The Wheaton (Boulder) Creek placer gold occurrence is located about 64 kilometres east of the south end of Dease Lake. Wheaton Creek is a north-flowing tributary to the Turnagain River.
The area is underlain by a five kilometre wide belt of upper Mississippian to Permian ultramafic rocks of the Cache Creek Complex. These rocks consist of peridotite, dunite and pyroxenite which are generally serpentinized.
A fault-bound section of Mississippian to Triassic Kedahda Formation (Cache Creek Complex) rock sits within the ultramafic belt south of Alice Shea Creek. This portion is reported to consist of slate, argillite, limestone and andesitic volcanics. There are many quartz veins and stringers in the slate and schist. Some are mineralized with pyrite but none are known to be gold bearing. Underlying the southern reaches of Wheaton Creek are upper Mississippian to Permian Nakina Formation (Cache Creek Complex) mafic volcanics and a large area of Lower Jurassic sediments and metasediments of the Inklin Formation (Laberge Group).
Gold-bearing gravel occurred at the lower end of Wheaton Creek and on Alice Shea Creek (104I 005), a tributary of Wheaton Creek. Almost all the gold from these creeks is coarse and nuggetty and most of the large nuggets have quartz adhering to them. Numerous nuggets found on Wheaton Creek weighed about 62 grams (2 ounces). The largest nugget found on Alice Shea Creek weighed 1612 grams (52 ounces) (the Turnagain Nugget); numerous others have been found, weighing up to 496 grams (16 ounces). The gold was recovered from clayey gravel and bedded clay.
Recorded gold production between 1931 and 1945 totalled 241,212 grams (7755 ounces).
In 1874, coarse gold was found in creeks tributary to the headwaters of the Turnagain River. In 1932, coarse gold was found on Wheaton Creek just above the falls. Jade boulders were found in Wheaton Creek (104I 082) in 1938 and about 1000 pounds of jade was flown out in 1957. Placer operations ceased in the early 1940s and resumed in 1970 when Demsey Mines Ltd. acquired eight placer leases on the creek.
