Author: Peter Klopp

STEEP AND CROOKED … by Late Writer, Artist & Castle Builder Bill Laux – Chapter 1

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STEEP AND CROOKED: THE MINING RAILROADS OF THE CANADIAN BORDER

 By Bill Laux

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROSPECTORS

1887 – 1890

 

            From the days of the Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders, the established routes into the Kootenay country in British Columbia had been up the river valleys from the Washington Territory. Six north – south mountain ranges made entry from east or west extremely difficult and impossible in winter. The first prospectors came north from Walla Walla and Colville.   They followed the Indian and Hudson’s Bay Company trails on foot or ascended the rivers in boats.   There was a good Hudson’s Bay Company trail running up the Okanagan Valley from Fort Okanagan to Kamloops.   Prospectors could leave this trail at Osoyoos and bear east to get into the Rock Creek placer grounds.   There also existed an Indian trail running north from Spokane Falls to present Sandpoint and Bonner’s Ferry to the Moyie River.   This river would be followed on the Indian trail to reach the placer grounds at Wild Horse Creek in the shadow of the Rockies.   The Columbia River was the third and easiest route.   From 1865 until 1874 when it was laid up, the small sternwheel steamer, Forty Nine, based at Little Dalles, could be hired to carry parties of miners up the Columbia into Canada.

            The Victoria, B.C. merchants, frustrated at seeing the Kootenay trade all going to the Americans, lobbied their legislature for a trail to connect the Kootenay mines with the Coast.   $80,000 was appropriated in 1865, and Edgar Dewdney was given the contract to build the trail, four feet wide and 400 miles long, from Hope, on the Fraser River, to Wild Horse Creek on the Upper Kootenay.   Much is made of the construction of this trail in B. C. histories as the first communication between the Coast and the Kootenays.   However, the stretch between Hope on the Fraser and Fort Shepherd on the Columbia was a mere brushing out and improvement with rock walls and bridges of the old HBC fur brigade trail, over which the HBC sent out their furs (and the first placer gold in 1854) to New Westminster.   The sole section of the trail which was new, and not an existing trail improvement, was the 50 mile portion between the Columbia at Ft. Shepherd and the Kootenay near Ockonook.   From that point the trail followed the old Wild Horse Trail of 1863.

            The Dewdney Trail was a laborious scramble over five mountain ranges, and through the notorious bogs and across the six swift running rivers between them.   In an effort to compel prospectors and miners to use this trail and keep their trade for British Columbia, the government raised customs duties at the border and tried (with little success) to enforce an export tax on gold.[i]

            In 1887, a pair of prospectors, George Leyson and George Bowerman, traveling the Dewdney Trail, found silver bearing quartz at the divide between Little Sheep Creek and Trail Creek, just two miles north of the border.   They staked the Lily May claim and took out some tons of ore.   Lacking any means of getting it to the Columbia, they left it there on the dump until such time as the Dewdney Trail should be improved to a wagon road.

            The Lily May claim lapsed, but it was re-staked by Newlin Hoover and Oliver Bordeaux of Colville in 1889.   D.C. Corbin was building his Spokane Falls and Northern Railway through Colville to the Columbia that year, and with the arrival of rail transportation, lapsed mining claims like the Lily May were now of interest.   Oliver Bordeaux recruited Joe Moris, another French-Canadian prospector wintering in Colville, to go with him in March of 1890 to do the assessment work on the Lily May.   When the work was done, Moris joined with Joe Bourgeois, who had come up Trail Creek to examine the strange, red rock mountain some five miles north of the Lily May.[ii]   On that mountain the two men discovered a continuous ledge of strongly mineralized ground and located five claims along it.

            In Nelson the assays of their samples proved so disappointing that they were unwilling to pay the $12.50 fee per claim to record their finds.   Instead, they traded their fifth claim, the Le Roi, to Colonel Topping, the Deputy Mining recorder in exchange for his paying the recording fees on the four claims they kept.[iii]   Nelson was an American town at this time, and Colonel Topping, an American writer and prospector, was its unofficial postmaster, selling only American stamps.   So isolated was the Kootenay from the rest of British Columbia that there was no Canadian mail service.   Nelson mail went out by boat to Bonner’s Ferry, to the Northern Pacific at Kootenai Station, and on its trains to American and Canadian addresses.

            Moris and Bourgeois returned to Red Mountain, followed by Colonel Topping and others, to dig on these new finds.   As they went deeper into the veins the assays of the ore improved spectacularly.   The news got out at once.   A rush began, largely of Americans from Colville and Spokane Falls.   Colonel Topping preempted a townsite at the mouth of Trail Creek, sure that a city would arise there if the mines proved out.   The twice weekly sternwheel steamer service between Dan Corbin’s SF&N railroad at Little Dalles and the Canadian Pacific at Revelstoke was bringing miners, prospectors and merchants with every trip, from all over the Northwest, and Topping’s tiny Trail Creek Landing began to grow.

