West Trail - Trail, BC
Posted by: 
T0SHEA
N 49° 05.800 W 117° 43.184
11U E 447459 N 5438451
West Trail is the ethnic area that, originally Irish and Italian, became a predominantly Italian enclave.
Waymark Code: WMGXTH
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Date Posted: 04/21/2013
Views: 2
West Trail begins at "The Gulch", the commercial area of the Italian community, and runs up the hill to the west and the south. This is the residential area of West Trail. It is where many of the employees of the Cominco smelter have lived for nearly 120 years.
I'll let the heritage marker tell the story of how and why it all began:
In 1890, the discovery of gold/copper ore on a mountain west of the Columbia River at the headwaters of Trail Creek by Joe Moris and Joe Bourgeois was the single most important event in the history of Trail and the Trail/Rossland area. With the discovery of the rich ore veins, two entrepreneurs, Col. Eugene Sayre Topping and Frank Hanna, purchased 343 acres of flat land at the mouth of Trail Creek on the Columbia River to develop a town to serve the mining activity in the mountains above. As the mines grew in wealth, Topping provided land to F.A. Heinze of Butte, Montana in 1895 to build a smelter to treat the Rossland ores.
The smelter was a success and in 1898 was purchased by the CPR. In 1906, the smelter, the War Eagle, Centre Star and St. Eugene mines and the Rossland Power Company were amalgamated to form the Consolidated Mining & Smelting Company of Canada.
The town of Trail prospered as the fortunes of the smelter improved. After WWI, the population increased as the demand for workers in the smelter grew. The area known as Columbia Heights overlooking the commercial area was developed by Richard T. Daniel, who arrived in Trail in 1896 and invested in the bench lands above the town on Lookout Mountain. Established in 1897, Columbia Heights remains one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city.
These homes provided modest living accommodations to local entrepreneurs and their families. As the town developed, speculative housing and multiple family dwelling units were introduced into this neighborhood. Columbia Heights has once again become a popular neighborhood for Trail citizens.