A film by
Jonathan Oldroyd

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Narrated by Bill Booth

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Sandon of the Silvery Slocan   

Capital of the Silvery Slocan, located in the Selkirk Mountains of the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, was founded in 1892 when a weathered French Canadian Indian circus tightrope walker named Eli Carpenter discovered silver at Payne Mountain.  Pretty near overnight, 140 mining claims were registered and before too long there were 300 mines in search of the richest veins of silver-lead-zinc in Canada - famous names like Bluebird, American Boy, Last Chance and Slocan Star, some pulling out $200,000 of ore in a day. In the 1890’s, the City of Sandon grew to between 3500 and 5000 people, jammed into a gulch and built over a mountain creek.  It became known as the Monte Carlo of North America with 29 hotels and saloons, an opera house, hospital, curling rink, bowling alley and two railways.  The famous K&S, an extension of the Great Northern, was a narrow gauge rail climbing the steepest grades in North America and carrying 28,000 passengers in and out of Sandon in its first year. Its hydro-electric plant is the oldest in B.C. and longest running in Canada, still serving the “ghost-town” residents. Sandon was home of Tiny Thompson of the Chicago Black Hawks and the regular B.C. hockey champion; birthplace of the Western Canadian Federation of Miners and site of a Japanese internment camp during WWII. Despite two devastating fires, declining silver prices, floods, slides, and scavengers, Sandon still attracts over 60,000 tourists a year to see such structures as the 1900 City Hall, the Sandon Museum, CPR steam locomotive, and best of all, the Silversmith Power & Light Company.  Its many switchbacks, old shafts, rail grades and surrounding ridgelines of 7000 ft mountains, including Idaho Peak, (the highest vehicle accessible mountain in North America) make it a recreational and cultural destination of historic significance.