Friends and colleagues, we have a New Year’s resolution for 2014: to finally finish all of our Featured Place posts for our blog! This has been an ongoing feature where we feature items in our collections relating to the places in B.C. that are the namesakes of the rooms in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Today we’re going to look for resources to do with Wells B.C. Wells is located in the Cariboo district between Quesnel and Barkerville- much closer to Barkerville though! Today it is mostly a tourist town, accommodating visitors on their way to Barkerville, but it was originally founded as a company town for the Cariboo Gold Quartz Mining Company- whose archives we happen to house here in Rare Books and Special Collection. The town of Wells was named after one of the founders of the company, Fred Wells. The town was established in the first year the mine went into production, which was 1933, and the population plummeted when the mine closed in 1967.
In addition to letters, reports, and maps, the fonds has a number of photographs showing the development of the mine and the town. These mini panoramas (the originals are just over 15 cm in length!) show the mine and the surrounding area ca. the 1930’s:
You can click on the images above to see them much larger. The Wells Classroom is room 461 in the Barber Centre.
We’re looking forward to featuring more B.C. places in 2014- we hope you’ll read along with us!