Note from Christine: My husband and I purchased one of the two turreted houses in Greenwood. We are hoping to restore it and as I was looking at your web site there was a view that looked like it might have come from the second floor patio of our new house. We purchased 432 Long Lake Rd, would you happen to have any photos of the house? I have managed to get the list of all the owners of the house but so far no photos have been found. Our new house once held 15 children and families during the interement. The architect for our house is also the same man who designed the post office (the only two he did in Greenwood). I would appreciate any additional info/photos you may have on our new home.[Email me if you know and I'll pass it along]

Note from Joe & Terrill: I lived in Greenwood in the early 60s' and knew many of the Japanese people there. Mr. Tasaka the barber told me thay while his family was interned, they received 1 blanket per person. My daughter in law says they were given 2. Can you tell me which of us is correct?

The view of Greenwood from the steep hill on the south side of the narrow valley. The line of yellow aspens behind the buildings defines the route of Boundary Creek, beyond which lies the roadbed of the old Columbia & Western Railway, now part of the Trans Canada Trail but in use until 1990 as part of the Canadian Pacific Railway's Kettle Valley line. It is easy to imagine prospectors coming through this area in the 1880s and spotting rich ore in the rocky outcroppings for, as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of the Cevennes (in Travels with a Donkey], "the stony skeleton of the world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air."

The three buildings on the extreme left sit on South Copper Street--Highway 3, in fact, which is the main street. They are the two-story Guess Block, built in 1899 and now home to the Copper Eagle Cappuccino and Bakery; next to it, the red-brick three-story building is the Greenwood Inn, originally the Windsor Hotel, also built about 1899 and home to the town's pub and cafe today; the white three-story building was the Pacific Hotel, built in 1907 and, during the Second World War, #1 Internment Building housing more than 200 Japanese-Canadians. The 1902 house in the left foreground sits on South Government Street and was the home of W.E. McArthur, Sr., the mayor of Greenwood in 1942 who welcomed the opportunity to house almost 1200 Japanese-Canadians in the town's many empty buildings.

The large turreted brick building is the post office and federal government building, erected about 1913-15, a few years before the collapse of copper prices that closed the local mines and smelters and sent the town into a tailspin.

The courthouse (now City Hall) illustrated below is a block to the north (right) of the post office. Greenwood's landmark smokestack--the one relic remaining from the B.C. Copper Company's 1900 smelter--is a few hundred metres south (left) of the hotel and main street.