Red/Cyan 3D glasses are needed to view the following photos.
I’d hoped to have this up on Saturday, but took too long preparing the photos. Here is the last(for a while, at least) collection of my pictures of Barkerville.
I haven’t gotten much into the history of the town; William ‘Billy’ Barker, an English miner, came to North America for the California gold rush. He moved into British Columbia in 1858 for the Fraser River gold rush, then to Richfield in 1861. Having little luck in Richfield, he prospected slightly farther down Williams Creek, a spot that was considered unlikely to contain any value. It was in this spot where he and his partners struck gold in 1862. For the record, this wasn’t just surface gold- they had to excavate 40 feet down to find the rich deposits. In two days, they excavated 60 ounces of gold(1.7kg), or over $80 000 USD worth in today’s money.
The town of Barkerville quickly grew around this claim; at it’s height, over 8000 people lived in the town. A fire in 1868 destroyed much of the town; The story is that a miner trying to force himself unto a saloon girl- the resulting conflict resulted in a hot stovepipe being knocked over. The resulting fire was uncontrollable, but the town was quickly rebuilt after the fire.
over 30 000 kg of gold were found at Barkerville, but the town quickly declined once the gold ran low. William Barker himself became wealthy, but ran out of money in the years after. He returned to prospecting without much luck, and died in Victoria in 1894. He was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
The town only had a few residents in the 1950s, before it was bought by the province as a historic site.
In my previous posts, I showed some 3D photos of the town, and some multispectral photos. Once again, I’m combining the two for this post. Of course, that presents some problems- I only have one full spectrum camera, so have to take a photo, move the camera, and take another. IF something moves between the two shots, the resulting photo looks off. I don’t usually alter my photos(other than setting the white balance and contrast and converting them to 3D of course), but in two of the photos, I had to remove people moving in the photos. I’m not going to say which ones; if you can’t tell by looking at them, then my removal was a success.
To start off with, here is the town as seen from the lookout above the Canadian Claim. I took almost all my photos with my Zomei 950 nm filter; this is the only one not in the near-infrared range.
It was taken with my short pass filter, allowing in ultraviolet, violet, and blue light. The white paint on some of the buildings is a sharp contrast to the dark foliage, but the brightest part of the photo is the light being reflected off the tin roofs.
… and here’s the same view in 950 nm infrared. As usual, the foliage is extremely light; the wood used for the structures is lighter as well, showing a greater contrast between different logs, as well as better revealing wear.
Zoomed out, more of the town can be seen.
This photo matches most of the ones in my previous post, if anyone is more interested in looking at the details of the spectra.
In town, I tried to take photos of the fire hall(I took them among the machinery to the left of the tree in the centre). I varied the difference between the left and right photos, trying to get a good balance of foregraound and background 3d. The photo with a small differen ce between left and right looks like this…
…while a greater distance between the two looks like this:
If the above photo doesn’t look right in 3D, try making the picture smaller by zooming out.
I didn’t get many photos from inside the town, as the moving crowds made it difficult to take two photos. However, Near the edge of town(in the ‘china-town’ section), I had a quiet view of the main street, shortly before the storms rolled in.
The Camerontown Cemetery, just outside the Barkerville town site, is minimally maintained. The graves have been restored and repainted, but the cemetery is not mowed or landscaped.
The abandoned look fits the cemetery and the photos. Most of the graves here are young men, miners who set out to strike it rich in Barkerville, Camerontown, and Richfield, only to never return home.
That’s a depressing end to the post, so one more thing. At 12:01 in the morning on July 1st, 1868 the town was woken by exploding anvils- Gunpowder sandwiched between two anvils would ignite, launching the upper one into the sky.
150 years later, and that is still how they celebrate Canada Day. They only have one explosion, using much less gunpowder, but the tradition lives on.
The above photos were taken with a modified Canon Rebel T3i camera.
Parallel Views 