The Boulder Creek placer occurrence is located on Boulder Creek, west of the middle lake of the Manson Lakes. It is approximately 12 kilometres southeast of the present location of the Manson Creek settlement. Vehicle access is controlled by the water levels of the Manson Lakes as the crossing is located near a narrow channel connecting the upper and lower portions of the middle lake of the Manson Lakes.

Boulder Creek drains ultramafic rocks, metamorphosed sediments, sedimentary rocks and granitic rocks belonging to the Pennsylvanian to Permian Manson Lakes Ultramafites, the Proterozoic Boulder Creek Group, the Middle Triassic to Lower Jurassic Takla Group and the Cretaceous Germansen batholith, respectively.

The creek is reported to be rich in coarse gold with a recorded production for the period of 1936 to 1940 being 3421 grams of gold (Bulletin 28, page 44). The wash is apparently difficult to work as it contains many large, closely-packed boulders weighing up to 27.2 tonnes.

In the 1960s, scheelite was discovered in the placer concentrate. This discovery shifted the focus from placer exploration to the search for tungsten during the early 1970s.