August14_2010

Botanical Glossary - Home - References Cited

In the early 1890s, the owners of the future townsite, David Kane and G. O. Buchanan, sold off lots to incoming miners drawn by the area's rich silver deposits. Kaslo quickly became a thriving community, and was incorporated as a city on August 14, 1893. It was an important silver ore mining and transshipment boomtown, boasting a population of 3,000.

Photos - Overlooking Kootenay Lake in Kaslo is the old Canadian Pacific Railway Station serving as a stopping point for folks wanting to catch the Paddlewheeler north along Kootenay Lake or south and west along the Canadian Pacific Railroad. This building is typical of the railroad style of the 1910s and 1920s. A wooden clad Caboose (CP 437092) decorates the rail tracks next to the train station - The little wood shanty that used to trail faithfully after every string of freight cars-like many other railroad scenes-has undergone many changes in the past hundred years.
The box-like shelters train crews used to build to shield their cooking fires on spare platform cars in the mid 1800s, the converted box cars with sliding doors used around the turn of the century, the cupola-topped wooden cabooses popular after World War I, all have given way to ever more modern, efficient and better-equipped cabooses.

The Moyie was built in prefabricated sections in Toronto, Ontario and was originally intended for service on the Stikine River as part of an "all Canadian" water and rail route to the goldfields during the Klondike Gold Rush. However, when the project failed for the lack of a railway, the Moyie and her sister ship, the Minto were put into service on Arrow Lakes and Kootenay Lake in the Kootenays of southern British Columbia.

Photos - Frame left: The two storey Canadian Pacific Train Station in the 300 Block of Front Street, overlooking Kootenay Lake.

Frames right and center: The bow and midship of SS Moyie Sternwheeler at the Lakeshore next to the Canadian Pacific Railway Station in Kaslo. The Moyie is a paddle steamer sternwheeler that worked on Kootenay Lake in British Columbia, Canada from 1898 until 1957.
After her nearly sixty years of service, she was sold to the town of Kaslo and restored. Today she is a National Historic Site and the world's oldest intact passenger sternwheeler.

She was launched and christened at Nelson on October 22, 1898 and embarked on her maiden voyage on December 7, connecting with a new line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which ran from Lethbridge, Alberta and through the Crows Nest Pass to Nelson. The Moyie soon became a favorite with passengers, featuring a large and elegantly appointed dining saloon, a luxurious smoking lounge, private ladies' saloon and comfortable overnight cabins, all richly decorated in gold leaf.
As the major vessel on Kootenay Lake, she was dubbed the "Crow Boat" and was the queen of the lake during the boom years of the early 1900s when the population of the Kootenay's was expanding and there was increased demand for passenger and freight services. During this period, the Moyie was joined by many other large and luxurious sternwheelers, among them the CPR's Kuskanook, which arrived in 1906 and the Bonnington, launched in 1911. These large and richly appointed vessels were part of the CPR's plan to develop the area into a major tourism center and the railway also built a grand resort hotel in the town of Balfour. However, the onset of World War I put an end to many of the CPR's grand dreams for the West Kootenays and one by one, the other sternwheelers were taken off of the route and the hotel at Balfour was closed.

Photos - Stern view of the covered paddle (frame left) and bow views of the SS Moyie Sternwheeler with Kootenay Lake in background.

Click here for more photos of Historic Sandon for this day.