Incorporation for the town of Phoenix came about in 1898. It was a company town, created by Granby Consolidated Mining, which owned and operated the Phoenix Copper Mine adjacent to the town on the top of Phoenix Mountain. At an elevation of 4,630 feet above sea level, it once advertised itself as "Canada's Highest City". The Phoenix hockey team won the provincial championship, in 1911 and some historians believe that Phoenix was home to the first women’s hockey team. Things went smoothly for the town until the end of The Great War.
Just after World War I the town/city of Phoenix had a population of about 4,000 souls, with all the facilities and amenities one would expect to find in a town of its size. The lifeblood of the town was still the Phoenix Copper Mine, still owned and operated by Granby Consolidated Mining. With the end of the war the price of copper crashed, forcing a shutdown of the mine on June 14, 1919. The mine ultimately produced 13,678,901 tonnes of ore. Plans for a cenotaph to honour the fifteen local men who had died in the war were already under way. To pay for it, lumber and steel from the town's hockey arena were sold, raising $1,200, enough to pay for the cenotaph and donate $400 to the Grand Forks Legion, the nearest legion at the time.
With the closing of the mine, the townspeople drifted away, leaving Phoenix nearly totally deserted when the mine reopened in the 1950s. Previously an underground mine, this time it became an open pit mine, swallowing up what remained of the town. All that is left as a reminder that a town once stood on the mountain is the large open pit, now with a lake forming in the bottom, and the tall stone cenotaph, a memorial to both the fifteen who did not return, and to the town itself.
If you wish to visit the townsite and the cenotaph, simply head up the mountain east from
Greenwood on Greenwood Street, which becomes Phoenix Road, for about 5 or 6 kilometres. You'll eventually see the open pit on your right and the cenotaph on the left, beside the road. Back down the road one kilometre or so are two cemeteries, the main Phoenix Cemetery and a smaller one with about five headstones, including that of William H. Bambury, the last resident of Phoenix. Bambury was born in England in 1967, the same year that Canada was born, and passed away in Greenwood in 1951.
The Cenotaph of Phoenix
There’s a greater appreciation of ghost towns in the Kootenays than most places.
“For a place that’s relatively small, the amount of history generated is rather remarkable,” says Greg Nesteroff, a journalist with the Nelson Star who has researched many of Kootenay’s ghost towns.
“The history itself is so fascinating and diverse. It’s not just railway and forestry or mining, there’s all of those things.”
In a boom-and-bust region where towns would quickly come and go, there are many ghost towns that dot the highways.
Most are lost to history – but one has an eight-foot-high monument in its honor.
Well, sort of.
The word cenotaph is Greek for “empty tomb,” and you can find plenty of them throughout Canada. From coast-to-coast, there are monuments, many of which were erected in honour of those who died in World War I.
One of them is in Phoenix, B.C. Today, it’s best known as a ski hill sitting between Greenwood and and Grand Forks. A century ago, with a population of nearly 4,000, it had equal standing with them in terms of population...
...Incorporated as a town in 1898, Phoenix had one of the most productive copper mines in B.C. for nearly two decades. It was of a company town, owned by Granby Consolidated Mining, which created lavish towns for its workers and their families.
In 1911, the Phoenix Hockey Club won the McBride Cup, given to B.C.’s top hockey team. They challenged the Ottawa Hockey Club for the Stanley Cup – but the team declined, saying it was too late in the year.
In the end, the fate of Phoenix was like so many other mining towns – when the price of copper crashed, the mine was shut down. However, when Granby announced the shutdown, the townsfolk were planning a cenotaph to honor 15 people from Phoenix who died in the First World War.
To make it a reality, the lumber and and iron were sold from the skating rink.
$1200 was raised, enough to build the cenotaph and donate $400 to the Legion in Grand Forks. By the time it was erected in 1920, the town buildings with any value were being shipped away.
“I’m trying to think if there’s another ghost town that has a cenotaph , and I can not think of it,” says Nesteroff.
The mine was reopened in the 1950s, operating as an open pit for nearly 20 years, before shutting down again. Today, Nesteroff says there are only a few people alive who ever lived in Phoenix. Only the mine pit, a decaying graveyard, and a few destroyed shacks remain.
Along with the cenotaph .
“It’s all the more poignant because it’s not just the men for the first world war, it’s a monument to the town of itself.”