Main Street Slocan BC

Just over eighty years separates the images used in this BIGDoer Then & Now, and while the mountains seen remain timeless, the foreground view shows much change. You’d never even know it was the same place if one were to only focus there. We’re along Main in little Slocan BC in what was once downtown, but now a quiet residential street.

This West Kootenays community flourished early on a mining centre but later flirted with ghost town status. Just look at the then photo. It functioned as an interment camp during World War Two, later prospered with coming of a huge sawmill and then retreated somewhat when it shutdown. There’s been good times and bad, the ups and downs, but Slocan endures as it has since being founded in the 1890s.

The population is again on the rise with many new locals made up of retirees or those who crave outdoor adventure. Slocan has lots of quaint charm and very much a backwater. While it was officially a city once (big aspirations), it’s now a village by size. Even so the old name is dusted off and used occasionally out of nostalgia. Slocan City lives on!

Then: The old photo dates from 1940 and comes thanks to the City of Vancouver Archives. The scene of old was captured by one James Crookall a prolific photographer whose collection there is huge and filled with all manner of interesting images. The street scenes he captured are pure T&N gold, but like us, shot a wide variety of subjects. Why limit yourself to one thing when the whole world is a literal buffet.

From Crookall’s bio: “He was an active member of the Vancouver Photographic Society and regularly exhibited his photographs in international salons.”

We’re looking at the business district of Slocan or rather what once was, in his photo. By the the time Crookall visited, most everything had been closed down with many buildings vacant. The mining boom of the early days was over and the party ended with Main Street looking run down and neglected.

The sign on the right reads “Fife Hotel, Rooms, Meals, Licensed” and old phone books suggest they were in business at the time of the photo. A lack of things going on in the scene suggests business was hard to come by. There’s but a few cars off in the distance and no people seen. This building and the others go back to Slocan City’s early days and similarly all were gone by the 1950s. Later homes would be built here, right where the actions was decades before and surely the ghosts of miner’s past must haunt the street today.

Stores and businesses that also once operated in downtown Slocan included the Arlington Hotel, a bathhouse, Rae’s Livery, a fire hall, Clough’s Store and the Lakeview Hotel. That’s just a sampling and most closed down by the 1930s.

A steam powered train can be seen crossing the road in back. The Canadian Pacific had a branch into town serving local industry (mining and forestry mainly) and in addition they loaded trains onto barges for a trip up the lake, to connect with an isolated branch serving Nakusp. What a strange operation it was.

The number can’t be read but it appears to be one of the CPR’s workaday Consolidation locomotives. The railcar in behind carries ore and reminds us that even though the boom was long over that mining activity in the area continued. Some even produced into the 1980s and were of the silver/lead/zinc variety, as was typical in Slocan Mining District, with some additionally producing minor gold and copper. Silver was unusually abundant and gave rise to the nickname “Silvery Slocan”

It appears the wheelhouse and stack of the tug used to move rail barges can be seen over top of the locomotive. That means it must be the SS Rosebery as it was the railway’s only tug on the lake at the time. Slocan Lake was just beyond the tracks and stretches north for about forty kilometres. It’s long, narrow and quite deep in places. There’s a couple train cars and even a locomotive that fell off a barge long ago, still down there in the depths somewhere.

Go here to see where the rail barges were offload in Rosebery: Rosebery BC Railway Barge Slip (from 1989) and Rosebery BC Then & Now.

Ottawa Hill is the prominent bump on the right and in back, it’s the shoulder of Hela Peak. Poking out behind, it’s the east end of Mount Denver almost twenty clicks away.

Now: Main Street is still Main Street, but now there’s homes here and lots of trees. The old timers would never recognize it! The barge loading area is now a beach, the tracks into town are long gone (since the early 1990s) and the mill spoken of earlier, closed (early 2010s) and now an empty lot. It’s all quiet now. All quiet and peaceful. A place off the beaten path.

The former railway line is now the Slocan Valley Rail Trail and follows the scenic valley south. Where as many rail-trails are rather mundane affairs, this one appears to offer lots of impressive scenery and keeps close to the river.

The mountains are little changed, as you can see, but for them times moves more slowly. We’re here and gone in the blink of a eye, but they’re forever and silent witness to history as it played out over the centuries. They’ve seen it all – the First Nation’s folks, the miners, the trains, the Japanese internees, the town of Slocan – and while history is not always pretty, it is fascinating. They could tell you that.

Not far away, there’s an old building painted up with a mural that once housed the town offices and fire hall. Also nearby, there’s a railway section house (typically a home for track workers) which oddly, is several blocks from the line. Or rather where it was. Perhaps it was moved at some point? CPR section houses followed common patterns and so easily identified. It’s empty and boarded up, so who knows what the future holds for it.

We shot a second Then & Now in town, down by the lake and this should be published soon. That’s assuming it worked out. The old image used shows a sternwheeler at the docks, but then we’ve said too much. Stay tuned.

So ends our time in Slocan City…for now. All that history? That scenery? So much outdoor fun? Mining? Yeah, we’re hoping to come back and get to know it better some day. If it kills us.

Dig deeper: (new window): Slocan British Columbia.

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”Off the Beaten Path”, what a great resource for visitors to AB, SK and eastern BC. Such detailed info and photographs to back it up make the site invaluable for people planning a trip to western Canadian provinces of BC, AB and SK and wanting to do something different but interesting also! Thanks Connie and Chris” Jan Normandale.

More small town T&Ns…
Tofield Alberta (x2) – Two for the price of one!
Sandon BC Then & Now – A famous ghost town with both shot by your author.
Rosedale Alberta then and now – The river flooded!

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Date of Adventure: July, 2021.
Location: Slocan (City), BC.
Article references and thanks: James Crookall 1887-1960, City of Vancouver Archives, Old BC Telephone Directories, BC Ministry of Mines, SlocanValleyHistory.ca and SlocanCity.com.

Main Street in Slocan BC 80 years apart (orig: James Crookall).

On the shores of Slocan Lake.

The mountains are timeless, but the rest has changed.

It once housed town offices and the fire hall.

Also nearby, this former railway section house.