20121, I followed the conversation about historical drilling with interest.

I admit I don't know Yellowknife gold belt as well as the Yukon, because Yukon's my stomping ground. But I have this to offer:

I have been to many historical mining places, and have read a lot of historical geological summaries in the Yukon. Whether they succeeded or not has as much to do with the economic times as with whether the property has the mineral or not.

example 1:

On the Yukon River is a ghost town called Williams Creek. You can still go visit the cabins, erected in the 1930's-1940's. It never made a successful story. It was a copper mining town that never made it. The adit at this "town" goes right into the main Sherwood copper deposit. Huge deposit, rich in gold as well as copper. Sherwood is a very successful company that I wish I had invested in earlier. The deposit just sat there waiting 60 years for the right times and financing.

example 2:

United Keno Hill Mines went bankrupt in the early 1990's due to years of continuously bad metal prices. The town of Elsa became a ghost town overnight. Nothing wrong with the property, and it is not played out -very rich silver/lead/zinc vein, and Alexco is looking at re-opening now that prices are decent. In addition, there are till many very rich untapped galena veins in the surrounding area. Everyone has known about them for 100 years. It just hasn't always been a good time to run a mine. When I ask myself why Cominco originally pulled out of the Con Mine and Yellowknife area, I believe that it was around this same time, and that there were simply more economic prospects elsewhere. Even gold can't always be mined at a profit.

example 3:

Northern Freegold, Stratagold, and Firestone Ventures have all had good results at properties where shallow historical drills have sometimes been completely unsuccessful, and sometimes had good results uncapitalized on. The properties have historical adits and have been sporadically mined over the last 100 years. One thing to note is that drilling and exploration techniques have been improved exponentially in the last 40 years. They used to just follow known veins and wild hunches, both when drilling and capitalizing on ore deposits.

And many of these properties have been continuously staked and undeveloped for 100 years, which doesn't mean that they are bad, either.

Who knows? You may be right about the properties. But you may also simply be looking at historical reports through the wrong lenses.

MR