SILVER RUSH: BRITISH COLUMBIA’S SILVERY SLOCAN: 1891-1900
Silver Rush 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.
This book will be of interest to history buffs, mining enthusiasts and genealogists in British Columbia, Washington, Idaho and around the world.
Comprehensive Name Index with dozens of unpublished photographs

SILVER RUSH: BRITISH COLUMBIA’S SILVERY SLOCAN: 1891-1900
Reviews
Nelson Star
British Columbia Reviews
I am very pleased to announce that Silver Rush won the Lieutenant Governor's Community History award
for BC historical writing, for 2020, awarded by the British Columbia Historical Federation.
“By far the most detailed and accurate account of the Silvery Slocan mining rush ever written. Highly entertaining too.”
“A mass of information not previously available.”
Greg Nesteroff, Historian, author, news editor.
R. Cole Harris, Professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, author of “Ranch in the Slocan.”
Reader's Comments
""The definitive book on the early silver rush!"
"It is wonderful"
"What a wealth of fascinating details"
"A huge source of new information"
"Descriptions of life for the early prospectors is priceless."
"Beyond epic."
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