Fred Ludditt is known to have done more than any other single person to save Barkerville for posterity—otherwise the fast-decaying town would have been stripped bare by souvenir hunters, and the nearby settlements of Van Winkle and Antler Creek, Marysville and Richfield would have been forgotten. Barkerville Days is the priceless product of interviews which can never be done again. Ludditt himself mined for gold in the Barkerville area in the 1930s—and there he met and spoke with old miners who worked the Cariboo gold fields in the previous century, as well as their descendants. This book, first published in 1969, is the nearest thing we have to a definitive history of one of the world’s most colourful gold rushes.

This reprint edition contains the original text and photos along with an Introduction by Fred Ludditt’s daughter, Karin Ludditt, who as a young child lived in Barkerville until her family was relocated when the town became a Provincial Heritage Site in 1958.