CPR’s Boundary District
PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR UNLESS NOTED
to the east), and then from there tracks continued to wind and twist their way over the mountains to Midway, which is situated half way across the south- ern boundary of British Columbia within sight of Washington State. There, the Kettle Valley Division, once known as the CPR’s Kettle Valley Rail- way, began and it extended the route through to the CPR mainline about 100 miles east of Vancouver. The Kootenay Division was divided into several subdivisions, which from the east to the west were: the Cranbrook Subdivision (from Crowsnest to Cran- brook), the Nelson Subdivision (from Cranbrook to Nelson), and the Boundary Subdivision (from Nelson to Midway). To the east into Alberta the Crowsnest Sub- division extended from the summit of the Rockies to Lethbridge and other con- nections with the CPR’s vast system across the Canadian prairies. The railway was built primarily to serve extensive mining districts, and the entire region was a battleground over routes and for traffic between the Great Northern and Canadian Pacific. These two companies both built branch lines to the mountainous mining dis- tricts and tried to beat the other to the best routes through the mountains. However, by the 1920’s, the competitive furor had passed, and a more busi- nesslike approach to competition and cooperation was in vogue. In the east, coal was mined in the Crowsnest Pass and also accessed by both the CPR and GN. Coal was essen- tial for industrial development and the smelting of ores, and it was also the main fuel for locomotives in the early 1900’s. Huge lead-zinc deposits were found at Kimberley, near the present city of Cranbrook, and they provided
48
NELSON, B.C.; JUN. 1978
NELSON, B.C.; 1973
NELSON, B.C.; SEPT. 1974
The Nelson yard and shops were a busy place in the 1970’s (top left). The enginehouse seen in the photo has since been torn down. In the early 1970’s the enginehouse serviced both the CPR’s new SD40-2’s (top right) as well as the older C-Liners (above). A trio of Fair- banks-Morse locos climb a grade heading eastbound through Grand Forks, B.C. (page 49).
the ore for smelting at Trail, on the Co- lumbia River near the other mining center of Rossland where major de- posits of ores rich in gold, silver and copper were mined. The Kimberley ore was to last a century before it was worked out. Farther west, large deposits of copper ore, with important traces of silver and gold, were discovered in the mountains near Grand Forks, B.C., and Republic, Washington. The boom town of Phoenix was built in the nearby mountains, and branch lines of the Canadian Pacific and Great Northern reached the city and its many mines. Huge smelters were established at
Boundary Falls, Grand Forks and
Greenwood along the CPR. Mining pros- pered until after World War I when the demand for copper declined and the best ore deposits had been worked out. Soon the mining industry was gone, except for the huge Trail smelter, which continued to process the Kimberley ore and other ores brought in from elsewhere. The railways of the Boundary region were a fascinating mixture of mainline and branchline, with through passenger services, mixed trains and wayfreights, snowplow extras, ore and coal trains, perishable fruit shipments and train- loads of lumber. They were single-
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