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The Following article by T.W. Paterson - The Chronicles
"Every summer he headed upriver; exactly six weeks later, he'd return with chunks of gold."
More than one adventurer has hiked up the rugged San Juan River looking for gold. Unlike the Spanish prospectors of legend who were massacred by Indians, the greatest threat faced by latter-day treasure hunters is the aggravating no-see-um.
Although local Indians had long known of 'pretty yellow stones' in the San Juan, it wasn't until 1859 that prospectors began to show keen interest in this area. In Vancouver Island's West Coast, the late George Nicholson wrote: "As early as 1860 a handful of men recovered gold from the gravel bars of the (nearby) Gordon River, but results were discouraging and when news of the rich Leech River strike - which occurred about that time - reached them, they abandoned their claims and hit the trail for that area."
Others checked out the San Juan but soon moved on disappointed after reporting only small quantities of the precious metal. There the matter might have rested had not a mysterious American named Foster made his dramatic debut. When he finally departed for the last time, he left an intriguing legacy: men have been trying to retrace his footsteps ever since.
He first appeared in Port San Juan (Port Renfrew) with two companions. The close-mouthed trio had trekked overland from Victoria, picking and panning their way along the many streams. Somewhere high up the San Juan they made a rich strike. That's what Renfrew towns people surmised - Foster and his friends weren't saying anything. Taking the coastal boat to Victoria, they apparently went their separate ways and were more or less forgotten by all but a few local diehards who tried their luck upriver without success.
Then, in 1907, who should reappear but Foster, now known as Old Foster. The aging prospector mumbled something about one of his partners having died, the other having disappeared. Laying in a large stock of supplies, he hired Chief Peter, the White Man's Guide, as the sign over his door advertised, to take him upstream in the chief's canoe.
"Ten or 12 miles later," the story goes, he waved Peter in to shore, shouldered his pack and curtly ordered his guide back to town. More succinctly, he ordered Peter not to look back.
Peter was to return in precisely six weeks.
Peter kept the rendezvous with his strange client, canoeing him downriver where Foster, who said not a word about his 'hunting trip,' boarded the coastal steamer. A year passed. With summer, the American was back. Again they made the mysterious trip upriver, Peter returning alone, then retrieving his passenger six weeks later. For five summers, Foster made his annual pilgrimage to the San Juan's upper reaches.
By this time Renfrew was obsessed with his secretive movements. Speculation as to the location of his mine - no one doubted for a moment but that he was taking out gold - ran wild. Some forsook their homesteads to pan "every little creek where bedrock could be uncovered, picking at cliffs and roaming all parts of the valley in efforts to wrench the mystery man's secret from the forest - but all in vain."
Others tried to follow Foster. But he soon discovered them and it wasn't long before his 'silent partners' straggled back to town, cursing bitterly. Foster played rough - at the first unnatural rustling of leaf, or the cracking of a twig, he'd blaze away with his Winchester.
Even old Chief Peter tried his hand. But he wisely saw Foster onto the ship before he and his son hurried upstream to the spot where Foster usually landed. All they found were the remains of a few camp fires and a miner's pick. Foster's secret remained intact.
Finally, the more persistent agreed to pool their resources. When Foster arrived as usual the following summer, no one attempted to follow him. Punctual as always, he boarded the steamer six weeks later. But this time he had a friend. It would seem that even Foster, after a month and a half in the rain forest, welcomed a little company and, after a few drinks at the bar, he and his new companion were hitting it off so well that the mellowing miner invited the worthy gentleman to enjoy another bottle in the comfort of his cabin.
The strategy was working beautifully, it having been planned that the carefully selected agent should be on the same boat as Foster. It was this man's job to ply him with drink, subtly lead him around to the subject of mining, then let nature - and liquor - take its course. Before long, Foster was flashing gold - not just nuggets, but solid chunks of it, hacked from a ledge high up the San Juan.
Alas, the best-laid schemes o' mice and men... The plotters had overestimated their spy's drinking capacity. Foster had drunkenly babbled away his secret, all right, but, come next morning, his treacherous companion was suffering a king-size hangover. When his friends eagerly questioned him later, their agent couldn't remember anything beyond the size of Foster's gold!
Summers came, summers went, but Old Foster came no more. And the secret of his gold mine, high up in the San Juan, remains a mystery.
Footnote: Ten years after Foster's last visit, San Juan pioneer Rev. W.E.H. Ellison recalled his mysterious friend to writer John Hickey.
"I knew Foster well. He was an old miner from Salt Lake City. As I gathered the story from him, he had prospected the valley back in the 70s and 80s with two companions and had made a strike of some sort. For some reason it was not until he was an old man, however, that he decided to come back. Then he returned year after year for quite a long period. I grew to know him quite well as he would stop at my cabin. He must have stayed with me six or seven times at least.
"He always told me," Ellison continued, "that he came back looking for the original find he had made and that he could never locate it. Every year he said that. But Salt Lake City is a long way off and it doesn't seem likely that a man, especially an old man, would come all that distance every year just on speculation. Besides, I noticed that he always slept with his bag under his pillow. I think he had something, all right."
The next paragraph of Reverend Ellison;s reminiscence should be of particular interest to present-day treasure hunters:
Foster, he said, "always arrived in July when the water was low in the river. That made me think that whatever he found was in the bed of the stream. He would stay about six weeks and then leave. By that time the river would be rising again. Of course it is possible he really was searching for his original location unsuccessfully. The river changes its course so much. One course gets choked with brush and windfalls and the water then makes off in a different direction. The valley is about two miles wide and I have known the stream to wander half a mile from its former bed. Something like that happens every year. So it is quite possible that changes in the many intervening years prevented him from finding his old strike again.
"It must have been about 1917 that he came for the last time. Then he died - at Salt Lake City. Quite a few have tried to find what he looked for but,so far as I know, without success."
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