Fraser. Sludge chutes - linear piles of vertically stacked tailings cobbles with deep channels between them - drained waste water and sediment to the river.

The aesthetic qualities of these landscapes are found in their geographical breadth, massive scale, meticulous hand building techniques and materials, reflecting years of continuous work by Chinese Canadians in the Fraser River gold fields.

van Winkle Flats and Browning's Flat are valuable for their potential to reveal further information about mining technology, landscape features and past ways of life, to increase interest in similar sites elsewhere, and to offer tourism and economic potential for researchers, scholars and the interested public.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Heritage Branch

Character-Defining Elements

Browning's Flat:
- Location and aspect facing the Fraser River on Lytton First Nation territory
- Dry Interior Douglas-fir landscape
- Sloped and stepped topography that allowed the flow of water
- Total area and perimeter of the worked landscape
- Streams and water courses that feed into the Fraser
- Significant size and complexity of mining systems and features
- Highly visible manipulated landscape features resulting from mining activity such as: terraces; vertical stacked tailing cobbles and boulders; drainage ditches, channels and drains through barriers; ground sluice channels, flumes and ramps; tailings piles; sludge chutes
- Intactness and original configuration of the landscape features
- Original location and order of the features (such as parallel channels perpendicular to the river) that reveal mining processes
- Trails that were earlier wheelbarrow tracks
- Location of a former Chinese mining camp, domestic artifacts and features
- Surface artifacts such as domestic items

Rip van Winkle Flats:
- Location and aspect facing the Fraser River on Lytton First Nation territory
- Dry Interior Douglas-fir landscape
- Sloped and stepped topography that allowed the flow of water
- Total area and perimeter of the worked landscape
- Streams and water courses that feed into the Fraser
- Massive size, extent and complexity of landscape manipulation, mining systems and features
- Highly visible manipulated landscape features resulting from mining activity such as: terraces; vertical stacked tailing cobbles and boulders; drainage ditches, channels and drains through barriers; ground sluice channels, flumes and ramps; sludge chutes
- Extent of cobble tailings field within the forested landscape
- Original location and order of the features that reveal mining processes
- Current roadway and forest trails
- Chinese Canadian pictographs