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Life in a Ghost Town
- Les Merson
- 1990
The Story of Sandon has been long, colourful and often stormy. But if the Sandon Historical Society has its way, the tale’s not over yet.
To some, R.T. Lowery’s observation that “silver, lead and hell … [were] raised in the Slocan” would seem a fitting epitaph for the ghost town of Sandon, British Columbia. Once the pride of the Silvery Slocan, Sandon has suffered more than its share of tragedy. Yet, with the tenacity of miners, the residents have raged against what cynics consider Sandon’s inevitable demise. The Sandon Historical Society has preserved much of the history and some of the buildings, and are embarking on an ambitious heritage conservation plan. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Sandon’s death are greatly exaggerated.
Not always tragic, Sandon’s history has certainly been dramatic. In 1891, two prospectors, Jack Seaton and Eli Carpenter, got lost in the thick underbrush near what would soon become the townsite. Fortune favored the two when, climbing up Payne Ridge, they discovered a seemingly rich ore deposit. Back in Ainsworth, Carpenter immediately proceeded to the assayer’s office while Seaton celebrated their presumed good luck in the saloon. When the assay report exceeded their highest expectations, Carpenter attempted to deceive his partner by declaring the ore low-grade, and made plans to stake the Payne claim with a new partner.
Fortunately for the inebriated Seaton, the hotel owner overheard the plan and informed him. Outraged at Carpenter’s skulduggery, Seaton and four prospectors banded together as “The Noble five.” Arriving ahead of Carpenter, they staked 21 claims. The Slocan silver rush had begun.
The rush attracted thousands of miners into the Slocan region and camps sprang up virtually everywhere. J.M. (Johnny) Harris surveyed and began construction on the townsite in 1892. Sandon reached its peak in 1898 with a population of 5,000, and according to the Kaslo Claim newspaper: “Money must be flush in Sandon. One of the Red Curtain sisters in that burg gave a dance last week and realized $250.50 from the sale of 2 1/2 gallons of whisky, 36 bottles of beer, 57 cigars and 8 packages of coffin nails.”
Rooms at Johnny Harris’s oppulent Reco Hotel let for $10 per night—triple a miner’s daily salary—and Harris’s two mines, the Reco and the Goodenough, earned $200,000 a week at the height of their production. It was a prosperous time for a town with an incredible array of business interests: 24 hotels, 23 saloons, two newspapers, two railroads (the Kaslo & Slocan (K&S) and the Canadian Pacific), theatres, breweries, two banks, a hospital, a soft-drink plant, a cigar factory, the second hydro-electric power plant in B.C., and a “red-curtain” district housing 115 prostitutes. Sandon was a city bursting at its seams; even Carpenter Creek, running through the centre of the city, was boarded up to provide another street.
In 1897, the Seattle Post reported that Sandon “undoubtedly ranks as the showpiece of the Kootenay Country.” However, newspaperman and self-proclaimed Colonel, R.T. Lowery, more accurately captured the uncivilized nature of the town lurking beneath a veneer of uneasy sophistication: “In the West, many men are in the habit of coming to town every little while and blowing all their money upon yellow liquor, the green cloth {gambling} and the woman in red. After a few days of hilarity they usually sober up broke, grow repentant, and then hit the hills for another stake, fully determined that they will never again sip the booze, shuffle the cards or trifle with the painted face of commercial love. As time goes along and their pile grows bigger, the memory of past misery Jades, and back they come to camp and history repeats itself. Strange lives to lead.”
But Sandon was more than a mining town. It was a town with a passion for sports. At the turn of the century, Sandon had a bowling alley, billiard hall, curling and skating rinks, as well as a downhill ski slope. Several NHLers got their start with the local hockey club and, in 1913, Sandon won the B.C. hockey championships. The town was also home to the 1910 “World Champion” rock driller, Angus McGillivary.
Yet, if the miners played hard, they worked even harder. Working ten-hour days every day of the week, they performed physically demanding tasks in deplorable conditions for low wages. In his book, Sandon: The Mining Centre of the Silvery Slocan, Dave May says that “few miners escaped without becoming ‘dusted’ (acquiring Silicosis or Miner’s Consumption in their lungs), catching acute rheumatism in their bones or becoming in some way dismembered or disabled.” And life in a bunkhouse provided a special hell of its own. With few distractions, the men were virtually sentenced to a monotonous existence of working, eating and sleeping. In 1905, Jack MacDonald griped: “They had a bunkhouse here about the size of a piano box. Stowed in it were about 25 men. … Old R.J. McPhee is a hard Shell. Hell, but he is mean. We have a cracker-jack of a cook and he puts up fine grub. When you say they feed you well you say it all. We are liable to be all frozen up some night. We have nothing but green Jackpine for wood and an old stove that the Company picked up on some ash pile. Just now as I write the air is blue with fellows swearing at the stove and fire.”
In response to the poor working and living conditions, the first Western Federation of Miners union local was established in Rossland in 1895. Local 96 in Sandon was instituted shortly thereafter. Dave May states that “unionization was viewed by mine owners as an unacceptable threat to their expected profits and their response was often with guns, dynamite or violence.” In 1899, the Union petitioned the mining companies to decrease the underground workers’ day to eight hours. When public sentiment opposed the mining companies’ attempt to have the eight-hour legislation repealed, the companies responded by offering substantially less pay. When a nine-month strike ensued, many of the miners left to find work elsewhere and the town’s population dropped by 40 percent. And although the miners finally settled for $3.25 for an eight-hour day, Sandon never regained its former prominence.
