Chenier's Cigar Store - Greenwood, BC - 1903 - Vintage Ad Locations on Waymarking.com

Anaconda was/is a small town immediately south of Greenwood and was the location of the local copper smelter. Anaconda had hoped to displace Greenwood as the major commercial centre here, but that never happened and Anaconda is now just a couple of streets of houese, with essentially no commercial activity. The Anaconda News was a small paper that ran in competition with The Ledge in Greenwood, rather unsuccessfully.

Greenwood was just one of dozens of mining towns which sprang up in the boundary country of southern BC in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Cigar stores were one of the most common sights in western towns in 1903 and stage coach stops came one to a town and, according to this ad, Chenier's Cigar Store was both. On Copper Street, which served as main street for Greenwood, this stage stop was right beside both the Pacific and Windsor Hotels. These happen to be the only two vintage hotels in the city which have survived to this day, the rest having burned or been demolished, mostly burned.

Though this would be the location of the one time Chenier's Cigar Store, next door north of the Pacific Hotel, this is not the building in which they would have been located as it wasn't built until the 1960s. The original may have burned or may have been demolished. The "Petersen's Grocery" sign on the building says nothing whatever about a previous occupant. It was painted on during the creation of the set for the movie "Snow Falling on Cedars!", which used downtown Greenwood to stand in for Amity Harbor, WA in the movie. Today, this building stands empty, awaiting a new owner.

Louis Ostrosky, a German immigrant, built the Greenwood Trading Co. in 1897. The building operated as a general store until 1907. In 1907 it was purchased by R Burns and Co. of Calgary, Alberta and operated as a meat market for many years.The addition to the left was built in the late 1960's. The sign Petersen's Grocery is from the movie "Snow Falling on Cedars!"
From the Greenwood Heritage Walk