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Abstract

A well-developed industrial mining complex, worked out in the hardrock mining camps of the American West, poured into the Slocan Valley in the 1890s. With it came a mixture of peoples, technologies of mining and transportation adapted to mountainous terrain, services, and the institutions of class conflict in industrial societies. This booklet, based on an article in the Canadian Historical Review in 1985, describes how these peoples, technologies, services, and institutions arranged themselves around Idaho Peak. It also describes the societies left behind when the boom was over, and what is now known of the Sinixt people in the Slocan during the century before the miners arrived.