THE KÜTNE READER

Recently I posted the transcript of a letter from a little girl in Rossland in 1898 writing to her father to tell him what she received...

Sam McGee wasn’t cremated in the Yukon — he was buried in Kaslo. Here’s his grave marker to prove it, as it appeared in 2008: I say this...

Did novelist Jack London once work in a tie camp at Lardeau? Jack London (Wikipedia/Little Pilgrimages, p. 235) The author is best known...

Former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated on Dec. 30, 1905 when a bomb exploded at his house in Caldwell. The sole person...

My wife recently surprised me with the gift of a 1978 Robert Inwood print of Malone Manor. For 88 years, it was one of Nelson’s most prominent heritage homes. But fewer and fewer people even remember it existed. The house was at the corner of Front and Cherry streets. This is the description given in Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation , which listed its street address as 1102 Front Street (formerly Water Street) and its legal description as Lots 1-4, Block 80.

The photo below, taken in 1950, shows the evocative Mar Sam laundry at the corner of Front, Lake, and Ward streets in Nelson. You’ll...

Three lots sold on eBay today featuring letterheads, letters, and envelopes from the Old Gold Quartz and Placer Mining Co. and Standard...

Was the Mirror Lake post office once listed by Guinness as the world’s smallest? I first encountered this claim on p. 199 of Kaslo: The...

In Silverton’s early days, Amy Carey was among the community’s leading entrepreneurs. She owned hotels, a grocery store, livery stable,...

West Kootenay prospector Eli Carpenter (?-1917) was chiefly famous for two things: co-locating the Payne mine, which started the Silvery...

Nelson boasts about 350 heritage buildings — commercial, residential, and institutional — based on those listed in 1981 in Nelson: A...

A neat item sold this afternoon on eBay for $192 US (which is $241 Cdn): an envelope from the Sandon Paystreak newspaper. It was...

Several places in West Kootenay were named after people who never actually visited their eponymous locales. Lt.-Gov. Hugh Nelson was...

A few years ago, I wrote about Koto Kennedy, the only Japanese Canadian living in Kaslo immediately before the start of the internment in...

This little building in Hills, on the east side of Highway 6, began life in October 1934 as the Hunter Siding school. An earlier Hunter...

From 1907 to 1911, members of the Patrick family lived in Nelson while operating a lumber company that owned timber limits in the Slocan...

Here’s a gallery of photos I took on March 3, 2003 during filming in Rossland of the Kurt Russell movie Miracle. Columbia Avenue was...

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...

During its 22 years as a bona fide city, Sandon had seven mayors — and four receivers. Sandon city hall was built in 1900 following a...