LARRY BARR & FRED DORWARD

In the early 1980s, Larry Barr’s mining company, Territorial Gold Placers, commissioned artist Jom Robb to do a series of paintings of the old cabins and mining sites in the Yukon’s Black Hills. Black Hills Creek was named for a famous southern gold mining area in the 1880s when a syndicate of Scandinavian miners from Minnesota arrived to prospect in the Yukon.

Claims were staked and expired over the years until the area was developed as a mining distract in 1908. The miners didn’t get the police detachment they asked for but construction began on a diversion of the Overland Trail into the Black Hills and Scroggie Creek districts in 1912.

The road moved north to connect with a road to the Mayo area silver mines in the 1920s and the Black Hills district was virtually abandoned until 1980 when the rising price of gold brought miners like Larry Barr back into the region.

In mid-September 1981 Fred Dorwood, vice-president of Territorial Gold, Jim Robb and Yukon photographer Richard Hartmier travelled by helicopter, truck and by foot to 124 sites on a dozen or so creeks. They saw roadhouses, cemeteries, clusters of buildings, old mines, water-carrying systems, solitary cabins, machinery and mined landscapes.

There were almost 40 separate sites on Black Hills Creek where 65 people resided in 1923. Many were accessible for close-up study and a large number were photographed from the air. Territorial Gold Placers has ensured that these rustic places of enduring charm and historic value are preserved in Jim’s art.