ROSSLAND HISTORY
The mining camp of Rossland was established in 1890, the same year gold was discovered on nearby Red Mountain. Numerous other claims were soon staked and worked and by 1895, Rossland was a bustling frontier town. Soon after the turn of the century, the Rossland Mines were worked out and the City gradually became a residential area for the workers at the smelter in nearby Trail.
Rossland today continues as a residential community but it is also the home of an excellent mining museum with its underground mine, a renowned ski area (made famous by Olympic Ski Champion Nancy Greene) and mountain biking.
The nearby forests were all logged at that time to provide lumber for the cities of Trail and Rossland, as well as mine timber for the square set stopes. Fire damage has been light in the area. Old fire areas are the jackpine forest on Blackjack Mountain, Record Ridge, small areas on Lake Mountain and Grey Mountain.
There are many old shafts and pits to be avoided while travelling through this area, particularly on skis. The forest has covered up the dumps from the old workings so that some of the pits are not too obvious. The area behind the mountain has been restored to eliminate these old mine risks.
ROSSLAND GEOLOGY
There was an early period of sedimentation that produced the oldest formation, the Mount Roberts argillites that outcrop on the east side of Mt Roberts and the west side of Red Mt and are the host rocks for molybdenite ores. This was followed much later by volcanism that deposited the Rossland volcanics. Much later, 49 million years ago, there was a period of batholithic intrusion. A contemporary volcanic period is shown as caps on OK, Roberts, Grey, Kirkup and Old Glory mountains. Mineralization with gold-copper ores and older molybdenum ores was then introduced into certain favourable rocks.
In 1890, Bourgeois and Morris staked the first claim on Red Mountain.
The Rossland mines produced 6.2 million tons of gold-copper ores with .47 oz gold, .6oz silver and 1% copper. Most of the production was before 1930. From 1966 to 1972, 1.335 million tons of molybdenum ore produced 3.65 million pounds of molybdenum.
The effect of alpine glaciation is shown by the glacier-scoured valleys of Big and Little Sheep Creeks that carried the melt waters of the glaciers, and now, in part, meander through relatively flat, wide valleys. Nearly all the high mountains show the steep headwall of a glacier cirque on their northeast side with a more gently sloping southwest flank where the sun removed the snow to permit normal weathering processes – best shown by viewing the profile of Old Glory and Abercrombie Mt, 40kms to the SE – both show the steep headwall of a cirque carved by a glacier on the shaded northerly side and a gently sloping southerly side. These glaciers have since melted, and even though Rossland averages a seven-foot snowpack, only a small remnant snow field on the NE side of Old Glory lasts until late in the summer.
HIKING IN ROSSLAND
Rossland has a massive number of mountain bike trails maintained by the Kootenay-Columbia Trails Society. They produce a large, full-colour 1:30,000 map that includes the entire Seven Summits Trail and extends south almost to the US border. The contour interval is unfortunately only 100m. Great for mountain biking, they are not hiking orientated – it took me a long time (it has been 20 years) to figure out how to walk from Columbia-Kootenay down a road to the Coffee Run using the map. I called the road Coyote Swamp, reviving an old name in Leo Telfer’s small book on hiking in Rossland.
Many of these trails are still good walking paths, uncommonly walked because everyone owns a mountain bike here and they are routed for biking purposes. But Rossland still has a few good walks around town. Walking anywhere around Rossland would be a hike in most other places. When I lived there for 3 years, we climbed Columbia-Kootenay Mountain almost every evening.
All descriptions start from the downtown intersection of Columbia Avenue & Washington Street.
Columbia-Kootenay and Monte Christo Mts are north of the Rossland townsite. There was considerable mining activity in this area at the turn of the century and the roads to these abandoned mines form the principal trails.