I've posted on this before, and if you're unfamiliar read this post: http://rodboyle.com/index.php/53-treasure/lost/552-the-lost-lemon-mine
Now having read a fair bit on it I've become convinced that it's just another "Lost Gold Mine" story, they're abundant, every state/province/town has one.
The "evidence", or "testimony" might be a better phrase, is too slender, the existence of Blackjack and Lemon questionable, yet still every few years in Calgary there crops up another "Explanation" for it, whether it be the Crowsnest Volcanics or simple low level gold accumulation in the gravels. Some are mere explanations, others are solicitations for investors. There are seldom any follow ups in the press.
A couple of possibilities, however, present themselves to the optimist. First of all, glaciation. Almost all of Alberta was covered in glaciation that pushed and scraped rocks from the adjacent mountains down the prairies. Walk, in the badlands or across a farmers field, and with luck you will find granite, metamorphic schist, garnets, every sort of rock imaginable, none local, all here as a result of glaciation. Think then of the Okotoks Erratic, a massive boulder deposited outside Okotoks, and then of the other erratics deposited throughout Alberta. They abound, the bulk of them buried under glacial silt, topsoil, etc.
It's not improbably, therefore, to consider that the same action that deposited the erratics might have shaved a gold bearing quartz ledge and buried it somewhere in the province. Indeed it would be improbable if, in the history of our province, that hadn't happened. And, slightly buried or slightly exposed, sheds it's gold in a seasonally dry coulee, to be eventually found by the imaginary Blackjack and Lemon.
Or consider, in the badlands and deeper rivers of the province, over 75 million, 100 million years of history is exposed. It seems unlikely, impossible even, that none of those rivers bore gold, find the intersection of the past and the present, worn cobbles deep in a river valley or on a cliff face, pan these and check, perhaps this is where it can be found...
In short, the myth is the myth, a legend, but it speaks to a deeper truth, that gold can be found in surprising place(r)s...