Why Greenwood Deserves a Longer Stop
Highway 3 runs straight through Greenwood, British Columbia, so it’s easy to see a few heritage storefronts, stop for coffee and carry on toward Grand Forks or Osoyoos.
Give the town a few hours and the route becomes much more interesting. Greenwood is Canada’s smallest incorporated city, and the old mining boom still shapes the centre. The 1903 courthouse is still inside City Hall, while the remains of the B.C. Copper Company smelter sits just outside downtown. Nearby, old mining roads lead toward Phoenix, now a ghost town.
Start at the museum, then try the water
The Greenwood Museum and Visitor Centre is a good first stop because several of the town’s best sights make more sense once you know what happened here.
The displays cover the copper boom, the smelter and the Japanese Canadian families who were forcibly relocated to Greenwood during the Second World War. There is also a replica of the old Deadwood bar and plenty of material from the surrounding mining camps.
Next door, the Assay Office replica has another very local curiosity. Visitors can sample the town’s municipal water, which won the municipal category at the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting in 2012. Greenwood has since promoted it as “Greenwood Gold.”
If Highway 3 is part of a longer trip, our road trip through Cranbrook and Fernie has more ideas for slowing down in the small towns along the route.
Travellers coming west from Alberta should also keep in mind that crossing into British Columbia can affect services that depend on physical location. The Alberta eligibility rules listed at SportsLine are one example, since access to the regulated service described there depends on the user being physically inside Alberta. It’s a useful reminder to check any location-sensitive apps before crossing the provincial line, particularly on a longer Western Canada road trip.
Once you reach Greenwood, leave the phone alone for a while. Most of the town’s historic sights are close enough together to explore on foot.
Ask about the courthouse
The courthouse deserves its own stop, even though it sits inside Greenwood City Hall.
Built in 1903, it once served the B.C. Supreme Court in the County of Yale. Upstairs is the old courtroom, with a high cedar ceiling and stained-glass skylights. Downstairs, an original jail cell survives from the building’s court days.
The museum can provide information about visiting the courthouse, so ask there before heading along Copper Avenue. Seeing the rooms adds much more to the mining-boom story than simply photographing the old buildings from the highway.
Spend time with the Nikkei story
The museum also opens up a harder chapter of Greenwood’s history. About 1,200 Japanese Canadians were sent here in 1942 after being forcibly removed from the West Coast. Hotels and other buildings left from the mining boom were turned into crowded accommodation.
Global News’ feature on Greenwood’s 125th anniversary recounts how that period changed the town and why Greenwood still gives this history such a prominent place.
Continue to Nikkei Legacy Park near the city campground. Memorial plaques record family names, while the Japanese-style garden gives visitors a quieter place to spend some time after the museum. Seeing both is worthwhile because the park and museum tell different parts of the same local story.
Follow the copper story out of town
Once you have walked downtown, continue to Lotzkar Memorial Park. The 36-metre brick stack from the old B.C. Copper Company smelter still rises above the site and gives some sense of how industrial Greenwood once was.
From there, the Phoenix Interpretive Forest route heads toward the former mining community of Phoenix, about eight kilometres east of Greenwood. The drive passes through old mining country, with interpretation along the way and traces of the industrial landscape still visible.
A simple half-day route is:
Greenwood Museum and Visitor Centre
1903 courthouse at City Hall
Nikkei Legacy Park
Lotzkar Memorial Park
Phoenix Interpretive Forest drive
A small city with plenty left behind
By the end of a few hours in Greenwood, the old courthouse, smelter site and mining roads start to connect. The Japanese Canadian history adds another layer that is easy to miss when Greenwood is treated as another Highway 3 stop.
That’s why the town deserves more than a quick look from the car. Park near Copper Avenue, start at the museum and let the rest of Greenwood unfold from there.
