Placer gold deposits of the Quesnel Highland region, including the former rich producers of the Barkerville Camp, have accounted for a large proportion of British Columbia's alluvial gold production. With the exception of a few producers in the Wingdam area, which are underlain by Upper Triassic sediments correlative with the Nicola Group, almost all the deposits are underlain by the Upper Proterozoic to Lower Paleozoic Snowshoe Group. These predominantly metasedimentary rocks have been metamorphosed to greenschist facies.

Placer gold deposits in the region are generally found in relatively young Pleistocene gravels. The morphology and mineral associations of the gold suggests that it was derived locally, the most obvious sources are the numerous auriferous veins in the Downey succession of the Snowshoe Group.

At the Little Valley Creek placer deposit, a considerable amount of underground work was done in prospecting a buried channel which was found to be up to about 75 metres deep. Apparently some gold was found on bedrock. Another occurrence of placer gold in the valley occurred in surface gravels resting on boulder clay in a depression in the glacial drift. The creek is near the contact between the Snowshoe Group and rocks of the Cariboo Terrane. Recorded intermittent production from 1906-10, and 1936-45 totalled 17,665 grams gold. Production for 1894 from Little Valley Creek is included with production from Mosquito Creek (093H 116) and Red Gulch (093H 15)(Bulletin 28).

"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).