Anyox was a small company-owned mining town in

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada. Today it is a ghost town, abandoned and largely destroyed. It is located on the shores of Granby Bay in coastal

Observatory Inlet Observatory Inlet is an inlet on the North Coast of British Columbia. It is a northward extension of Portland Inlet, other branches of which include the Portland Canal. The entrance of Observatory Inlet, from Portland Inlet, lies between Ramsden ...

, about southeast of (but no land link to)

Stewart, British Columbia Stewart is a district municipality at the head of the Portland Canal in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, near the Alaskan panhandle. In 2011, its population was about 494. History The Nisga'a, who live around the Nass River, called the h ...

, and about , across wilderness, east of the tip of the

Alaska Panhandle Southeast Alaska, colloquially referred to as the Alaska(n) Panhandle, is the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Alaska, bordered to the east and north by the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia (and a small part ...

Early history

The remote valley was long a hunting and trapping area for the Nisga'a, and the name Anyox means “hidden waters” in the Nisga'a language. The first Europeans in the area were the members of the Vancouver Expedition, who surveyed the inlet in 1793. Nisga'a legends told of a mountain of gold, attracting speculators for years. In 1910, the

Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Company Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Co. was established by charter to operate in the Boundary region of southern British Columbia. Primarily involved in the mining and smelting of copper, the conglomerate became a publicly traded compan ...

(Granby Consolidated) started buying land in the area. They soon found gold.

Town and mines

Granby Consolidated started construction of the town in 1912. By 1914, Anyox had grown to a population of almost 3,000 residents, as the mine and smelter were put into full operation; rich lodes of copper and other precious metals were mined from the nearby mountains. Granby Consolidated moved its copper mining interests here from Phoenix, British Columbia. Copper was mined from the Hidden Creek and Bonanza deposits and smelted on site.

Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

to fuel the

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including Silver mining#Ore processing, silver, iron-making, iron, copper extracti ...

was shipped from the company built and owned town of Granby on

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are o ...

and Fernie in southeastern British Columbia. Anyox had no rail nor road links to the rest of British Columbia, with all connection served by ocean steamers that traveled to

Prince Rupert Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, (17 December 1619 (O.S.) / 27 December (N.S.) – 29 November 1682 (O.S.)) was an English army officer, admiral, scientist and colonial governor. He first came to prominence as a Royalist cavalr ...

( southwest) and

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

. The company town was a very large operation with onsite railways, machine shops, curling rink, golf course and a hospital. In the spring of 1918, Granby Consolidated built the first wooden tennis court in Canada, for additional recreation. That same year, incoming ships brought the

Spanish flu epidemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

to Anyox. Charles Clarkson Rhodes, the Chief Accountant for the Granby Consolidated operations in Anyox, died on October 29, 1918, while helping to treat patients in the Anyox Hospital. Dozens of workers and residents of Anyox died from that flu epidemic. In the early 1920s, concrete pioneer and dam engineer John S. Eastwood designed a

hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

dam which, standing high, was the tallest dam in Canada for many years. Anyox was almost wiped out by forest fires in 1923, but the townsite was rebuilt and mining operations continued.

Acid rain Acid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). Most water, including drinking water, has a neutral pH that exists between 6.5 and 8.5, but acid ...

from the smelter denuded the trees from the hillsides which soon became bare. The

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

drove down the demand for copper, effectively the beginning of the end for Anyox. Operations continued, but were steadily scaled down while the company stockpiled of copper, three years of production, that it was unable to sell. The mine shut down in 1935, and the town was abandoned. Salvage operations in the 1940s removed most machinery and steel from the town, and two forest fires, in 1942 and 1943, burned all remaining wood structures. During its 25 year existence, Anyox’ mines and smelters produced of gold, of silver and of copper.

Ongoing developments

Active mineral exploration continues in the area. In the 1980s, local entrepreneurs teamed with Vancouver investors to purchase the long dormant operations from the owner of record. Whenever there is a rise in the price of copper, there is speculation about the possibility of re-development – though none has ever occurred. Since 2000, the current owners have been trying to attract interest in rehabilitating the hydroelectric dam, to either supply the British Columbia grid or to attract and serve an on-site natural gas liquefaction facility. The town was the subject of the 2022 documentary film ''

Anyox Anyox was a small company-owned mining town in British Columbia, Canada. Today it is a ghost town, abandoned and largely destroyed. It is located on the shores of Granby Bay in coastal Observatory Inlet, about southeast of (but no land link to) ...

''.Marc van de Klashorst
"Cinéma du Réel 2022 review: Anyox (Jessica Johnson & Ryan Ermacora)"
''International Cinephile Society'', March 14, 2022.

Notable residents

Former Vancouver mayor Jack Volrich was one of the 351 people born in Anyox, as was

Thomas Waterland Thomas Manville Waterland (born December 15, 1933) was a mining engineer and political figure in British Columbia. He represented Yale-Lillooet in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia from 1975 to 1986 as a Social Credit member. He was ...

, MLA for

Yale-Lillooet Yale-Lillooet was a provincial electoral district for the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Canada. It first appeared in the 1966 General Election, when it superseded the older Lillooet riding, which was one of the province's original ...

from 1975 to 1986.

Reid Mitchell John Reid Mitchell (October 6, 1926 – February 24, 2012) was a Canadian basketball player who competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics. He was part of the Canadian basketball team, which finished ninth in the Olympic tournament. Mitchell was bor ...

, who represented Canada in basketball at the 1948 Olympics, also was born in Anyox.

References

External links

Pictures of Anyox today
{{Coord, 55.417, N, 129.833, W, display=title, type:city_region:CA_source:GNS-enwiki Ghost towns in British Columbia Company towns in Canada North Coast of British Columbia