HISTORY
Four individuals were instrumental in the founding and development of Trail.
Fritz Augustus Heinze was a young mining magnate from Butte, Montana. A millionaire many times over when still in his twenties, he was a large, good looking man and easily recognizable. With his magnetic, flamboyant personality, he was one of the most memorable men of his day. Always searching for a challenge, when he heard about the great strikes at Rossland, he headed north. But he was beaten by the mining men from Spokane who had bought up all the best properties.
So Heinze, never at a loss, built a smelter on a bench overlooking Trail Creek Landing, a sandy flat beside the Columbia River to treat the ores of Red Mountain. The smokestacks of the impressive smelting works dominated the skyline. Heinze built a railway from the mines in Rossland to the smelter.
Beside the river were a handful of buildings scattered around including a massive hotel near the river’s edge.
Eugene Topping, nicknamed “Colonel”, was an American, adventurer, Indian fighter, hotel owner, speculator, mine owner and rich man. He had purchased the Le Roi mine for a paltry $12.50 from the original owners. It was the most fortuitous purchase in Canadian mining history as the Le Roi ultimately produced over $40 million, the greatest gold producer in BC. Topping, however, had sold the Le Roi for $30,000, still a great deal of money. Frank Hanna, also an American, was Topping’s partner in his hotel and real estate – and a gambler, lady’s man and speculator. James Breen was Heinze’s clever lieutenant.
With the $30,000, Topping and Hanna developed the townsite on 343 acres at Trail Creek Landing in 1891, effectively owning the Trail Creek townsite. Trail Creek was a stream that the Dewdney Trail followed and gave the creek its name. Drawn by Rossland’s Red Mountain, hundreds of prospectors followed the Columbia River north from Washington, Idaho, Montana and other points south. The two partners prospered selling land. In the late spring of 1894, the Columbia River rose to the highest levels ever recorded. The two-story hotel collapsed into the river, but it was rebuilt as a grander Trail house nearly 100 feet long on a higher bench.
The building of the smelter was the boost the fledging town needed. The Trail Creek News started publishing in 1895. Real estate boomed until the blast furnaces were blown in in 1896.
However, a competitor of Heinze, Daniel Corbin, built a railway from Red Mountain to his smelter in Northport to process Le Roi ore. As a result of the setback, Heinze sold all his assets in British Columbia to the CPR. Trail Creek was shortened to Trail in 1897.
But Trail kept growing, was incorporated in 1901 with a population of 1,500 and had a dozen hotels including the Crown Point and Arlington. In 1905, the Centre Star and War Eagle mines, the Trail Smelter, the rich St Eugene Mine at Moyie and the Rossland Power Company merged under the name of the Canadian Consolidated Mines. Within a decade, with the acquisition of the incomparable Sullivan Mine in Kimberley and the once unwilling Le Roi Mine, and a name change to Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada (C.M.&S), it emerged as one of the mining giants of the time. Trail’s fortunes continued to improve as the smelter became the economic cornerstone of the West Kootenay. When the output from the Rossland and St Eugene mines decreased and then stopped, the Sullivan mine in Kimberly produced so much lead-zinc ore that by 1929, the Trail smelter was the largest lead-zinc refinery in the world, a position it still retains.
Topping didn’t benefit from Trail’s prosperity. He left Trail in 1906 for Victoria after marrying Mrs. Hanna. Later investments (properties in the Lardeau, Eric Creek and Skeena) were disastrous, and he died poor.
The city is located on both banks of the Columbia River, approximately 10 km north of the United States border. A bridge was built across the Columbia River. The clannish and hard-working Italian community, established during the 1890s, still hold onto their enclave in the Gulch. Bay and Cedar Avenues remain the main thoroughfares. But with growth, most of the old colour faded. Landmarks such as the Trail House, Opera House, the 50-foot bell tower on the firehall, most of the original hotels and many of the first houses were victims of a number of fires.
Today the second Crown Point and the original Arlington still stand and the smelter still dominates the town.
The population was 7,709 in 2016. The Italian community comprises only 17.8% or the total population. Trail is home to the largest non-ferrous lead and zinc smelter in the world. Employing approximately 1,800 people, Teck Resources (formerly Cominco) is the region’s largest employer. It is anticipated that within 15 years Teck Resources’ Trail operation will have a completely new and different labour force. A younger and perhaps more technical labour force will most likely replace those that are retiring.
As its contribution to the Manhattan Project’s P-9 Project, Cominco built and operated a 1000 to 1200-pound-per-month (design capacity) electrolytic heavy water plant at Trail, which operated from 1943 to 1956. Lt-Col Nichols noted environmental damage from emissions to the “beautiful valley and mountain slopes” in the first half of 1943.
Cominco Tour. Take the 2.5-hour industrial tour of the Teck (Cominco) smelter which can be arranged in the Teck Cominco Interpretive Centre through the Trail & District Chamber of Commerce office located above the Toronto-Dominion Bank,
Historic Gulch. In the early 1900s, a large influx of Italian immigrants lent a distinctive character to “The Gulch” which is located at the entrance to Trail accessed by the Schofield Highway which drops down the long grade from the city of Rossland and the village of Warfield and sub-division of Annabel onto Rossland Avenue.
This neighbourhood which runs the length of Rossland Avenue is known as “the Gulch.” Originally called the “Dublin Gulch” in the very early days, it eventually became known as “The Gulch” as it filled up with Italians who chose not to live on the original Trail townsite. The Gulch starts as the throat of Trail Creek narrows between the high, sandy slope of Smelter Hill on its left bank and the West Trail bank where early pioneer houses were built by immigrants as they purchased properties along the west bank’s steep terrain.
In the early pioneer days, industrious Chinese launderers and cooks spent time gardening in the defile of the Gulch. Few of these immigrants ever acquired rights to own land in the Gulch and their gardens were gradually displaced by Italians and other European working families who terraced their properties into level plots. Despite the steep terrain, these immigrant families planted vegetable gardens reminiscent of the old country, fed by plenty of water from Trail Creek and the hot summer sun.
The Gulch is home to shops and the Terra Nova hotel, located at the entrance to Trail’s central business district at the foot of Rossland Avenue.