Mining Camp Tales of the Silvery Slocan

In 1891, the quiet forests of B.C.’s Slocan Valley — a rugged strip of wilderness dominated by long, narrow Slocan Lake — were briefly disrupted by the arrival of thousands of silver-mad prospectors and get-rich-quick entrepreneurs. The mania lasted less than a decade and is commemorated today by a few ghost towns and the tiny settlements of New Denver, Silverton and Slocan Village.

Author Peter Smith’s record of one of Canada’s few silver rushes provides a densely packed history of the boom towns that sprung up in the region — assiduously trying to include all the major and minor characters, hotels, churches and brothels that his herculean research uncovered. However, readers expecting colourful Robert Service- or Jack London-style tales will be disappointed, for the lives that Smith chronicles are most often told in paragraphs rather than pages. It’s safe to assume that few of the newcomers stayed long enough to leave detailed evidence of their lives; the ones who stayed permanently tended to be mortal casualties of mishap or murder.

Nevertheless, this is a thorough catalogue of the dozen camps that grew into temporary towns, many with temporary populations of several thousand. When news of the first Slocan silver assays initially reached the city of Nelson, B.C., 100 kilometres away, a reporter noted that nearly its entire population of 5,000 rushed into the area.

Strangers to the Slocan Valley, located on the eastern edge of rugged Valhalla Provincial Park, are advised to have a good map close at hand since the book’s single small hand-drawn effort offers no overall geographical perspective.