Railroad History in Ymir, BC - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

RAILROAD HISTORY

With the end of the gold rush on the Pend d'Oreille River in 1885, the miners started moving north up the Salmon River. A few settled at the mouth of Quartz Creek. in the summer of 1895, Jerome and Joseph Pitre and Oliver Blair staked the first claims of what was to become the Ymir Gold Mine. When they returned to Colville the word spread that they had found gold, then the following year many more claims were staked in the area. When the Ymir mine was staked in 1895, a railroad station was built just north of Quartz Creek, naming it Ymir after the mountain to the north. With the staking of the Ymir mines such as the Dundee, Porto Rico, Tamarack, Hunter V, Yankee Girl, Blackcock, Wilcox and many others, followed by the completion of the railroad, Ymir blossomed into a major mining community.

The Salmo Ymir - Troup section of the Spirit of 2010 Trail is marked by a rugged landscape and a colourful history. Like many of the other rail line segments of the trail, rail expansion began with the drive to find huge deposits of gold, silver, lead and copper in the area, in the 1880s and 1890s. This section of the rail line was built by American Daniel Corbin. His Spokane Falls and Northern (SF&N) Railway reached navigable water on the Columbia River only 24 kilometers south of the Canada/US border in 1890.

Corbon continued building his railway north and completed the Nelson and Fort Shepard (N&FS) Railway in 1593, providing Nelson with an uninterrupted rail line to Spokane, Washington. Another significant step in railway expansion was the opening of the Great Northern Railway main line from Spokane to Seattle also in 1893. The rail line was initially forced to use Mountain Station, lotated high above Nelson, with a steamer dock at Troup, 8 kilometers north east of the Queen City on Kootenay Lake. In 1895 a rail loop was established at Troup with a line along the lake to the outskirts of a neighbourhood called Bogus Town just outside of Nelson, now known as the Fairview neighbourhood.

In 1898 the Great Northern Railway acquired a controlling interest in both SF&N and N&FS Railways, and two years later, acquired running rights to the new CPR station in Nelson. Great Northern Railway purchased SF&N outright in 1907 and the N&FS in 1944 and merged into the Burlington Northern system in 1970.

In the early days, the rail line formed an important connection for the West Kootenay mining towns, allowing efficient shipping of their rich ores to the US. Passenger traffic also flowed between Nelson and Spokane from 1893 to 1941. All train traffic into the region ceased in 1989, except in the section between Waneta and Ross Spur that continues to see active rail use to this day. In 1998 the Rails and ties were removed between Ross spur and Salmo, and in 1999 the final removal of the rails and ties between Salmo and Troup was completed.
From the Plaque