SILVER RUSH: BRITISH COLUMBIA’S SILVERY SLOCAN: 1891-1900
This was my first book on the history of the Slocan silver rush. Self-published in 2020, it is now out of print. It tells the story of British Columbia’s “Silvery Slocan.” In the 1890s, mining camps like Sandon, Three Forks, Whitewater and their neighbours; New Denver, Silverton, Slocan City, Kaslo and Nakusp, thrived. Once the most productive mining region in British Columbia, prospectors and miners came from Idaho, Montana and other mining centres to reap the silver harvest. Capitalists flooded in from Spokane, Seattle, Vancouver, and investment centres across North America and the world. Plummeting silver prices, labour troubles and the Klondike gold rush eventually put an end to the silver rush but the legacy of that rush endures to this day.
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THE SILVERY SLOCAN: 1891 - 1900
MINING CAMP TALES OF THE SILVERY SLOCAN
This is my second book dealing with the history of the Slocan Silver Rush. It was published in2025 by Heritage House Publishing. It includes some material from Silver Rush, but much additional information and a comprehensive index
BIO
Peter Smith was born and raised in Victoria and the Saanich peninsula on Vancouver Island.
In the mid-1970s he moved to the Slocan, had breakfast at New Denver’s Newmarket Hotel, and was captivated by the region’s history.
Part owner of a mining claim south of Silverton, he eventually moved back to Victoria. With a post-graduate degree in Folklife Studies from the University of Leeds, U.K., he worked for many years in British Columbia’s civil service at the Ministries of Transportation, Provincial Secretary, Environment, and Agriculture.
He retired as Director of the province’s Information Access and Records Service Delivery Division in 2011.
He currently lives in Ladysmith, B.C.
The author in 1970s at a mine site above Silverton
