More than the usual amount of mystery appears to be attached to this pioneer prospector. No one knows where he came from or where he ended up. Even his name seems to be some well-guarded secret, as the man has always been referred to strictly as H.E. Porter by himself, by the press, and by the mining recorder.
What is known about H.E. Porter is that he spent at least a dozen years scouring the rugged valleys and mountains of south and central Yukon in search of valuable mineral deposits, and often finding them. The fact
is, there are few prospectors in Yukon’s history who possess such a shining track record.
Shortly after staking the Pueblo Copper Mine, Porter headed north to the Carmacks country where in 1903 he discovered and staked one of the Yukon’s largest known coal deposits, “Division Coal”. Division today is a
valuable property with over 45 million metric tonnes of high quality reserves.
By 1906 Porter was firmly entrenched in the Wheaton Valley where he prospected for gold and silver veins. In August of that year quite a stir was caused when prospectors working for J.H. Conrad discovered the original
claim posts to the “lost Corwin gold mine” on ground belonging to Porter. The mine, supposedly discovered by Frank Corwin, was said to contain gold valued at $2000 a ton, several tons of which was also said to have
been packed out to the Juneau Alaska mill in 1893. For reasons of failing health, Corwin did not return and upon his deathbed a few years later he drew a map and told the tale to a Catholic nun at the hospital.
While the exact location of Corwin’s old workings was never found, Porter did discover a vein on the property that ran as high as 500 ounces of silver to the ton. For the next four years Porter worked the vein with the
help of a small crew of miners, eventually tunneling 1000 feet into the mountain before selling out to wealthy Chicago patent medicine “millionaire”, W.J. Fleming.
When not prospecting or mining, Porter sometimes hunted as a profession. In August of 1911 the Whitehorse Star reported that he bagged and had shipped to town 19 prime Dall sheep that he shot in the mountains
behind his Wheaton home – a home he shared with his wife, “Mrs. H.E. Porter”.
The last reference made to the man was in late 1912 when he was said to be “in the country and continuously prospecting”. Afterwards, Porter and his wife, who had previously garnered a fair amount of press coverage,
are completely dropped from the record. A much later report (1980) states that he went prospecting near the headwaters of the Stewart River and was never seen or heard from again.