            The ore Bourgeois, Moris, Colonel Topping, and others were hauling to the surface on Red Mountain was copper, with gold and silver.   Although their best ore contained $300 to $400 in gold for every ton, it could not be milled on the site.   Copper ores had to be shipped to a smelter to extract the metals, and the nearest copper smelters were in Montana, 700 miles away.   From the mines themselves, 2300 feet above the Columbia, there was only that four foot wide Dewdney Trail winding down Trail Creek Gulch to the river.   Sacking the ore and sending it down on horseback was prohibitively expensive.   Winter rawhiding was the preferred means of transport.   A horse could carry but 400 pounds on its back, but if the sacked ore were wrapped in a green cowhide, hair side out, a horse could easily pull 1500 pounds down a snow covered trail.   The best ore was rawhided down the mountain that first winter of 1890-91, and stockpiled on the riverbank to await the opening of navigation in the spring.   The Upper Columbia was closed by ice every winter; steamer schedules could be maintained only from Mid-May to December.

            Upriver from the Trail townsite, the Canadian Pacific was building Captain Ainsworth’s isolated portage railway around the falls and rapids of the Kootenay River so that Columbia River steamers could connect with Kootenay Lake steamers.   The Columbia and Kootenay Railway was put into service in 1891, and ores from the Kootenay lake mines, the Silver King mine above Nelson, and the gold mines of Forty Nine Creek could now be put aboard the steamer, Lytton, at Sproat’s Landing.   The Lytton took them down river to the US. and D. C. Corbin’s rails at Little Dalles.   The SF&N and Northern Pacific forwarded them to the smelters in Idaho and Montana.

It was as Captain Ainsworth had foreseen ten years before: the compelling topography of interior British Columbia made the Kootenays a logical extension of American commerce with Spokane as its supply and financial center.

            In his Trail townsite, Colonel Topping needed money to clear streets of tree stumps, to install a water system, and to put some sort of bridge or causeway across the delta of Trail Creek which flooded his proposed business district every spring.   For funds he would have to put up a part of his Le Roi mine.   In the fall of 1890, he took some samples of his best ore, and booked passage down river to Little Dalles where he boarded the train for Spokane.   On board he met two Spokane lawyers, George Forster, and Colonel William. H. Ridpath.   He showed them his samples and described his mine.  The men were impressed.   In Spokane they introduced him to some investors, including Judge George Turner, Colonel W. W. Turner and Colonel Isaac N. Peyton.

            These men were all investors in mining properties in Eastern Washington and northern Idaho.   Peyton, Ridpath, George Forester and Judge George Turner were at that time partners in the Dead Medicine silver mine north of Colville.   The Dead Medicine had ceased paying dividends after the silver price crash of 1893 and the impoverished syndicate was looking for a paying gold proposition.   Judge George Turner was a well known personality in Stevens County.   He had come west from Missouri in 1884 and the next year was appointed Teritorial Judge by President Grant the next year.   He held court in Colville until 1888 and later became a U.S. Senator.

            Topping, a colonel among colonels, was in his element.   He was able to convince the group to take a bond on 16 thirtieths of the Le Roi.   This obliged them to spend at least $3,000 sinking a shaft, and gave them the option to buy the 16 thirtieths by June 1, for $16,000.   Promising to furnish the money were Colonels Ridpath, Turner, Peyton, and Major Armstrong, plus the civilians, Judge George Turner, Alexander Tarbett, and Frank Graves.   With them was the respected and experienced mining man, Oliver Durant, who would manage the mine.   As all of the investors owed considerable back rent and board to their host, hotel owner, Bill Harris, they took him in as a full partner as a settlement of their debts.   Oliver Durant later confirmed that the $3,000 to sink the shaft had come from him.[iv]

            Durant put his foreman, Ed Kellie, and four men to work on the Le Roi that winter.   By spring they had the shaft down 35 feet and had ten tons of good ore on the dump awaiting the resumption of the Lytton’s runs down the Columbia.   When the ice went out and the river rose, the Lytton carried the ore to the SF&N and it was shipped to the smelter in Butte, Montana.   The smelter returns were $70 in gold (at $18 per ounce) per ton, and 5 percent copper.   Delighted with these results, the Colonels took up the bond and paid Colonel Topping his $16,000.   For another $16,000 they bought his remaining 14 thirtieths, and became the sole owners of the Le Roi.[v]