Convinced the treacherous spirit of Eli Carpenter had forever tainted Sandon, long-time resident, Leah Martin MacKay contended that “Good cannot come of evil. As long as water flows in Carpenter Creek, it will carry bad luck.” And that bad luck was no more apparent than on May 4, 1900, when a fire destroyed most of the business section. Only by dynamiting the railroad station was a break in the fire created and the residential area saved. Ironically, the fire began in the Spencer Opera House after a performance of the play, The Bitter Atonement.
Nonetheless, the miners were gambling in the street the morning after the fire. As reported in the Sandon Paystreak, they vowed to build again—“Like the mythological Phoenix, Sandon will rise from the ashes, larger and better than before.” While Sandon did re-emerge within 60 days, it was a charred shadow of its former self.
In 1906, another fire, which destroyed a portion of the residential section and the Miners’ Union Hospital, combined with slumping metal prices to accelerate Sandon’s decline. Still, the bruised town fought on and the miners continued their frantic search to hit the motherlode.
The disincorporation of the city due to a declining tax base, and the One Big Union strike of 1920, rendered Sandon terminally ill. The strikers’ demands for a dollar a day wage increase, the provision and cleaning of blankets by the mining companies, and a closed union shop, were all rejected. Scab labor and starvation forced many to break union solidarity and return to work. A lessening demand on the world metals market forced the remainder of the strikers to settle for a wage reduction.
By 1941, only 20 people remained in Sandon. The internment of 933 Japanese-Canadians in Sandon during the Second World War served as only a short reprise in the ghostly town’s decay. Sandon was one of several ghost towns renovated as relocation centres to house these Japanese-Canadians who had been branded “enemy aliens” and forcibly moved from the West Coast. For a time, life in Sandon re-emerged, as always, tempered by hardship. Children once again attended school in the city hall and peered at Carpenter Creek through the cracks in the boardwalk.
“The magnificence of the outdoor setting and the echoes of a romantic past were but candy wrapping, hiding a grim reality,” commented Ken Adachi in his book, The enemy that never was. Yet even though referred to as “Camp Hellhole,’ the men preferred life in Sandon to the arduous work on the road gangs, separated from their families. And as one woman wrote, “The place is so nice that we do not feel upset…” Strictly supervised but not guarded, the Japanese-Canadian “prisoners” maintained the town until the summer of 1944, when the camp was closed and they were evacuated to the Toronto area. Once again Sandon was a dying shell of memories.
Yet, in spite of innumerable adversities, Johnny Harris, the Grandfather of Sandon, remained optimistic, maintaining both his Reco Hotel and the hydro-electric plant. In 1950, he still envisioned a renaissance for the beleaguered town, in spite of 50 years of deterioration and destruction. Harris bragged that “when big money starts rolling again, Sandon will come to life with a bang.” He died three years later.
In June 1955, Carpenter Creek went on a violent rampage, flooding the entire town, leaving most of it virtually unrecognizable. In Moira Farrow’s book, Nobody Here But Us, the late Eugene Peterson recalled: “The creek took out most of the town in just a few hours. The noise was terrific. Huge trees and boulders five feet across came crashing down the creek and we worked for about forty-eight hours without sleep to keep the water back. By the light of the storm, I watched the houses and hotels being undermined and toppling into the creek—one building maybe a hundred feet long fell into the creek in minutes.”
By the next day everything was covered with mud and most of the buildings were damaged beyond repair or destroyed. Much of what remained was sold for salvage, vandalized, or left to be ravaged by the elements.
During the next 35 years, Sandon and its residents stubbornly clung to life like a timberline pine. For a brief period, Peterson was its only resident. An optimist—“l could have been a millionaire by now… but the outcroppings petered out”—he was firmly convinced Sandon should be designated a historic site.
Recently, Sandon has been reprieved and it appears that Eugene Peterson’s dream shall become a reality. Seven residents now live in Sandon year-round, and the efforts of the Sandon Historical Society are beginning to pay dividends. For the first time in 90 years, the condition of Sandon’s buildings has improved over the previous year, primarily the result of volunteer efforts to shovel close to 100 tons of snow off thei town roofs annually. Last summer, 40-50,000 tourists explored the fifty-two buildings—most predating the turn-of-the-century—that remain intact, including the City Hall, the museum and Tin Cup Cafe, the Trimenco Mill Complex which today employs more than 50 people, Tattrie & Greer’s General store, three brothels, several old homes, and the Silversmith Powerhouse, which for 85 years has provided continuous power to the town. The cemetery, hidden on a forested slope, contains 15 wooden headboards dating back to 1898 and a dozen or so concrete gravestones in the Japanese section. The ruins of many more structures, including the boardwalk, the Miners’ Union Hospital, and the Ruth Mine Concentrator, evoke strong memories from a colorful past.
The Heritage Conservation Plan, in cooperation with the B.C. Heritage Trust and the Sandon Historical Society, has identified ways in which public and private financing can effectively preserve and promote Sandon while ensuring that it retains its historical integrity. Zoning and development by-laws will be instituted to regulate the appearance of building exteriors and the townsite. As a pilot project, the City Hall is presently being structurally restored to its original 1900 appearance. Plans for its interior include a private residence and a small curio shop selling local arts and crafts which will be operational this summer. Trail-riding will also be offered and the first annual Sandon Days celebration will take place on July 14, 1990, with barbershop singers, Can-can dancers, hay rides, a barbecue and an evening dance.
And the dreams don’t die there. Impending legislation should enable the Regional District to designate Sandon a protected historic site. MLA Howard Dirks and B.C. Hydro have encouraged plans to preserve the Silversmith Powerhouse in operating condition as a heritage project as well as utilizing the power on a larger scale. Model railroaders have expressed an interest in recreating the K&S Railroad Station which would accommodate a museum and a model of the K&S from Kaslo to Cody. There is also talk of a small lodge, an artisans’ community, and even a Casino. Big talk. But then there’s life left in this ghost town.
