THE KÜTNE READER

Who won a soccer match between Sandon and New Denver immortalized on a postcard?

I had the privilege of examining the guest book of Sandon’s Reco Hotel for the period of April 1, 1905 to March 27, 1908.

At least nine people were born, 14 people died, and five marriage ceremonies were performed between 1942 and 1944 when Sandon was an internment camp.

The only person killed in the fire that destroyed most of Sandon in 1900 has long been forgotten, despite a marked grave that notes the circumstances of his death.

What happened to the bars from the Reco, Sandon, and Hume hotels?

The cachet associated with the ghost town of Sandon probably drove up the auction price of a trade token from the Hotel Reco.

A couple of postcards sold on eBay, both mailed in 1908 to a Miss Kitty Hope of Sandon. Who was she?

Sandon produced a Hall of Fame NHL goaltender. But Tiny Thompson’s relationship with his birthplace has not been explored — until now.

The story behind a charming painting created more than 75 years ago. At least two people who were there that day are still around.

Names scratched on bricks outside the Sandon museum are some of the few reminders of the town's days as a Japanese-Canadian internment camp.

I was intrigued to read in John Mackie’s This Week in History column in The Vancouver Sun : The first films in BC were shown in Victoria on Sept. 28, 1895 on an Edison Kinetoscope. But the Kinetoscope only allowed one person to look at the films through a viewer, like a peep show. The first projected films came along 16 months later. “The earliest (projected films) I have found in BC (were shown by) a company called the Edison Bioscope Novelty Company that pops up from Spokan

During West Kootenay’s mining boom of the 1890s, newspapers popped up like Starbucks franchises. But lugging a printing press into a remote area was no small chore. Consequently, many presses churned out several titles before being retired. In 1962, during land clearing for a resort at Trout Lake, a bulldozer unearthed a hand-cranked press, seen above in the Nelson Daily News on June 23 of that year. The caption read in part: [T]his ancient Washington hand press … appeared f

Sandon is an interesting place for many reasons. One remarkable but perhaps under-appreciated aspect is that it is (or ought to be) a Mecca for antique fire hydrant aficionados. At one time the town had 11 hydrants. Today there are 10, of which nine are pictured below, although only three are original to Sandon. Top row, from left: 1) Next to old laundry in upper Sandon. This one is several feet tall and is the most photographed Sandon hydrant. 2) At corner of replica buildi

A little to the northeast of the Sandon cemetery — which is on a hillside about 1.4 km northwest of the ghost town — lies a concrete slab with the inscription: “July 8, 1942/Ken Sato.” It’s not a gravemarker, although I suspect its proximity to the cemetery has led to the erroneous belief that Japanese-Canadians were buried there during the internment era. There were cremations at Sandon, but no burials I am aware of. According to the BC vital events index, 14 Japanese-Canad

An obituary appeared in the Vancouver Sun for Norma Evelyn Schiller of Mission, who died Aug. 9, 2018 at age 100. She was born in Sandon. Sandon, between 1904 and 1907. (Greg Nesteroff collection) In 2008, Schiller wrote a tribute to her father , Joseph Birling Johnson, that also appeared in the Sun . Johnson immigrated to Oregon from Sweden in 1892 and to Canada in 1907, arriving at Silverton. He became renowned for his mining prowess. When he arrived in Silverton in 1907,

Visting Sandon in August 2018, I was surprised to see a hand-carved wooden sign on the old brothel as you enter town that reads: “Greentree 1 mile.” The sign must have been added fairly recently, I figured, as I certainly didn’t remember it and it doesn’t show up in photos I’ve taken of the building in years past. What came to mind was the short-lived Greentree Hotel, which operated for a few months in 1897 between Sandon and Cody. Its exact location is unknown and no photos

Michael Kluckner’s new graphic novel, Julia , is a biography of Vancouver’s Julia Henshaw (1869-1937). She was, among other things, a music and drama critic, columnist, novelist, socialite, botanist, fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, ambulance driver, and recipient of the Croix de Guerre. Henshaw (pictured here ca. 1920, in a photo from Wikipedia) visited the West Kootenay in 1898 as part of a tour for the Vancouver Province that also inspired a novel. It forms an i

Painting signs by hand has largely gone out of style but was once a common vocation. The men (and I imagine a few women) who did it for a living sometimes supplemented their income by painting houses but also occasionally created other artwork. In 1880s Idaho and 1890s Montana and West Kootenay/Boundary, if your opera house needed a new backdrop or you wanted to gussy up your hotel (or boat or store), M.D. Cryderman was your guy. Main Street in Slocan City is seen in May 1897

West Kootenay prospector Eli Carpenter (?-1917) was chiefly famous for two things: co-locating the Payne mine, which started the Silvery Slocan rush in 1891, and walking a tightrope across Slocan’s Main St. on May 24, 1897 as part of Queen’s birthday celebrations (depicted below in a mural in the Slocan campground). He is also the namesake of Carpenter Creek, which flows through Sandon and New Denver. Both the Payne’s discovery and the tightrope walk are part of local folklor

A neat item sold this afternoon on eBay for $192 US (which is $241 Cdn): an envelope from the Sandon Paystreak newspaper. It was postmarked Jan. 3, 1898 — two days after Sandon incorporated as a city — and sent to a J.W. Wheatley, Esq. at 1427 11th Ave. in Spokane. Wheatley was a lawyer, according to the 1900 US census. The envelope’s seller was in Seattle. The Paystreak was one of Robert Thornton Lowery’s many mining-themed papers in the West Kootenay. Although he owned it