            Colonel Topping now laid out and cleared the streets of his townsite, put in a water system,and began a brisk sale of lots.   His town began to fill with people drawn by the success of the mines on Red Mountain.   Up on that mountain, Ross Thompson had some of the steep ground surveyed and platted another townsite he called Rossland.   It too, attracted buyers, as good ore was struck in the Centre Star, the War Eagle and other mines.   Still, isolation was hampering the development of the full potential of the Red Mountain mines.   Only the highest grade ore would bear the cost of rawhiding down to the Columbia over the snow covered trails, and the costly manhandling of the sacked ore onto the steamer, and then onto the freight cars at Little Dalles.   Most of the ore being hoisted from the mines was not rich enough to support the cost of this pioneer transportation.   It was stockpiled at the mines, huge dumps of it, worth $20 to $30 a ton at a smelter, but 2300 feet up on a remote mountainside, worthless.   Trail and Rossland desperately needed a railroad for cheap, year round transportation.   If one were not forthcoming, the spectacularly rich fraction of Red Mountain ore would be quickly exhausted, and the camp, like so many others in the West, would shrivel and die.

   

Chapter 24 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part III

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Rendezvous at the Wuppertal Opera House

On the Sunday morning of November 15th, I boarded the train at Giessen and was on my way to Wuppertal, where I was to meet Biene at the train station.

Floating Tram in Wuppertal - Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

Floating Tram in Wuppertal – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

During the three-hour train ride I had ample time to reflect on the strange nature of my relationship with Biene. In the angry exchange of words with my friend Hans I had allowed the word ‘marriage’ to slip out of my mouth, which must have seemed totally ridiculous to him and seemed to me now as well. Hadn’t she set new boundaries for the two of us? Hadn’t I acknowledged them in my letters and promised to respect them? And what was the purpose of friendship in the light of my planned emigration to Canada? Hadn’t I lost within less than a year friends and classmates, who were living closer than a half-day’s train ride from me? Would any of my friends sit for hours in a train just to attend an opera in a distant city on a Sunday evening and then in a grand loop, including annoying late night transfers, return home at eight o’clock in the morning? Why was I doing this? It seemed to me that in spite of my promises to the contrary I still wanted to climb over the wall that Biene had erected between the two of us.

Return Ticket of November 15, 1964

Return Ticket of November 15, 1964

As the express train was approaching my destination, I put myself in Biene’s shoes and began to ponder what had made her so eager to meet me. Why would she go through the trouble of traveling to Wuppertal to buy tickets and then exchange them a few days later, because I had postponed the date of my arrival? Would anyone do this for a mere friend? In spite of my disagreements with Dieter, Gauke and Hans, they had been right in one thing. An actual face-to-face encounter is worth more than a hundred beautifully written love letters. I remembered how annoyed I was in my grief, when Private Gauke romanticized about that happy moment when he saw his sweetheart waiting for him at the end of the platform with her hair undulating in the evening breeze. After our transfer back to Koblenz we had lost sight of each other. I felt thankful now for the care and compassion of a true friend and for the romantic image that was almost identical to the one that I envisioned now. It had vividly come back through Biene’s instructions in her postcard, “I will be standing under the railway clock near the exit behind the ticket gate.”

Opera House Wuppertal - Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

Opera House Wuppertal – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

Then we met. During the afternoon we immersed ourselves into the mellow sensation of togetherness that resisted any attempt to spoil it with talk about how we felt about each other and what destiny held in store for us. In my memory the exuberant feeling, which I experienced while being together with her so powerfully dominated my heart that all else was drawn into a blissful blur. Later on I could not tell where and how we had spent the twilight hours before we entered the opera house to take in the sights and sounds of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’. For me, who had never gone out on a date before, the experience was almost overwhelming. We were thankful for the silence imposed upon the audience by the theater’s etiquette. Any casual conversation would have ruined our sense of happiness. Instead we communicated the feeling of physical closeness to each other by the gentle squeezing of our hands. Too soon the three-hour long opera came to an end. I had to catch the last train to take me home in a veritable odyssey. By German traveling standards the round trip of more than ten hours with its many stopovers and waiting times had been an ordeal. Although I arrived at Mother’s place tired and exhausted, I felt happy. I sensed that our late night rendezvous at the opera had sprung a hairline crack in the invisible wall that Biene had erected.

Train Arriving at Home Base: Watzenborn-Steinberg (Now Pohlheim) near Giessen

Train Arriving at my Home Town Watzenborn-Steinberg (Now Pohlheim) near Giessen (1964)

While the monotonous click clack of the train lulled me into sleep, I was blissfully unaware of the profound sadness and feelings of desperation, which had gripped Biene the very moment my train had vanished like a phantom into the darkness of the night.

 

STEEP AND CROOKED … by Late Writer, Artist & Castle Builder Bill Laux – Introduction

/ Peter Klopp / 1 Comment

For information on the author search for Bill Laux on this blog.

