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In this wilderness of rugged Mountains ore was first found in the late 1880's. Further prospects led to the building of a large smelter by the BC copper company. From 1901: copper, gold and silver poured from it's furnaces. Fed by the great Motherlode mine which emploed 400 people. The collapse of the inflated Wartime copper prices led to it's closure in 1918.
Located on Crow's Nest Highway #3, Greenwood is the smallest city in British Columbia & Canada. Founded on July 12th, 1897, as a mining supply centre for the rich mines at Phoenix, Mother Lode and dozens of smaller mines surrounding the City. The establishment of a BC Copper Company smelter, the Columbia & Western Railway (Canadian Pacific Railway) soon followed. Greenwood was on its way to its short-lived prominence, the rich heritage of a Victorian-era mining and smelting City with a population at an estimated 3 000, until 1918 when the mines and smelter closed. The fires in the smelter had died, and closed down for good, leaving only a huge black wall of slag to greet travelers and the 35m high smokestack.
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