Greenwood: A Seattle Report
BY: BG EDITOR
Dec 15, 2018 — GREENWOOD, BC (BG)
Following are excerpts of an article that appeared in a February 1900 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, describing the early exploration of Greenwood, prior to Robert Wood, and settlement of the townsite.
GREENWOOD
The Mining, Financial and Commercial Center of the Great Boundary Creek District of British Columbia
"No section of British Columbia offers today more opportunities for fortune than the great Boundary Creek district, a district that within the past two years has attracted the attention of mining capitalists by its immense low grade copper-gold ore deposits, that give promise with development, of becoming the largest mines of their kind in the world. …
History of the District
The history of the district carries one back as far as the early sixties, when a party of prospectors, en route from the California diggings to the then recently discovered placers of the Cariboo, passed up Boundary creek. Gold was discovered in the creek and it is said that some $50,000 was panned, cradled and sluiced, when the rich gravel "played out" and the pioneers moved on.
Little was known of the district, after these forty-niners had disappeared, until 1886, when quarts was found in what is now known as Copper camp. In the same year W. T. (Boundary Creek) Smith discovered Smith's camp. Another period of inactivity lasted until 1890, when the first real movement of prospectors to the district commenced and today there are some 3,000 claims located.
Little development was done until 1896, merely assessment. From that time on, however, capital has been slowly but surely coming into the district, until there are now fully twenty mines in a position to ship, just as soon as the different main spurs and sub-spurs from the Columbia & Western branch are completed. …
What is now the city of Greenwood was originally a pre-emption taken up by Otto Diller in August, 1894. It is situated in the valley of Boundary creek, nine miles from where this now well known stream enters the Kettle river at Midway. The townsite is about 2,500 feet above sea level, with a climate characteristic of the interior plateau of the province.
In the same year Robert Wood, who may be called the "father" of the city, secured the pre-emption, surveyed out a site, graded the roads, cleared the timber from the lots, and induced the first settlers to locate in the embryonic city. From that time on the town grew slowly, but surely, without blow or bluster. The program has been steady and uninterrupted -- greater during the past year than ever before, the population having nearly trebled, until today it is nearly 3,000 inhabitants."
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