STEEP AND CROOKED:

THE MINING RAILROADS

OF

THE CANADIAN BORDER

By

Bill Laux

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

In the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, the discovery of three successive copper-gold bonanzas along the international border between Washington and British Columbia, brought the railroad builders of the Northwest into a fierce rivalry to get their tracks to the new camps and control the traffic in ores, coal and merchandise.

The mining potential of the Kootenay country in southeast British Columbia had been known since the 1840s.   The voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company had been shown the lead deposits on the shores of Kootenay Lake by the local Indians, and for years had melted down those silver-rich ores on wood fires to cast bullets for their muskets.[i]

The Big Bend gold strike of 1864 on the Upper Columbia in British Columbia attracted the attention of Captain John C. Ainsworth of Portland, Oregon and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company.   The Oregon Steam Navigation Company had a near monopoly on steamer transportation on the Columbia and Snake Rivers and Captain Ainsworth was determined that any development in Interior British Columbia should be made tributary to Portland merchants through his steamers.   He therefore financed the building of the small sternwheel steamer, Forty Nine, (named for the Forty Ninth Parallel, the international boundary), at Marcus, Washington Territory.   By the next year, 4000 miners, mostly Americans, were at work, washing the gravel bars of the Big Bend.   All were supplied by Captain Leonard White and the steamer, Forty Nine.[ii] The Big Bend boom fizzled out in a few years, and with no one to hire her, the Forty Nine was beached.

The next effort to exploit Kootenay minerals came in the 1870s when Henry Doan, a Colville prospector, claimed to have a deposit of very rich ore on the shore of Kootenay Lake.   It was actually that same deposit the Hudson’s Bay fur traders had been exploiting for their musket bullets.   Doan sent what he claimed was a sample from his deposit to George Hearst (later Senator) of San Francisco.   In fact it was not.; it was high grade silver-lead ore, probably from Colorado.   Hearst came north by train, steamer, and stagecoach to Colville, and engaged Albert Pingston,[iii] mate of the Forty Nine, to take him, Doan, and an assay outfit to Kootenay Lake by rowboat.   Pingston rowed the party up the Columbia from Marcus to the mouth of the Kootenay River.   During the long portage around the falls and rapids of the Kootenay, Doan secretly proposed to Pingston that he should “lose” the assay outfit so that Hearst would not be able to make any tests on the deposit Doan was going to show him.   Pingston indignantly refused, and brought the two men and the assay kit successfully to Kootenay Lake.   Hearst, on testing the ore, saw that he had been duped; it did not resemble the sample sent to him.   Furious at having come all the way from San Francisco, Hearst refused to let Doan into the boat for the return.   He proposed to abandon the man there on that wilderness lake.   Pingston told Hearst, “You can go and thrash him if you like but you cannot leave him here to starve and you must let him come back in the boat to where he can get something to eat.”[iv]

Pingston was concerned more for his reputation than for Doan.   There was a tradition on the Upper Columbia that one never left a penniless prospector on the beach in that wild and empty country.   Hearst went back to San Francisco, damning the Kootenay and its scoundrelly prospectors.

Captain Ainsworth, however, was still interested.   The Northern Pacific Railway would be been completed in 1883 putting Kootenay minerals within reach of a transcontinental railroad.   Small quantities of rich silver-lead ores were beginning to come out of that country by boat to Bonner’s Ferry and from there by pack-horse to the Northern Pacific at Kootenay Station (a few miles east of Sand Point).   A party of his people, including his son, George, made their way into the Kootenay and visited the small mining camps that were springing up on Kootenay lake in 1882.   They staked some claims, laid out a townsite called “Ainsworth,” (still in existence), and proposed a portage railway around those falls and rapids in the lower Kootenay River so that a rail and steamer service could link the area via the Columbia River to Portland.[v]     To that end, Captain Ainsworth had, the year before, commissioned Albert Pingston to make a survey of the Columbia River from Wallulla to its confluence with the Kootenay, to see if a through steamer service would be feasible.   Pingston reported that with three portage sections, boats could navigate the Columbia as far as Rickey’s Rapids (below Kettle Falls) “for 2/3 of the year.”   However, a portage railway would definitely be needed around the twenty foot drop of Kettle Falls.[vi]

Ainsworth lobbied the U.S. Congress for the navigation improvements Pingston had recommended.   Congress sent out Lt. Symons in the fall of 1881 to repeat Pingstone’s survey, and report on what engineering works might be necessary.[vii]

To get a charter from the B.C. Government to build the portage railroad, it would be necessary for Captain Ainsworth to present the project as a thoroughly Canadian plan to keep the Kootenay trade for B.C. merchants.   Accordingly, Ainsworth went to Victoria posing as a friend of Canada.

