Alba Root “Deep Hole” Thompson (1845 - 1936)
Alba Thompson was born in the Thousand Islands area and, at an early age, moved to Colorado where he lived through a gold rush. He came to the Klondike in 1898 and mined for many years on Eldorado and the surrounding goldfields.1)
In the Klondike, Thompson’s partner was Asa Thurston Hayden, a one-time professor of geology at the University of Hawaii. Hayden was convinced there was a second layer of bedrock, and therefore another layer of gold-bearing gravel, and they chose No. 30 on Eldorado Creek as a place to experiment. An unmanageable source of water was found at 220 feet and the Yukon Government was called in to cap the flow at a estimated cost of $6,000.2) Thompson’s obituary in the Mayo Miner says the cost to the government was in the neighbourhood of $50,000.3)
In 1916, when he was seventy, he got lost on Haggart Creek and found himself on the Hart River. He floated down to Fort McPherson on the Mackenzie River and returned to Dawson in the summer via the Rat and Porcupine rivers.4)
Thomson moved to the Mayo Mining District in 1922 and made his home in Keno where he had mined and prospected. During the last months of his life, Alba often referred to the secret channel of gold still undiscovered on Eldorado Creek. He was a member of the Royal Arch and Knights Templar of Dawson and a Shriner in Victoria. At the time of his death, he had a son and a daughter living in New York state.5)