The Murder Gulch placer deposit is located on Placer Lease 7139 on the banks of the Cariboo River about 9.6 kilometres upstream from Quesnel Forks, 5 kilometres north of Likely.
There is some evidence of previous work on the deposit and numerous placer deposits have been worked in the area since before the turn of the century during the Cariboo gold rush. Historic production from 1876-1945 for the Cariboo (North Fork Quesnel) River has been combined with the Murder Gulch deposit and totalled 258,037 grams gold (Bulletin 28).
This placer deposit is located within the historical Cariboo goldfields where deposits occur in glacial, interglacial fluvial and till deposits of Pleistocene age. These lie unconformably on rocks belonging to the Slide Mountain, Cariboo, Barkerville and Quesnel terranes which range in age from the Precambrian to the Jurassic.
The geology of the area consists of glacial clay mixed with coarser material and occasional outcrops of graphitic slate. Bedrock consisting of primarily Middle-Upper Triassic Nicola Group volcanics and black basal phyllites contains frequent quartz stringers containing abundant pyrite.
In the Likely area, placer gold is associated with glacial and glacio-fluvial action. The auriferous gravels of the Murder Gulch deposit contain particles ranging from clay to boulder size. The gold is usually found in the top part of the gravel mixture. The richest gold concentrations are generally found on top of blue glacial clay, bedrock or in a rusty clay gravel boulder mixture. The gold is often quite rough with quartz fragments still attached indicating a nearby source and a short transportation distance. The upper layer has been exposed for 75 metres and is between 1 to 4 metres thick.
Production from the upper bench in 1976 was 4118 cubic metres resulting in 3497 grams of gold. Indicated reserves in 1977 were 37,250 cubic metres with the same grade as the 1976 production ($3.63 per cubic metre) with an additional 142,500 cubic metres inferred reserves (Property File - Gavex Gold Mines Ltd. Prospectus Feb. 1977). A 36-day production period in 1976 recovered 3508.8 grams of gold from 4046 cubic metres of gravel (Property File Chevron - Poloni, J., 1985).
In the mid-1980s, Big Valley Resources Incorporated held placer claims 5.5 kilometres northeast of Likely, on the south side of the Cariboo River and downstream of its confluence with Spanish Creek. The claims covered a level bench 90 metres above the Cariboo River, upstream from the Murder Gulch placer leases. Glaciofluvial and interglacial deposits occur on the bench and 75 to 90 metres below this a Tertiary gravel channel is exposed. In 1987, initial test work of the upper deposit returned 0.105 to 0.158 gram of gold per cubic metre and a previously unknown higher channel returned 0.526 gram per cubic metre. A potential for the 230,000 cubic metres of material was calculated for the upper gravels and an indicated 76,500 cubic metres of material in the lower preglacial channel (Property File Chevron - Schmidt, U., 1987).
"Data from the Cariboo mining district indicate that supergene leaching of gold dispersed within massive sulphides by Tertiary deep weathering followed by Cenozoic erosion is the most likely explanation for the occurrence of coarse gold nuggets in Quaternary sediments" (Exploration in British Columbia 1989, page 147).
