Anyox facts for kids
Anyox was once a busy mining town in British Columbia, Canada. It was a "company town," meaning one company owned most of it and ran everything. Today, Anyox is a ghost town, which means it's abandoned and mostly in ruins. You can find it on the coast of Granby Bay, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Stewart, British Columbia. It's a remote place, with no roads connecting it to other towns.
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Anyox's Early Days
The land where Anyox was built has a long history. For many years, it was a hunting and trapping area for the Nisga'a people. The name "Anyox" actually comes from the Nisga'a language and means "hidden waters."
The first Europeans to explore this area were part of the Vancouver Expedition in 1793. They mapped the coast. The Nisga'a people had stories about a "mountain of gold," which made many people want to search for riches there. In 1910, a company called the Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Company (or Granby Consolidated for short) began buying land. They soon discovered valuable minerals.
Building the Town and Mines
Granby Consolidated started building the town of Anyox in 1912. By 1914, it was a booming place with almost 3,000 people living there! The company opened a large mine and a smelter, which is a factory that melts metal from rocks. They found lots of copper and other precious metals in the nearby mountains.
The company moved its copper mining operations to Anyox from another town called Phoenix, British Columbia. Copper was dug out of two main places, Hidden Creek and Bonanza, and then melted right there in Anyox. To power the smelter, they needed coal. This coal was shipped in from other company-owned towns, like Granby on Vancouver Island and Fernie, British Columbia.
Life in a Company Town
Anyox was very isolated. There were no trains or roads connecting it to the rest of British Columbia. Everything came and went by ocean steamers, which are large ships. These ships traveled to Prince Rupert, British Columbia (about 145 kilometers or 90 miles southwest) and Vancouver.
Even though it was remote, Anyox was a very organized town. It had its own railways, workshops for machines, a curling rink, a golf course, and even a hospital. In 1918, the company built Canada's first wooden tennis court for people to enjoy.
Sadly, in the spring of 1918, ships arriving in Anyox also brought the Spanish flu epidemic. This was a very serious illness that spread quickly. Many workers and residents in Anyox became sick, and dozens died. Charles Clarkson Rhodes, who was the Chief Accountant for the company, died while helping sick people in the hospital.
Anyox's Big Dam
In the early 1920s, a clever engineer named John S. Eastwood designed a huge hydroelectric dam for Anyox. This dam, which was 47.5 meters (156 feet) high, was the tallest dam in Canada for many years! It used the power of water to create electricity for the town and mines.
In 1923, large forest fires almost destroyed Anyox. But the town was rebuilt, and the mining continued. However, the smelter caused acid rain, which made the trees on the hillsides die, leaving the land bare.
The End of Anyox
The Great Depression, a time when the economy was very bad, started to cause problems for Anyox. People didn't need as much copper, so the demand for it dropped. The company kept mining but slowly produced less and less. They even had 45,000 metric tons (100 million pounds) of copper stored up that they couldn't sell!
Finally, in 1935, the mine closed down, and the town of Anyox was abandoned. In the 1940s, people came to salvage, or remove, most of the valuable machinery and steel. Then, two more forest fires, in 1942 and 1943, burned down all the remaining wooden buildings.
During its 25 years of operation, the mines and smelters in Anyox produced a huge amount of metals:
- About 4 metric tons (140,000 ounces) of gold
- About 227 metric tons (8 million ounces) of silver
- About 345,000 metric tons (760 million pounds) of copper
Notable People from Anyox
Even though Anyox was a small town, some famous people were born there:
- Jack Volrich, who later became the Mayor of Vancouver.
- Thomas Waterland, who was a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the Yale-Lillooet area.
- Reid Mitchell, who played basketball for Canada in the 1948 Olympics.
- Denny Boyd, a well-known reporter for the Vancouver Sun newspaper.
See Also
- Ghost town
- Company town
