Rosebery is an unincorporated community about north of New Denver in the

West Kootenay The Kootenays or Kootenay ( ) is a region of southeastern British Columbia. It takes its name from the Kootenay River, which in turn was named for the Kutenai First Nations people. Boundaries The Kootenays are more or less defined by the Koot ...

region of southeastern

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, ...

. The former steamboat landing and ferry terminal is at the mouth of Wilson Creek on the eastern shore of Slocan Lake. The locality, on BC Highway 6, is about by road north of Castlegar and by road and ferry south of Revelstoke.

Name origin

Wilson Creek, the former name, came from the creek flowing through the hamlet. The naming honoured either John Wilson, a resident until about 1902, or Arthur M. Wilson, the Slocan's first justice of the peace, who staked land at the creek in 1891, and left in the late 1890s. The Slocan Trading and Navigation Co. (ST&N) steamboat ''Wm. Hunter'', launched at New Denver in November 1892, would have served the location on its regular trips from New Denver to the head and foot of the lake. With the coming railway, a townsite was surveyed and renamed Rosebery, in honour of the prime minister of Great Britain,

Lord Rosebery Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian, (7 May 1847 – 21 May 1929) was a British Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from March 1894 to June 1895. Between the death of ...

. He may have been a Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) director. From the beginning, the place name was often misspelled Roseberry.

Rail/ferry expansion

The southeastward advance of the Nakusp & Slocan Railway (N&S) rail head from Nakusp reached Rosebery in August 1894, and the terminus at Three Forks that November. CP, the N&S owner, built a medium sized station, section house, freight shed, sidings, and wharf at Rosebery, which was the transfer terminal for travel to other points on the lake. The ST&N, which had primarily served New Denver to Silverton and Bonanza City, substituted Rosebery/Wilson Creek for the latter from the beginning of 1895. The transshipment of ore, even from the foot of the lake, was initially northward via Rosebery to the CP main line. The Columbia and Kootenay Steam Navigation Company (C&KSN) acquired ST&N, and CP bought C&KSN in February 1897, which included the small Rosebery shipyard. During the earlier years, ongoing improvements were made to the Rosebery wharf infrastructure, ultimately allowing a seamless rolling of freight cars onto/off a

rail barge A railroad car float or rail barge is a specialised form of lighter with railway tracks mounted on its deck used to move rolling stock across water obstacles, or to locations they could not otherwise go. An unpowered barge, it is towed by a tugb ...

. From 1897, the Rosebery– Slocan City ferry linked to the CP

Columbia and Kootenay Railway The Columbia and Kootenay Railway (C&KR) was a historic railway operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. This route, beside the unnavigable Kootenay River, linked Nelson on the west arm of ...

(C&K). In 1898, CP installed a

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

at Rosebery. CP acquired the abandoned

Kaslo and Slocan Railway The Kaslo and Slocan Railway (K&S) is a historic railway that operated in the West Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia. The K&S connected Kaslo and Sandon. Initially a narrow-gauge railway, the line was later rebuilt to standard gau ...

, rebuilt the infrastructure to standard gauge, and opened the link to

Kaslo Kaslo is a village on the west shore of Kootenay Lake in the West Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia. A member municipality of the Central Kootenay Regional District, the name derives from the adjacent Kaslo River. At 2016, the p ...

in 1913.

Early rail/ferry accidents

1897: A brakeman, who fell between cars, sustained a crushed leg. 1898: Two loaded freight cars plunged into the lake during unloading from a barge. 1899: On departing, a deckhand fell from the barge and drowned in the frigid waters.

Community

In 1897, an English syndicate bought the townsite. The population of 85 included 21 children. However, being a strategic rail/ferry transport link alone was insufficient to elevate Rosebery to the likes of district communities thriving during the mining boom. The opening and closure of the post office, and periods of losing a hotel and store, reflected the uncertainty. Announcements of projects to build a

concentrator In the evolution of modern telecommunications systems there was a requirement to connect large numbers of low-speed access devices with large telephone company 'central office' switches over common paths. During the first generations of digital netw ...

came to naught. When one was finally built, it operated less than a year, with limited temporary use years later. Nowadays, Rosebery is a largely agricultural, recreation-retirement and resource community.

Rail/ferry contraction

The station was southwest of Denver Canyon, and southeast of Hills. A wye replaced the turntable. The final passenger train northeast of Roseberry ran in 1933. Damage from the 1955 floods on Carpenter Creek ended all traffic east of Denver Canyon. The final passenger service on the remainder of the line and by ferry across the lake ended in 1954. The final freight run on these sections was either December 1988 or March 1989. However, by the 1960s, the latter service had reduced to twice weekly, and once weekly by 1980.

Japanese internment

Rosebery was one of the smaller West Kootenay internment camps housing Japanese Canadians removed from the BC coast during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. Holding 357 individuals, the centre had the smallest number of children attending school, about 100.

References

{{reflist Unincorporated settlements in British Columbia Populated places in the Slocan World War II internment camps in Canada