Burlington Northern Railway Station - Salmo, BC - Western Canadian Heritage on Waymarking.com

Waymark Code: WM12ZHC

Location: British Columbia, Canada

Date Posted: 08/14/2020

Published By: bluesnote

Views: 1

Built around 1913, this little single storey, wood framed station was built in Canada by an American railroad, the Great Northern Railway (GNR). Today the building is a Designated Heritage Railway Station, protected under the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act. The line which the depot served was originally built as the Beaver Falls and Nelson and Fort Sheppard Extension of the Spokane Falls & Northern Railroad by American entrepreneur and railroad builder, Daniel Corbin, then of Spokane, WA.

The Historic Places Canada text, quoted below, is misleading, in that it was not the Great Northern Railway (GNR) which invaded the Nelson-Salmo area from the south, but Daniel Corbin's Spokane Falls & Northern Railway. His Spokane Falls & Northern Railway remained independent until 1898. In that year control passed first to the Northern Pacific and then to the Great Northern through stock purchases. At the time of construction of this depot, however, the line was under the control of the GNR, but Corbin was, by then, out of the picture. One hundred kilometres further west, however, in the Grand Forks area, the Great Northern was actively building railways to nearby copper mines concurrent with construction of the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway.

Daniel Corbin's Spokane Falls & Northern Railway was completed north from Spokane to Colville, WA on October 18 1889. By 1890 the railway had been completed to near Northport, WA. In 1891, Corbin received a charter from the Canadian government for the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway. The government had misgivings about granting Corbin a charter, fearing that it would allow the gold, silver and copper riches of the area to flow south to Spokane. By promising to connect the railway to the coast and by using a group of Canadian businessmen as a front for the railway, Corbin got his charter. The connection to the coast was never built but the railway did reach Nelson in 1893. The line from the border to Nelson came to be known as the Beaver Falls and Nelson and Fort Sheppard Extension of the Spokane Falls & Northern Railroad, or, more simply, the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway, Fort Sheppard being just north of the border and across the Columbia River from Waneta.

At the time, it was competing with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) for supremacy in the mineral rich area of the southern British Columbia Interior. The Canadian Pacific Railway reacted by building the Columbia and Kootenay Railway(C&K) between Robson (near Castlegar) and Nelson in 1891.

Later, with railway amalgamation, the station and the line were taken over by the Burlington Northern. It likely was last used as a passenger Depot in the late 1960s. Today the section of line from Salmo north to Nelson is a rails to trails trail. A section from Fruitvale south to the border is still in use, hauling wood products from Fruitvale and ore north to a transfer station south of the Trail airport which is then trucked the final few miles to the Teck Smelter in Trail.