Captain Ainsworth’s plan was to construct a wagon road from the head of navigation on the South Thompson River over Eagle pass to the Columbia River at Big Eddy (Revelstoke).   He promised the legislators that he would then put his steamers on a route down the Columbia and through the Arrow Lakes to the mouth of the Kootenay River.   Here he would build a forty mile portage railway to Queen’s Bay on Kootenay Lake.   This “All Canadian route” would secure the Kootenay trade for the B.C. merchants.

The B.C. legislature, alarmed by the rumor that the just completed Northern Pacific was planning to tap the Kootenay Lake trade with a branch from Sandpoint to Bonner’s Ferry on the Kootenai River, gave Captain Ainsworth his charter and a wildly generous land grant of 750,000 acres of Kootenay land.   Only when the charter was submitted to the Dominion Parliament for approval, did someone actually look at a map.[viii]   What the Federal Railway Commissioner saw, was that Kootenay traffic, moving down the portage railroad to the Columbia, could just as easily move south, down the river into Washington and on to Portland via the canals and portage railways Congress was expected to authorize.   The Dominion Government therefore disallowed the B.C. legislature’s charter, creating outrage in the Province.   In an attempt to resolve the bitter conflict following, the whole affair was thrown into the courts to wind slowly through their procedures for seven years.     Eventually the Ainsworth syndicate, getting nowhere in courts, sold their charter to the Canadian Pacific Railway, which satisfied both the Dominion Government and most British Columbians.

The completion of the Northern Pacific in 1883 was bringing the era of steamboat transportation on the Middle Columbia to a close.[ix]   Captain Ainsworth sold his Oregon Steam Navigation Company to the new Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.   The American Congress took note of this and failed to vote any new river improvement projects for the Columbia.   Railroads, not dredged waterways, were to be the new mode of access in the Northwest.

As the new railway era opened in the Northwest, it was Daniel Chase Corbin, a Spokane mining and railroad investor, who was the first to lay tracks toward the Kootenays.   The Northern Pacific was receiving ores from the Kootenay Lake mines via a laborious wagon haul from Bonner’s Ferry to Kootenai Station.   Corbin’s plan was to run his rails all the way to Kootenay Lake via Colville, the Columbia and Salmo rivers.   His survey included, as a branch, Captain Ainsworth’s portage railway for steamer traffic around Kettle Falls, just in case Congress changed its mind.   Corbin began building his Spokane Falls and Northern Railway in 1890, and reached Colville that year.   The following year he had his rails to Little Dalles, a steamer landing, on the Columbia, seven miles north of Marcus.[x]   From Little Dalles he had navigable water all the way to the Canadian Pacific main line at Revelstoke.

Corbin joined forces with a syndicate of Kamloops, B.C. businessmen who had organized the Columbia and Kootenay Steam Navigation Company to link the two transcontinentals with a sternwheel steamer service from Revelstoke to Little Dalles.[xi]

                Corbin kept his track layers moving north.   In 1893 his rails crossed the border at Waneta and climbed Beaver Creek to a low pass leading to the Salmo River.   From the headwaters of the Salmo his graders laid the line steeply down Cottonwood Creek to reach Kootenay lake 5 miles east of Nelson.   But her he found himself blocked by William Van Horne ofthe mighty Canadian Pacific.

The CPR was in no position to build a new rail line into the Kootenays from Alberta. It was still paying off its construction debt and was financially cripples by having to rebuild hundreds of miles of line washed out by the great flood of 1894 in B.C.   However, it had Captain Ainsworth’s charter for that portage railway around the falls in the Kootenay River.   Van Horne believed that by building that portage railway and buying the CKSN steamship company he could control Kootenay traffic by rail and boat service to the main line at Revelstoke. He had also committed to the CPR building at some future time, that rail line in from Alberta over Crowsnest Pass.   To secure that right of way and to block Corbin’s line from entering Nelson, Van Horne had the B.C Government declare a “Canadian Pacific Railway Reserve” along the south shore of Kootenay Lake.

Corbin, blocked out of Nelson, simply ran his tracks down to the water where freight and passengers would transfer to a steamer for the five miles to Nelson.

 

The lure of a substantial mining and coal traffic now brought James J. Hill and his unfinished Great Northern Railway into the contest.   His Great Northern was to run through Bonner’s Ferry, from which a boat service down the river to Kootenay Lake would give him access to the new mining districts there at Ainsworth, Nelson and Bluebell.

