1905 - Fernie City Hall - Fernie, BC
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T0SHEA
N 49° 30.244 W 115° 03.759
11U E 640263 N 5485296
Occupying an entire city block between 3rd and 4th Avenues and 5th and 6th Streets, the Fernie City Hall is centred in a park-like setting decorated with historical information and artwork.
Waymark Code: WMPW95
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Date Posted: 10/28/2015
Views: 2
Built in 1905, city hall was initially the offices of the Crows Nest Pass Coal Company, the town's major employer at the time. It's a beautiful old concrete block building, two storeys high, standing on a raised basement. The building was donated to the town by then owners, Shell Canada Limited, on March 1, 1993. As it was coal which gave birth to the City of Fernie, is seems only fitting that the city's government today be seated in the one time offices of the company primarily responsible for its existence.
Formed in 1897 with a coal mine at Coal Creek east of the present town of Fernie, the Crows Nest Pass Coal Company soon became one of the major players in the Elk Valley, as is exemplified by, this, its Fernie offices, built in 1905. The company continued in production while others faltered and disappeared, opening operations in Michel/Natal near Sparwood in 1901 and at Morrissey about seven miles south of Fernie in 1902. The company capitalized on the lucrative coking coal market developing in the Pacific Northwest states and at Trail, BC by building no less than 1188 coke ovens by 1904.
The Crows Nest Pass Coal Company managed to continue in production through the depression but, in 1968, most of its assets and properties were taken over by J. Edgar Kaiser. In 2004 the five remaining Elk Valley mines were consolidated into one large entity known as the Elk Valley Coal Partnership. In 2008 Teck acquired all interests in the partnership, today shipping 25 million tons of coking coal around the world annually.
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