Luneta Thelen

Luneta Thelen held the cafe at Gorda, and then four gold claims above Willow Creek.

The village John Evans built in 1935 — a cafe, a service station and eight cottages terraced into the hillside above the sea — passed through several hands before it came to her. She ran it, sold the business to Lavina Frame in 1959, and stayed on living in the village.

By June 1960 Mabel Plaskett recorded her as the owner of the Logwood Claim, below the Goodrich Mine, which Joe Logwood had located back in the 1890s; and of the Blackbird, the Buzzard and the Crow, bought from Fred Vaugh, below the Queen Hattie on the north side of Willow Creek. “All of these claims show good prospects,” Mabel wrote, “and the owners are conscientious about their assessment work.” That was no small remark. Assessment work was the law — real labour on the ground every year, or the claim lapsed — and she was keeping four of them alive.

A year later Mabel set her among the people who made that coast: “Luneta Thelen and Betty Rivers both with masters degrees live here because of a deep and unalterable love of the coast land.”

Bill Alderson knew her as a child and helped clear brush around her mine cabins — which is to say he helped hold her claims.

She was alive in June 1961. Nothing after that has been found.