![]() Unfortunately access to the area is not permitted at this time. T he waste slag glowed red hot in the night during the smelter’s heyday, and is now a black moonscape. ![]() Waste slag was taken from the smelter by rail in 25-ton (23-tonne) bell-shaped slag cars, and dumped nearby. The brick stack was originally 36 metres, the highest in the province, and contained nearly 250,000 bricks. The smelter was originally built with a sheet steel smokestack that was replaced by the present brick stack when the works were expanded in 1903. The plant was sold to Leon Lotzkar who disposed of the machinery and later gave the site to the City of Greenwood as a park. Throughout World War l the smelter worked intermittently at a reduced rate and on Novemclosed forever. The smelter operated very successfully until 1912 when shortages of ore began to affect production. On January 18, 1902, a record amount, 416 tonnes, (about 9 tonnes for every man employed, were smelted. That year 106,000 tonnes of ore was smelted. The smelter was open 24 hours a day and employed 47 men during the first year. “The Vancouver Province” newspaper described the smelter as “one of the most complete and modern in the world today…It is a model plant in every respect on which money has been spent unstintingly, and the machinery installed is the most modern in engineering practice.”įebrumarked the blowing in of the first furnace. ![]() the nearby superintendent’s house, which still stands today, was the only smelter building built in Greenwood. The smelter was erected on a 28-hectare site at the mouth of Copper Creek (now called Mother Lode Creek) in the town of Anaconda, just south of Greenwood. The smelter was built by the British Columbia Copper Company, a New York-based organization that bought the Mother Lode mine in 1898. The most noticeable thing about Greenwood as you drive into town is the h uge s lag p ile and imposing s mokestack. The production of copper was seen as a long term investment, not a one or two year boom and bust that happened to so many of the gold and silver laden districts of the frontier west bringing Greenwood’s population to around 3000. Greenwood, Phoenix, Deadwood, Boundary Falls, Eholt, Summit City, and Grand Forks all grew to house and service the men who worked in the copper mines, smelters and railways. The Boundary Region was one of the biggest copper producing regions of the world. The BC Copper Company Smelter was one of 3 in the Boundary Area. Greenwood’s history was not a typical boom and bust mining town based on mining and later copper smelting. The BC Copper Company Smokestack is 36m (121ft) high and a prominent landmark on the edge of Greenwood overlooking the huge Slag Pile. ![]()
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