From: http://spatialitism.wordpress.com
Continuing in the vein of the Hawley Town Commons in Western Massachusetts and the changing rural landscape of Saint-Sylvestre, Québec, I present now to you the ghost town of Phoenix, British Columbia. Phoenix is located in the Kootenay Mountains of eastern BC, not far north of the American border.
Phoenix, BC, 1912
About a century ago, Phoenix was a thriving copper mining town. It boasted modern amenities such as electricity and phone lines, there was a ballroom and an opera house. it had a stop on the stage lines that ran through the Boundary Region of the Kootenays, there was a post office and around 1900, both the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Great Northern Railway arrived in Phoenix. In short, the town had made it. It was thriving. But as was often the case in the mining regions of the North American west, the boom years were short. At the end of the First World War, the price of copper dropped dramatically and the Phoenix Mine was shut down. And the town of Phoenix died.
Phoenix First World War Cenotaph, 1937
In the 1920s, the homes and buildings were torn down or buried and there was nothing left of Phoenix, except for its First World War cenotaph, which is still there today. Otherwise, nature has reclaimed the old town site of Phoenix, despite the operation of an open-pit mine in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. When I visited Phoenix about 15 years ago, I was floored by the site. I had seen other ghost towns in BC, most notably Barkerville, a tourist site. But many other sites I had seen were maintained to at least some degree. Phoenix was a smallish clearing in the dense forest, and the forest was rapidly moving back in, re-claiming its territory. The grave yard was the most fascinating location on the old Phoenix townsite. Most of the head stones were long gone. Many of the graves no doubt never had a proper head stone in the first place, graves marked by wooden crosses, wooden heads, or whatever was handy. One grave, otherwise unmarked, had a furniture cabinet as a marker.
But otherwise, the grave yard had 80 year old pine trees reclaiming their territory, encouraged by the heavy fertiliser in the soil in the form of decomposing human bodies. (Since my visit, residents of nearby towns have sought to restore the graveyard some, restoring the headstones that do exist). What struck me the most about standing in the Phoenix cemetery, though, was not so much the dilapidated headstones, the cenotaph in the distance, or the trees. It was the black bear about 500 metres away, happily munching away on some berries. It was also the bear that convinced us to get back in the car, slowly and quietly, and get the hell out of there.
Andrew Phillip Chernoff 