Once a prospector had located a potentially productive source of gold with his gold pan, he then had to "work" or mine the source. In the 1870s and 1880s, all mining was done on the bars and banks of the Yukon River and its tributaries. Most of this mining involved working only the top two to four feet of the surface, known as skim digging, since below four feet the miner usually found either water or frost. The long winters meant that the mining season was short.
The use of fire to thaw the frozen ground, known as drift mining, was a major innovation. Jack McQuesten and Joe Ladue were experimenting with this method at Sixtymile as early as 1882, although William Ogilvie claims that he suggested it in 1887, having seen it used in the streets of Ottawa to reach frozen gas and water pipes. In any event, this technique was in general use on the creeks around Fortymile by the 1890s. It continued to be a basic mining technique in the Yukon until mechanized mining was introduced during the Klondike Gold Rush.
During the Birch Creek strike, the diggings were too shallow to use drift mining, so in summer open pit mining was practised. The main problem was water, which was removed from the exposed diggings with a bedrock drain. It was also around this time that mining became more labour-intensive. Instead of individual claim holders working their own ground, many men now worked as labourers for those who held the claims.
