Thomas Duncan Gillis
Thomas Gillis started prospecting in the Yukon in 1892. He was in Nova Scotia when he heard about the gold strike on Bonanza Creek. He came back in via Edmonton, and the Mackenzie and Keele rivers. He came down the Macmillan River thinking it was the Hess. Gillis panned for gold for several weeks on a creek he called Slate Creek and recovered coarse gold. He stayed so long that ice prevented him from rafting, and he suffered great hardship walking to Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River. Gillis returned in 1899 with two partners and a young American mining engineer. They prospected and opened a cut about nine miles up the creek where they built a cabin. They recovered about $200 valued at $20.64 per ounce for nugget gold. Gillis went to Ottawa and obtained a prospecting concession of five square miles on Slate Creek, now renamed Russell Creek.1)
Gillis approached Nevil Armstrong in 1901 to back a partnership to prospect and develop the property. Gillis and Armstrong, with a legal surveyor Charles S.W. Barwell, and four labourers took the steamer Prospector from Dawson in August. They arrived at Armstrong Landing, about a mile up from the mouth of Russell Creek on August 15. This was the first steamboat trip up the Macmillan River, which is very shallow late in the season. Barwell started a survey and took astronomical observations while Armstrong and Gillis prospected. They found a nugget weighing three quarters of an ounce, the largest ever found on the creek. Armstrong was not impressed with the mining possibilities for his company, but the area had excellent hunting. They finished the survey on August 30 and were back in Dawson by September 14. Armstrong was named a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for leading this expedition. The highest peak in the Russell Range is named Mount Armstrong.2)
Armstrong persuaded R.G. McConnell DLS to go up the Macmillan River in 1902 and McConnell reported no work being done on the creek that year. Armstrong joined Gillis and four others in Dawson on June 8, 1904. They took the steamer Quick and reached Armstrong Landing on June 22. They built a bridge across Canyon Creek (North Russell Creek) and started digging a ditch for sluice water. The day after it was completed, they laid in sluice boxes and made a bedrock drain. They recovered $218 in fine gold plus some small nuggets. They were at the landing when hunters F.C. Selou and C. Sheldon, and W. H. Osgood (US Biological Survey), and C. Rungius (artist) and other hunters arrived on September 1. They came there at Armstrong's suggestion. Osgood and Rungius used the Gillis cabin as a base for hunting and trapping. They all headed down river to Fort Selkirk by scow and canoe on September 2. Armstrong and Gillis continued on to Dawson by canoe and they arrived on September 9. Armstrong renewed the concession and did other business before returning to England. In the fall of 1904 or the spring of 1905, Armstrong and his backers bought Gillis’ interest in the concession.3)