The entry of J.J. Hill alarmed his bitter adversary, William Van Horne, President of the Canadian Pacific.   As Hill had patiently built his Great Northern across the Dakota and Montana prairies, he had run feeder lines up to the border to siphon off Canadian traffic.   Van Horne knew he had to preempt the Kootenays for the CPR or lose them to the aggressive J.J. Hill.  He sent his surveyors out to locate a line from Lethbridge, Alberta to Hope, B.C. through the mineral-rich Kootenay and Boundary country.   They reported back that such a line was possible, but would be difficult and very expensive to build.       Jim Hill countered this by incorporating the Bedlington and Nelson Ry. to connect at the border with his American branch, the Kootenay Valley Ry running up from from his main line at Bonner’s Ferry.[1]   When built,that line would put Great Northern steel on Kootenay Lake.   Van Horne had no choice.   His rail steamer service was summer only.     When the Arrow Lakes froze each winter, service had to be suspended until spring.   Van Horne began laying track through Crowsnest Pass to enter the Kootenays in 1898.

With the three great Captains eying the increasing rich Kootenay mines, and each intent on seizing the traffic for his railroad, a serious clash was imminent.   It came in the 1890s when three great gold-copper bonanzas of international importance were uncovered along the border, at Red Mountain and Phoenix in British Columbia, and at Eureka Creek in Washington.   Now the railroad wars were on.                     Daniel Chase Corbin, William Van Horne, James Jerome Hill, and a newcomer, Frederick Augustus Heinze, a 26 year old American mining millionaire, were all determined to put their own rails to the new mining camps.   In the ensuing struggle to control the mineral traffic, seven steep and crooked mining railroads were built from the main lines.     Each of the now four great captains was determined to put his tracks to the mouth of every substantial mine to freeze out the other three.     Engineers were called in and tracks were laid, competing sets of them, switchbacking up dangerously steep grades, over towering wooden trestles, and around cranky curves to mouths of the mines themselves.   Mine owners, finding two competing sets of tracks at their loading bunkers, bargained for lower and still lower rates.   The railroads, fighting for the ore hauls, dropped their rates to cost. And then to below.   At 75 cents a ton, even low grade ores, discarded as uncommercial, could be shipped to the smelters, and the great boom was on

.

This is the chronicle of those seven small railroads through their short and contentious lives from 1896 until 1921.

 

 

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION    [i]   Letter of Archibald Mc Donald, HBC factor at Fort Colvile (not “Colville”), to James Douglas,                         Governor of the Colony of British Columbia, September 29, 1844.   It is quoted in Edward                         L. Affleck, Kootenay Lake Chronicles, (Vancouver, 1978), p. 33.

[ii]   Affleck, Columbia River Chronicles, (Vancouver, 1976), p. 49 & 58, note 4.   Letter from                                 Magistrate Haynes at Osooyoos to Colonial Secretary, August 11, 1865, “A steamer is now             being built near Fort Colville by a company represented by one Captain White, which will, I                 am told, be ready to start in about six weeks.   I would beg for instructions as regards U.S.                  steamers running up here.”   Quoted in Affleck, op. cit., p. 54, note e.

[iii]   The name is spelled “Pingstone” in the US and “Pingston” in Canada.

[iv]   Related by William Fernie in a letter to S.S. Fowler, manager of the Bluebell mine, in 1909.               Quoted in Affleck, Sternwheelers, Sandbars and Switchbacks, (Vancouver, 1973), p. 8.                    Fernie was an early Kootenay settler and trail builder.

[v]   Affleck, Kootenay Lake Chronicles, pp. 25 – 26.

[vi]   Albert Pingstone, A Memorial to Captain John C. Ainsworth, n.d. in WSU library, Pullman.

[vii]   Symons’ Report, Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 186, 1st Session, 47th Congress.

[viii]   Affleck, Columbia River Chronicles, p. 125.

[ix]   In British Columbia, “Lower Columbia” meant that part of the river in the U.S.; the “Upper                         Columbia “ designated that part of the river inth Rocky Mountain trench, above Boat                 Encampment.   In Washington State “Lower Columbia” meant the part of the river from             Portland to the Pacific, “Middle Columbia” referred to the river from Portland to the                           confluence with the Snake, and the “Upper Columbia” meant the remainder of the river in               both countries.

[x]   Fahey, Inland Empire, p.  10       Affleck, Sternwheelers, Sandbars and Switchbacks, p. 18.

11   Ibid. pp. 19 & 20.

Chapter 24 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part II

/ Peter Klopp / 6 Comments

Happy New Year to Bloggers and Friends Far and Wide!

*****

A Tale of Two Castles

panoramiocom

Marburg Castle – Photo Credit: Panoramio.com

 In contrast to Koblenz soldiers relatively small in numbers did not overcrowd the medieval city of Marburg. The only barracks was relatively small and like Maxhof in Bavaria served as a technical training center. To go to the city center I had to descend from the hilltop where the Tannenberg barracks was located on steep roads or if I wanted to take a shortcut on even steeper stone staircases. In the narrow streets below there was hardly enough room for cars to pass each other. It was not uncommon to see vehicles parked right on the sidewalks as not to impede the traffic flow. On my free late afternoons and evenings I often strolled by the many quaint shops. Sometimes I dropped in at one of the numerous bookstores, which always have exerted a special attraction for me. With shelves upon shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling these stores looked more like libraries, which is not surprising, if one considers that Marburg is a well- known university town. Here I discovered and bought a copy of the New Testament in Latin. The young saleslady might have thought that I was a first year student enrolled in the faculty of theology rather than a common soldier from the local barracks.

