This Phoenix Didn’t Rise From the Ashes

This was no Wild West town of false-front buildings lining a single street with a scattering of shacks. The Boundary Country’s Phoenix was nothing less than a city in every sense of the word: modern, substantial buildings, services, fine homes, rail connection to the outside world—all the latest amenities of the first two decades of the 20th century.

Then—it was gone, just a man-made lake on top of a mountain in the wilderness.

In a single generation the Phoenix mines had yielded an amazing $100 million ($2.5 billion today) in copper, gold and silver ores. But Phoenix was a company town, dependent upon a one-horse economy that spelled riches for its owners and jobs for its workers—both its genesis and nemesis, and all within just a few years.

British Columbia has seen 100s of ‘ghost towns’ over the past century-plus but there never was another like Phoenix.

The incredible story of the ill-starred “highest incorporated city in Canada” in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Phoenix, B.C. —BC Archives