Our featured place this week is Stewart B.C., which is a border town near the end of the Portland canal and the border of Alaska. Forestry and mining are the two main industries of the area, mining being what prompted white settlers to the area in 1898. The Nisga’a First Nation called the Stewart area Skam-A-Kounst, meaning “safe house” or “strong house.” Stewart is named for the Stewart brothers from Victoria, who held interests in a number of mines in the area at the turn of the century.
The featured item from Stewart is from our B.C. Historical Photograph Collection and shows a tram at one of mines in Stewart:
BC1538, Head of Porter-Idaho tram
This snowy photograph was taken in 1933 at the Porter-Idaho mine. This aerial tram line was built in 1928 to run from the mouth of the Marmot River up Mount Rainey to the mine.
In the Barber Centre, the Stewart room is room 184, a meeting room on the first floor.
To learn more about our historical photograph collections, you can consult our Historical Photographs Research Guide.
Hello folks…
Terrific image!! What other information do you have…provenance etc?
We’re in the process of building a hist’l-geog’c file on the Porter-Idaho mine- part of a spl interest initiative focusing on aerial tramways. What other images might you have that might be relevant to our interest?
One niggling thought-the image as presented looks to be reversed!
Mike Kennedy
Hi Mike! Thanks for the great feedback. This is the only image that comes up in that collection for Porter-Idaho, but if you search for Stewart you will also find this record:
http://bibrrs.library.ubc.ca:7108/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=209948
A great source for B.C. photographs is the Jim Spilsbury fonds: http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/AZ/PDF/S/Spilsbury_A.J.pdf
You might also try a search through the BC Historical Newspapers:
http://historicalnewspapers.library.ubc.ca/
And yes, it could very well have been printed backwards- we only have a print, not the negative. Thanks for the tip!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8J0FmqGraM
Hi Folks again…re: Porter-Idaho project…see link!!
Mike