Marburg Castle - October 1964

Marburg Castle – October 1964

In the downtown area there were also many cozy pubs. In one that was catering to the students of the nearby university my friend Hans and I frequently got together for a chat and a refreshing local beer from the tap. Naturally in such congenial place we did not limit ourselves to just one drink. After the third beer I felt ready to give my old friend a progress report on my relationship with Biene. Through our correspondence Hans was well aware of the trials and tribulations, but also had also been very skeptical about my love to her. He shook his head in disbelief when I told him that I had met her only two times earlier in the spring. Having gone through several love affairs, all of which have ended in disaster, he could not believe that I was still on my first.

            “We are planning to meet again in November,” I said noticing the same doubtful expression that I had seen so often in Dieter’s face.

            Ignoring my statement, Hans bluntly asked with a sardonic grin, “Have you kissed her yet?”

            “Yes, I have,” I answered curtly getting quite a bit uncomfortable with the direction our conversation was taking.

            Making use of his own peculiar metaphor, which he had used in his letters before, he ventured another question. “Have you conquered the castle or has she voluntarily open the castle gate to you?”

            I felt quite annoyed with the embarrassing questions, which so glibly popped out of his mouth. With a hint of rising anger I managed to reply firmly, “Whether it is open or whether it is locked is none of your business! But to satisfy your juvenile curiosity, I will wait to marry her if and when she is ready.”

My Friend Hans giving a Guitar Concert to Fellow Stundents

My Friend Hans giving a Guitar Concert to Fellow Stundents

            “Ede,” using my nickname and almost shouting now, “you must be kidding me …” He stopped in mid-sentence, when he glanced at my angry and determined face. Whatever was his opinion on this delicate topic, I did not care to hear anymore from someone so disillusioned as my friend was through all his failed relationships. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to change topics, before the matter would escalate into a real fight. I told Hans that I still had the set of walkie-talkies, which I had bought from a roommate and had occasionally used in Koblenz to transmit music within the short range of the barracks environment.

“ Wouldn’t it be exciting if we tried them out over a longer distance between the castle and the barracks?” I suggested to him. He happily agreed. And so we turned our attention away from the contentious issue of a few moments ago and focused on the number one common interest in electronics that had once formed the foundation of our friendship. Opposite to the Tannenberg barracks was an even higher hill, on which the Marburg castle and the Museum for Armory were located. Three kilometers or perhaps even four separated the two hills with a direct line of sight high above any obstruction, which might have impeded the radio signals. We agreed to test the radios at five o’clock on the very next day. To add an air of adventure, we recalled from the time before we joined the European scout movement our old code words we had used in our twosome secret society ‘The Black Hand’. However, what we in our excitement did not consider was that the fantasy world of our boyhood adventures was not so far removed from the reality of the Cold War era, where spies and agents from East Germany were roaming about looking for valuable information of military significance in West Germany. Precisely at 1700 hours Hans and I established a communication link with our walkie-talkies between the two hills. An exchange of short and snappy statements ensued taking on a distinctly clandestine character and went approximately like this.

            “XU73 calling Ede Wolf. Over.”

            “Ede Wolf acknowledging call from XU73. Over.”

            “XU73 to Ede Wolf. Confirm validity of call by providing code word between XU73 and Ede Wolf. Over.”

            “Code word is: ‘The Black Hand’. Over.”

            “Roger from XU73. What is today’s message? Over.”

Now came the moment when our game reached its climax. Even though we had rehearsed the script in the pub the day before, I felt just as excited as if the whole scenario was for real. “The message for XU73 from Ede Wolf is: Five black umbrellas in Italian ice cream parlour. I repeat …”

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Tannenberg Barracks at Marburg – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

I could not repeat the sentence. In the twilight of the early November evening hours I saw a police car with a directional antenna on top racing up the winding hillside road. Almost in panic I pressed the send button one more time and warned my friend, “Danger! Turn off your radio at once. I explain later.”

