Photo:
E. (Andy) Cleven |
This view is of the long-vanished town of Minto City in
its last days, just prior to he flooding of the fall of 1957 when
the waters of Carpenter Lake rose over the foundations of Minto's
buildings, which were by then demolished. Minto was the
brainchild of Bill Davidson, a prospector and speculator, who
developed a model town (named for Lord Minto, one of the main
investors), but the diggings were not profitable and Minto was
abandoned as an economic enterprise quite a few years before its
inundation by hydroelectric development. The waters were always
shallow - today Minto often stands as "dry" land when the waters of
the reservoir are low, with the street grid and the imprint of one or
two foundations visible from the road, which runs across the bottom of
the hillside at left. A famous structure which I'll find a
picture of to add to these pages was a huge stope - mine entrance -
which ran out over the main road between Bridge River (Shalalth) and
Gold Bridge. I remember Minto as an extensive mine complex,
although I was too young to notice how ramshackle it was,
perhaps. Bill Davidson's other notable legacy in the area was his
Little Gun Lake Lodge, opened as his own private residence but
variously a ski lodge, small 14-room private hotel and other uses over
the years - one of the finest and most precisely built log cabins in
BC.....today a private residence, I think. |
