Robert “Bobbie” Fisher (d. 1939)
Bobbie Fisher was born in Bonavista, Newfoundland and came in over the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike gold rush. He travelled with Art Rouse and they stopped in Skagway where Fisher trained a team of twenty-five dogs for his partner.1) J. A. Rouse ran a freighting company out of Skagway and later in Dawson.2) At some point, Bobbie brought his sister Agnes and their sister Virtue from Newfoundland to Grand Forks.3) Fisher mined on Dominion Creek near Dawson for several years.4)
He moved to the Mayo mining district in 1907 and prospected on the Potato Hills at the head of Dublin Gulch. In 1908, he found a quartz lead about two miles from the Hills, with very fine gold seven feet below the surface. The richest lead was on the Olive claim that Bobbie’s sister Agnes Kinsey bought two-thirds of in 1910. By 1922, Bobbie had extended the tunnel on his claim to two hundred feet where he found good gold-bearing ore. He mined on Dublin Gulch until 1933 when he thought the ground was pretty well worked out.5)
Scheelite, a tungsten ore, was found on many of the Dublin Gulch claims and Fisher found a quartz vein with scheelite and several small lode deposits. Sheelite was in high demand during the First World War, but Dublin Gulch was too remote and the quantities too small to make it worth developing a mine. Bobbie Fisher held on to the scheelite-bearing property until his death in 1939. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Canada Tungsten took an interest in the area.6)
After silver was discovered on Keno Hill, Fisher started prospecting there and then spent twenty years mining on Keno Hill, Galena Hill, and other parts of the silver camp. Agnes Kinsey owned a property on Keno Hill with her brother. She sold this property during the 1950s silver boom and made enough to retire in the south.7)