Travelling in British Colombia

The Province of British Columbia is big - big enough for Washington, Oregon, and California to fit easily within its borders, even without including Vancouver Island, which by itself is as big as New Zealand. BC is blanketed in huge forests, and is rich in natural resources - oil, gas, metals and minerals. As a result, there are many active mining towns, but there are also plenty of old mining towns to explore, some abandoned, some restored as tourist attractions, and some surviving with economies now based on something other than mining.

Four of those mining towns are located within a few hours drive of Kelowna, our usual summer location, and we have passed through them many times, never stopping to explore any of them prior to last July. That was when we finally decided to take a 12 day, 900km, circle route to visit Cherryville, Nakusp, Greenwood, and Hedley. It turned out to be a trip well worth taking, one requiring only a small detour for anyone renting a motorhome in Vancouver to travel to Banff and Jasper. Each of the towns has pleasant RV parks with full hook-ups, and there is a surprising amount to see and do in each location.

Cherryville

Goldpanner RV Park (www.goldpannercampground.com) in Cherryville was our first stop after leaving Kelowna on 9 July. It is located on the site of an old gold mining operation known for more than 100 years as the Upper Cherry Creek Placer Camp. At its peak, from 1863 to 1885, more than 200 ounces of gold a day is estimated to have been extracted in this area, and although there are no longer any commercial quantities being worked, panning for gold in Cherry Creek is still a serious hobby for some campers. In fact, Goldpanner had just hosted the Annual BC Goldpanning Championships about a week before our arrival.

There is a very pretty walk through the forest from the campground down to Monashee Creek where many artefacts of mining days long gone still remain – an old stagecoach station, various pieces of mining equipment, sluices, and a generator. There are also enormous piles of river stones left behind by Chinese immigrants who carefully reworked all the original workings, hauling out the boulders and stacking them into an embankment about 100m in length and 10m high.

In Monashee Creek there is plenty of sand waiting to be panned by hobbyists, and a tantalising amount of very fine gold is visible to the naked eye when that sand is stirred into the crystal clear water. In the campground itself though, campers can pay $2 to pan in comfort for tiny flecks of gold in the sluice set up outside the office. Also next to the office is an old restored miner’s cabin, and a field full of ancient tractors, cars, and mining equipment. Overall, this is an interesting and well-maintained campground considering that it is located high in a remote part of the Monashee Mountain Range.

Nakusp, Kaslo and Sandon

The route from Cherryville to Nakusp, the second stop on this circle tour, crosses over Monashee Pass at 1200m and then descends to Farquier at Lower Arrow Lake. At this point, a cable ferry carries vehicles across to Needles where Highway 6 heads northward along the side of the Lake to Nakusp. It is a very pretty drive through high mountain scenery, and the ferry ride adds a unique component, which always brings travellers out of their cars and RVs to take pictures of the crossing.

Nakusp (www.nakusp.com) was a major lake country port and trading centre during the gold rush days of the late 1800s but is now an important tourist destination. Attractions include the hot springs just out of town and a host of lake and mountain recreation oriented events throughout the summer, most famous of which is the Annual Classic Rock Music Festival. Nakusp is also a convenient base for day visits to the nearby mining towns of Kaslo and Sandon, which is why we chose to stop there for a few days at Three Island RV Resort. As an added bonus, Ian and Ann Dufty, an RVing couple from Morrinsville, arrived the next day in their fifth wheel to join us for the balance of the trip.

The morning after the arrival of the Duftys we took the 45-minute drive eastwards, over yet another set of mountains, to Kaslo on the shores of Kootenay Lake.

We all wanted to see the SS Moyie, the world’s oldest intact passenger sternwheeler, which is now preserved as a historical site by the Government of Canada (www.klhs.bc.ca). When the Moyie was retired in 1957, it was Canada’s last operating sternwheeler and had been steaming on Kootenay Lake for 59 years. It had played an important role in the provisioning of mining settlements up and down the lake, transferring cargo from the Canadian Pacific Railway to remote parts of the West Kootenays.

One of the mining towns which relied on supply lines through Kaslo and Nakusp was nearby Sandon, where a silver mining boom took place in the 1890s (www.sandonbc.com). Once the boom was over, the buildings, which included theatres, 29 hotels and 28 saloons, were abandoned and Sandon became a ghost town. Some of those buildings have now been restored, including City Hall, a fully operational power station, and Molly Brown’s Brothel, but it is also interesting to take a walking tour of the buildings, which still lie in ruins, trying to imagine how busy and vibrant this place must have been 140 years ago.

Greenwood

In contrast to Sandon, Greenwood, some 260km to the south, is still very much alive as a town, surviving because of its position on a main highway even though the copper smelter closed in 1918 (www.greenwoodcity.com). In its heyday, the Greenwood smelter was one of the biggest in the world, operating 24 hours a day and producing a massive slag heap, which is still present today for more than half a kilometre alongside the highway. Greenwood was the third stop on our circle tour, where the RV park of choice, in fact the only RV park in town, consisted of some grassy full hook-up sites behind the Greenwood Motel.

There are no organised tours of the slagheap and smelter in Greenwood but it is fascinating to explore the area by foot. It is possible to walk right inside the 36m high smokestack and 3.5m diameter flue, which runs up the hillside, and the slagheap itself is like a lunar landscape. In some places the slag is composed of volcanic glass-like sand, which sparkles like tiny gemstones, and formations known locally as the Devil’s Bells are scattered everywhere. They are reminiscent of giant cherry liqueur chocolates, about 2.5m high, formed when slag began solidifying in the cauldrons prior to being dumped. As the bell-shaped cauldron contents were tipped onto the slag pile they often fractured, allowing the molten centres to escape. Today these Devil’s Bells offer a unique not-to-be- missed photo opportunity and a reminder of a very different time in BC’s history.

Hedley

Approximately 130km to the west of Greenwood lies Hedley and the remains of the Mascot Gold Mine which in 1936, was a significant contributor to the 1.5 million ounces of gold and 4 million pounds of copper extracted from mines in the area (www.mascotmine.com).

An excellent tour of the Mascot Mine is available, well worth the somewhat disconcerting one-hour bus ride along a series of 48 switchbacks with steep drop-offs on a one-way road to the top of the mountain. Once there, visitors can explore a number of beautifully restored mine buildings and there is also an excursion underground, complete with some well presented special effects. These include bright flashes and the sounds of blasting down darkened side tunnels, followed by the rush of air and smoke. This is not a tour for people who have difficulty with stairs though – there are a total of 700 steps down to the mine and the only way out is back up them!

The stop at Hedley was a very satisfying end to our tour of the four mining towns, and a reminder that even the smallest of settlements along the highway can have interesting past lives to share with travellers who take the time to stop. Next month though, a boomtown of a completely different type will be the focus as Sue and I visit Las Vegas at the start of our trek south for the northern winter.

This article by Ted White, who emigrated to Canada from New Zealand in 1979, and is now a full time RVer in North America, describes a visit to four small towns in British Columbia, which were bustling centres of mining activity in the early 1900s.

Ted welcomes questions from readers about RV travel in North America. He can be reached by email at TedandSueWhite@aol.com

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