            While the police car navigated a few more switchbacks, I had barely enough time to jump off the road and hide in the dense brush below. A minute later I heard a car passing by at high-speed no doubt in search for that elusive radio signal carrying those mysterious messages. If I had been caught, Hans and I would have been in a real pickle as to how to explain that the conversation between a student of the local university and a member of the Armed Forces was just a juvenile game apart from the disturbing fact that we had been using a communication device without a license.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

/ Peter Klopp / 29 Comments

Brilliant Sunshine after the First Snow in Fauquier, BC

Photo Essay without Words

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This will my last post for 2016. I will resume my blogging activity in the New Year. I would like to take the last post of this year to say thank you to all my followers and visitors for supporting me with your kind and encouraging comments. I wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Chapter 24 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part I

/ Peter Klopp / 7 Comments

A Wall Comes Tumbling Down

But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control. Paulo Coelho

Having a Good Time in Marburg

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Downtown Marburg – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

In the afternoon of October 1st, 1964, I stepped into Room 328 of the Tannenberg barracks named after the place in East Prussia, where Germany defeated the Czarist Second Army at the beginning of WW1. The room was fully occupied by ten soldiers. To accommodate me, another bed was brought into the room for the newcomer from Koblenz. Even though I felt like an intruder in this close-knit group of young men, they gave me a cordial welcome into their circle of friendship and camaraderie. We had many things in common, which greatly facilitated my acceptance by the group. All of us were near the end of our army time with 180 days or less left to go. We shared the same know-how of carrier frequency technology and were looking forward to more technical training on the latest communication devices. But best of all there was a love in the entire group for music, singing, even dancing in a wholesome, man-centered environment, which gave me a big lift in optimism and morale. There were three buddies in Room 328, who could play the guitar. They were delighted to see that I had brought my six-string with me. I gladly let them use it, as they were so much better in the accompaniment of our favorite army songs, whereas I was just a beginner and concentrated more on playing simple classical guitar pieces. We celebrated the major countdown dates of the remaining days, first every month, then every week, finally the last ten days every single day.

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Singing and Celebrating: Peter to the left of the one Playing the Guitar

As part of the ritual we marched through the hallway past the rooms where the new recruits were just beginning their lengthy term of duty. Boisterously, mockingly, but mostly joyfully singing, our voices reverberated throughout the building with the intoxicating line, ‘Homeward bound, the reserve has rest.’ Then we returned to our room for more celebration and merrymaking. On one of these occasions, having already consumed a good quantity of the fine Marburg beer, I felt emboldened to demonstrate to my room buddies how beer can travel upwards from the mouth to the stomach. To accomplish that feat I assumed the typical yoga headstand position. To everyone’s amazement, I drank a glass of beer, which a roommate was slowly pouring into my open mouth. Klopp, the yoga man from high school, had just added a new twist to the ancient Indian system of physical exercises.

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Peter drinking Beer in a Headstand Position

There must have been some favorable mention of my instructional abilities on my transfer papers. For it did not take long before I was asked to resume my teaching duties in basic electricity and electronics. To deliver effective lessons to the new recruits, I was given preferential treatment. For the preparation of the instructional units I had more time than I needed, which I often used to write letters to Biene instead.

Maneuvers and military war games were more frequent now and occurred on a much greater scale often involving several divisions drawn from the various regions of West Germany. The exact starting time, scenario and action plan were kept secret by the high command to make the exercises more realistic. Our commanding officers at Marburg were also kept in the dark and fretted like little schoolboys over their involvement in the upcoming operation. For achieving success in the eyes of the army top brass they heavily depended on our cooperation and technical expertise. Gone were the days of the master-servant relationship of former days at the basic training period. It felt good to be truly respected as citizens in uniform. I remember one particular military exercise very well. Many days ahead of time the Tannenberg barracks were put on high alert. Weekend passes were cancelled. Maintenance crews feverishly worked on the trucks to make sure that they were ready to roll out at short notice. I had to verify that the electronic equipment was functioning properly in the truck that was assigned to my driver and me for the impending maneuver. Alluring promises were filtering down the ranks. If we did well during the seven to ten days of the upcoming manoeuver, we all could count on a pass for an extra long weekend as a reward for our efforts.

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On the Way to Military Exercises on a foggy November Day

Then one day in the early morning hours the long-expected order came. Within less than an hour a column of heavy-duty Mercedes trucks was heading west. The purpose of the operation for all the army units in the northwestern region had finally been revealed. Our mission was to throw back an imaginary enemy across the River Rhine. At a location unknown to me, the truck and electronic gear for which I was responsible was parked in a small clearing surrounded by dense woods. These were tiresome days. My partner and I often worked through the night ensuring that the connections were establishing telephone contacts by the cables, which the linemen were rolling in from all directions. But there were also lulls in the frantic activities, when we took turns sneaking in a little bit of much-needed sleep. The only noise then was coming from the 220 V generator, which provided power for light, electronic gear, but also heat for those chilly November nights. I found the entire experience challenging and rewarding to be at the controls of one of the centers of a complex communication’s network. Tired, but satisfied in the knowledge of having made a small contribution to the success of the Marburg contingent, I took the extra long weekend catching up on some much-needed sleep and enjoying Mother’s excellent home cooked meals and hospitality.