Big Bend Gold Rush

My last Brown Bag Picnic talk was on the Big Bend Gold Rush. This gold rush, in 1865 and 1866, was less significant than the Cariboo and Yukon gold rushes, but it is estimated that there was more than 3,000,000 dollars worth of gold taken out of the area in that short period of time. The rush was centered on the tributaries of the Columbia River north of Revelstoke, notably Carnes Creek, Downie Creek, French Creek and the Goldstream River. Towns sprang up in the area, especially at the point where French Creek flowed into Goldstream. B.C. Surveyor and explorer Walter Moberly laid out a townsite at French Creek, and at one time there were up to 5,000 people living there. The town boasted hotels, general stores, barber shops, saloons (complete with dance hall girls) and everything else you'd expect in a wild west town. There was even a grand piano in one of the hotels, and a large pool table that eventually wound up in one of the early Revelstoke hotels.

The Big Bend was difficult to reach, but the two most travelled routes were over a rough trail from Seymour Arm on Shuswap Lake, and up the Columbia from the United States. Captain Leonard White began running the steamship SS 49 in April of 1866, bringing boatloads of people into the goldfields. Anyone travelling north on the SS 49 had to be able to pay full fare and have a year's worth of supplies, but the Captain would happily take any man out of the goldfields free of charge. Revelstoke Museum and Archives holds a unique artifact related to the SS 49. A tree blaze was found on the west bank of the Columbia just north of Revelstoke in the 1960s. It reads: "SS 49 delayed in consequence of high water, July 4, '66." The '66', of course, is 1866.

The Big Bend Gold Rush ended as quickly as it began, and by 1870, there were only a few hundred men left in the region. Call or visit Revelstoke Museum & Archives for more information on the rush.

Our next Brown Bag Picnic, on July 30 at noon, will be led by museum employee Jen Busch, and will focus on her current research on Revelstoke's involvement in the Boer War. We will soon be opening an exhibit on the Boer War, focused around the recent donation of the Boer War uniform of Walter Dunne, who enlisted in Revelstoke in 1901.

Brown Bag Picnic

The ever-popular "Brown Bag History" series at Revelstoke Museum & Archives will continue this summer as "Brown Bag Picnic." We will hold it in the Heritage Garden, weather permitting, beginning this Wednesday, July 2 at 12:15. The first topic will be "Downtown Revelstoke." I'll explain why the downtown is where it is now, instead of in the original location on Front Street, on the riverbank. The explanation includes a lawsuit between original townsite developer A.S. Farwell and the Canadian Pacific Railway. I'll also talk about some of the early businesses in the downtown, and the corduroy road on Mackenzie Avenue. And let's not forget the smelter at the end of Campbell Avenue, and the approximately 10 city blocks that eroded into the river.

Revelstoke's downtown has a very large concentration of late 1890s and early 1900s building, and I'll talk about the history of some of these buildings. Did you know that the Roxy theatre building was built in 1905 as Lawrence Hardware? The original facade was High Victorian style, and it was converted to an Art Deco style in 1938 when it opened as the Avolie Theatre. Did you know that the first Catholic church was built in 1893 at the corner of First and Mackenzie, where the Royal Bank is now? Legend has it that if you lifted a floorboard of the church you could see running water beneath.