Anyox: The Town That Got Lost

Karma. It’s a curse, I tell you.

Hard as it is for me to believe, it’s been almost 50 years since I wrote Ghost Town Trails of Vancouver Island and it’s still in print after several changes of format and cover, and a slight tweak of the title and byine.

I also wrote two other B.C. ghost town books, on The Lower Mainland and Okanagan-Similkameen. There were to be several more: on the Cariboo, the East and West Kootenays, the Boundary Country and northern B.C. But life took a turn and, with the exception of some magazine articles, newspaper and online columns, and Riches to Ruin, my history of the copper mining boom on Mt. Sicker, I’ve drifted from a subject that has intrigued me since childhood.

But life, it seems, has taken another turn and here I am, looking into my vast archives on B.C. ghost towns again, thanks in part to Blake MacKenzie’s virulently popular Facebook website, Gold Trails & Ghost Towns.

All of which reminded me of the late Ozzie Hutchings, the unofficial historian of the northern coastal community of Anyox. Back in the 1960s, Ozzie set out to record the history of this copper smelting town on Alice Arm, just below the Alaskan border, which was abandoned by its owners in the 1930s.

The amazing thing is, because the Granby Co. built everything to last of concrete, much of the town is still there in the wilderness. You can even book a tour of the old town site which, for the most part, stands like a ghost from the past.

Ozzie Hutchings is long gone now but he left me his files and photos. Next week in the Chronicles, he and I will tell you the story of Anyox, The Town That Got Lost.

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PHOTO: Anyox, B.C. —Courtesy Ozzie Hutchings