"Volcanic" or "Sunset" or "Crazy" Brown

Some background information from The Virtual Crowsnest Highway about treasure hunter R.A. Brown, one of the real--not imaginary--persons in the saga of the Lost Creek Mine.

[In 1885, near Grand Forks] Brown staked his Volcanic and Fontentine claims on pyrrhotites and pyrites carrying significant gold, silver and copper values. He was soon convinced that a mother lode of gold-rich chalcopyrite lay within the claim, and his optimism for the properties soon attracted other treasure-hunters. Nearby, around what was dubbed Brown’s Camp, other claims including the Pathfinder, G.W. House’s Black Tail, Hummingbird, and Golden Eagle, were staked.

So enthusiastically did Brown expound upon the thousands of tons of pure copper ore and gold and silver that he knew were just beyond the end of his current tunnel, and so wild were his prognostications that the riches within reach would fuel a benevolent economic Goliath that would summon a half-dozen railroads and shelter its workers in Utopian settlements where all the churches would be “halls of science,” that he soon became known to some as “Volcanic” Brown, to others, “Crazy.” Despite his best promotional efforts, however, Brown failed to attract much investment, and in 1897 leased the Volcanic to the Olive Mining and Smelting Company while he went off hunting for his next bonanza.

By January of 1904 the Michigan-backed Volcanic Mining Company had purchased the property, renaming it the Volcano in an attempt, perhaps, to try and disassociate it from Brown. When told the next year that the tunnel was in 800 feet and still no lode had been located, Brown assured his interviewer that the “real thing” was just beyond the end of the tunnel. There it remains, for even Brown himself, who returned to the abandoned property towards the end of the Great War, could never push the tunnel far enough to hit pay.