THE KÜTNE READER

What happened to the coffeehouse and resort that existed at Coffee Creek in the late 1940s and early 1950s?

A rare photo shows us one of the West Kootenay’s oldest buildings when it was brand new.

A ghost story from 1911 that has never been reprinted: how a phantom helped a prospector discover a valuable nugget.

What is the origin of a concrete ruin at Ainsworth Hot Springs across from the Fletcher store?

A terrific, rare postcard of Ainsworth sold last month on eBay. Here’s a closer look at some of the buildings depicted.

A look at the development of Ainsworth Hot Springs resort from the 1930s to the '60s as seen through ephemera.

Prospector Henry Cody (1861?-1921) is said to have stumbled across the cave system near Ainsworth that bears his name in the late 1880s. The Nelson Daily News of Oct. 3, 1902 said the cave was “known to the people of Ainsworth as Cody’s cave from the fact that it was discovered by Mr. Henry Cody, now a resident of Kaslo. This cave was discovered many years ago.” (Cody visited the caves that summer with Theodore Adams and Jack McKinnon.) This is the second-oldest known photo

Fifty-five years ago today, the Ainsworth post office ceased to exist. The following day, it was reborn as Ainsworth Hot Springs. The envelopes pictured below, which sold on eBay recently, were postmarked Jan. 10 and 11, 1964 as the change took effect. The explanation for the change is found in a letter to the postal inspector of Oct. 3, 1963 from A.E. Catterall, district director of postal service (held in the place names duotang of the Martin and Jane Lynch fonds at the Koo

The Cody Caves (naturally occurring) and hot springs caves (mostly or entirely human-created) aren’t the only caves in and around Ainsworth. Several months ago, Angela Ortega dropped off a newspaper clipping (seen below) that she correctly thought I would find interesting. It’s from the Calgary Herald of June 5, 1912 and reports the discovery of prehistoric fossilized bones in a cave at the Silver Hoard mine. The Vancouver Sun ran the same story that day with the headline “

Although I’m rarely on the cutting edge of technology, I was the first person I knew to own a digital camera, purchased directly from Kodak in February 2000. It was a DC280 Zoom (similar to the one seen below), and produced images of two megapixels, of which I could squeeze about 35 onto the 8 MB card that came with it. The batteries required constant recharging, and since my computer lacked a USB port, it took half an hour or more to download a batch of pictures via serial p

In 2008, I wrote a story for Route 3 magazine about the Thomas (or Tomas) Higstrim grave at Ainsworth Hot Springs, which dates to 1891 and is West Kootenay’s oldest marked grave in situ . There are certainly many older, unmarked First Nations graves. There are also older sets of remains that were re-interred in Nelson Memorial Park and the Sinixt burial ground at Vallican. But Higstrim’s posthumous distinction is that he’s been in the same marked grave longer than anyone els

Several places in West Kootenay were named after people who never actually visited their eponymous locales. Lt.-Gov. Hugh Nelson was never in Nelson, Lord Balfour was never in Balfour, and Hudson’s Bay Company governor John Shepherd never saw Fort Shepherd. But what about Ainsworth? The Kootenay Lake community was named for either or both John Commigers and George Jennings Ainsworth , father-and-son capitalists from Portland. In High Grade and Hot Springs: A History of the Ai