THE KÜTNE READER

Some amazing and incredibly rare Kootenay railway passes have sold on eBay in recent weeks for eye-popping prices.

Four bridges have crossed the Canadian side of the Pend d’Oreille River, two of which still stand. Others were proposed.

A 113-year-old school bell is expected to be returned soon to a prominent place in Salmo. But what happened to its plaque?

In June 2018, the Salmo Valley Historical Society got a peek inside the Salmo Hotel, including the second floor and basement.

Was the Salmo Hotel built in 1896? 1912? 1932? 1981? Find out here and a whole lot more.

When was the Salmo bridge built? When was Rivervale named? Why doesn’t Nelson have a Robert Hampton Gray school? At last we have answers.

One day in Sheep Creek, a giant boulder came crashing down the mountainside, flattening the front end of a car and hitting a house.

Martha Collins was a pioneer prospector and hotel keeper whose name was once known in every mining camp in the west.

Several envelopes that sold at auction have intriguing connections to West Kootenay Japanese-Canadian, Chinese Canadian, and mining history.

In 1910, a remarkable curved bridge was built at Salmo across a slough formed by the Salmo River.

Salmo first came to prominence as the result of a bar room murder in 1893. The town — then little more than a cluster of shacks — was known as Salmon City, and was headquarters for contractor Pete Larson, who was building the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway. The spot was described as “near the forks of the Salmon river and about two miles from where the railway crosses the north fork.” It was also a rendezvous for placer miners on the Salmon (now Salmo) River and Hall Creek.

One of West Kootenay’s least known attractions is an amazing map of the Kootenays and Okanagan in the pub of the Salmo Hotel , created in March 1955 by Vancouver sign painter Jack Lines. We know the date and the artist because he signed it. I haven’t measured the map, but it takes up a good portion of the wall behind the pool table. (Unfortunately, the location of the table and way the room is lit make it very difficult to get good pictures.) It has a red border, with the wor

I recently came across a charming anecdote about hockey legend Lester Patrick in West Kootenay that I had never seen before — and in fact found several slightly different versions of it. The first appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly of June 27, 1936 as follows: RECALLS PATRICK UNKNOWN MAESTRO Lester preceded fame to coast — Wanted by Slocans Nelson — Reputations did not travel very fast into this West Kootenay country 30 years ago. So Carl Lindow, now postmaster at Salmo, 15

Is being a hospital’s one millionth patient an honour? It was in January 1938, when Florence Lumsden of Salmo registered at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. as patient No. 1,000,000. The numbering system was inaugurated in 1907 by Dr. Henry S. Plummer. (Wikipedia photo) It’s not clear what Lumsden was being treated for, but according to a story in the Nakusp Silver Standard on March 3 of that year, she was “thrilled” and “very proud that the honour is putting her home tow

At a presentation on the history of Slocan Valley sawmills in November 2016, a forester suggested the poles for the original light stands at Yankee stadium came out of the Lardeau. I had never heard this before, but discovered something else in Salmo Stories , p. 197. It’s a quote from a 2010 interview with Les Jensen, who was born in 1942: When I was a kid, we took poles and fence posts down on sleds equipped with steel runners … We took out poles that were sent to Yankee St

One of the most venerable and unique made-in-BC business names ceased to exist on March 22, 2018 after 103 years. The last Overwaitea...

When he wasn’t out sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street in London. According to Wikipedia , at the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his stories in the 19th century, that fictional address did not exist. But when the real Baker Street was extended, the Abbey National Building Society moved into 219-229 Baker, and “employed a full-time secretary to answer mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes.” In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, at 237-241 Baker, installed a

In 1893, a prospector named Baxter wrote two letters to the Northwest Mining Review of Spokane from the Salmo River (then called the Salmon). Both were printed in the May 22 edition and are available through Google Books , but to my knowledge they have never been reprinted. It’s unclear how the letters were mailed, but it was either via Northport, whose post office opened Nov. 1, 1892, or Waneta, where the office opened on May 1, 1893. Baxter comments in the second letter on

In 1989, Donna Bishop and Joan Field produced a report for the Salmo Arts and Museum Society entitled Dewdney Trail 1865. They wrote the following of the confluence of the Salmo and Pend d’Oreille rivers under the heading “Ghost Flats.” There are many stories as to who was buried here. Some say the graves have been there since the turn of the century. What we do know is that they were travellers or settlers on the Dewdney Trail. This gravesite was apparently moved in 1949 wh