John Jackson “Jack” Suttles (b. 1872)
Jack Suttles was born at Silver Creek, Kentucky. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He arrived on Dublin Gulch in 1899 and within eight days had recovered $364 in gold. He eventually grouped ten claims on the creek and mined them for fifteen years, recovering $45,000 - $50,000.1)
In 1905, James Haddock obtained a hydraulic concession on Dublin Gulch that included all of the ground, except Suttles’, on the short creek. Dr. W.E. Thompson took over the concession in December 1908, and he hired an expert to oversee a hydraulic operation. The Dublin Hydraulics Company was incorporated in 1910 with Thompson as president and A.W.H. Smith as the secretary-treasurer and promoter of the project. Suttles, who owned ten claims inside the concession, optioned them to the company for $10,000 payable in two years. For some reason the ground was not profitable for the company and little more was heard from them.2)
Suttles claims lapsed without his notice around 1914 and the Cantins, who were mining on the creek below his claims, staked the property. Suttles put a curse on the claim saying that the Cantins would get nothing from it. The Cantins had mined the claims for scheelite, valuable during the First World War.3)
Suttles was a musician known as the “Kentucky Minstrel.”4) In 1915, he played banjo and fiddle at the Moosehide Christmas festival.5)
In July 1916, Jack Suttles enlisted for service in the First World War. He was a private in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Yukon Infantry Company in January 1917 and then was transferred to the Canadian Infantry, 231 Battalion.6) He received an honourable discharge in 1919 and returned to his home in Kentucky.7)
As for Suttles’ curse, his claims were open in 1932 and Ted Bleiler and Norval Loshore staked them and started ground sluicing. Within a month they had recovered $1,400 with some coarse gold and a half ounce nugget. The better pay was under the ten or so inches of blue clay pan mined by the Cantins.8) In 2019, the process was in place for a new mine on Dublin Gulch. The Eagle mine was projected to produce more than three times the 2019 production from all gold mining in the territory.9) This story did not have a good end when a tailings pond released contaminated water into the valley in 2023.