The Discovery of the Sullivan

Second Version

As the story goes, the four men, Smith, Cleaver, Sullivan, and Burchett, were found by some people of the Ktunaxa wandering around lost and starving, but what has not been questioned is where they were found.

They were found within twenty miles of the silver strike they claimed not to be be able to find. They had to have walked right past it. What they had been looking for was North Star Mountain pictured below. 

In this image slash is being burned as a result of clearing a few new ski runs. In 1892 there was enough of this mountain staked with mining claims that there was no more room. There would have been a multitude of fires sending smoke up into the air. The tendency is for  smoke from this area  to travel south or to the left of this image as it is the east slope of North Star Mountain and the mountain runs north/south. They would have passed some five miles to the left of this spot and should have smelled the smoke of a multitude of fires burning on this hill.

This is the area where the four prospectors were when they ran into the Ktanaxa group:

Straight ahead, about ten miles, is the Mission where Father Coccolla told the men where they could find the North Star discovery, which in turn, is about ten miles to the rear of where this was taken. In this terrain, the further one is from North Star Mountain, the easier it is to see. The good Father would have simply pointed to it.

Then there is the story of the nine dollar compass. According to the Mining Engineers Handbook by Peele copyright 1918, 1927, the cost of a compass was $1.50 (page 481),

and this was some thirty years previous. A geologists dip compass, however, was expensive and was utilized in areas such as the men were found. Again from Peele:

Next: The orebody that they found, not unlike the boy that caught the whale!

Left to Right: E.C. Smith, John Cleaver, Pat Sullivan, and Walter C. Burchett