Wilhelm 'Dutch Bill' Dietz

Wilhelm Dietz, known to fellow miners as 'Dutch Bill', was a Prussian-born sailor who joined the California Gold Rush with little success before following the miners' frontier north to British Columbia. By 1859 he was working the bars of the Fraser River near Lillooet, and like thousands of others he pushed inland as the rush moved into the Cariboo.

In February 1861 Dietz and several companions crossed from the headwaters of Antler Creek over the Bald Mountain plateau and descended to a north-flowing stream, where Dietz panned gravel yielding about $1.25 to the pan. Word of the strike spread quickly, and within months more than a thousand miners had crowded into the narrow valley of the creek, which was named Williams Creek after him. It proved to be the richest stream of the Cariboo Gold Rush, producing the great claims around Richfield and Barkerville.

Dietz himself profited little from his discovery: his own claim turned out to be among the poorest on the creek. He prospected for a few more years, but failing health forced him out of the Cariboo, and he died in poverty in Victoria in 1877. His birth date and early life are poorly recorded; his enduring legacy is the name of the creek that made others rich.