Return to main Vanishing B.C. page Return to home page

Page last updated November 13, 2004

Townsite 1, Bralorne, a jumble of buildings spilling down the hill above the mine works. It has much more of the sort of organic layout usually associated with a mining town. The town's administrative buildings are all located here, including the Art Deco mines office just above the hill from where I sat while painting. The building on the right, according to a faded sign on its facade, was once the Bralorne Inn.

Whiting Avenue, Townsite 2, Bralorne. The brown house second along was vacant,with its door hanging open, so I entered it to draw the floorplan below. A number of the other houses on the street are occupied, I think by retirees and part-time recreationists. Most of the houses are single-family, and I think have a common floorplan although there are minor differences in roof treatment and some are mirror-images, but note the white duplex next to the brown house, probably the sort of building referred to in the quote below.

Bralorne is probably the most intact mining company town in the province from the years before the First World War. Unlike Zeballos, dating from the same period, Bralorne's Townsite 2 was a planned community, with curving streets and well-designed cottages that were state-of-the-art suburban design. This sort of company town re-emerged after the Second World War, most strikingly at Kitimat. Townsite 2 began construction in 1934 on a bench about half a mile to the southwest of Townsite 1. Eventually there were about 70 houses there, together with school buildings, park facilities, a hockey rink and a church.

Notes from Teri Anderson, Portland, Oregon: I lived in Bralorne from 1978 through 1981 with my husband and brand new baby daughter. I still own two of the little houses right across from the Church. Bralorne was quite a place in those years. We had a hardware store and a grocery store. The Mines Hotel with its beautiful polished burl bar was in full operation. There was work around. I ran a cookhouse for the drillers that used to fly in there. There were lots of young people throughout the area with small children. We even had our own Rocking Horse playgroup. My children have grown and I am now alone, but dream and plan to return there. With my extended family, we are renovating one of my houses and planning to rebuild one that has "lost its legs".

"When I was up there, there were some families from Burnaby etc. that were upgrading some of the houses. One of mine is being renovated and I am rebuilding the other. I actually plan to move back there. It is truly a wonderland to me. When I lived there, the Whitings had actually purchased the town and were selling lots and houses and there was a lot of activity to recreate Bralorne. I see that did not really happen The lots seem worth about $10,000 and with an unfinished house on it around $14,000. This is just a guess from one that I saw for sale while up there. It is the place that has value - the lakes - hiking and of course the quiet. We lost a lot of the stars when they put in those pesky street lights. My ex got arrested one night trying to correct this crime against nature."

Note from Jim Eddie: I own the brown house in Bralorne that you have drawn the floor plan of. My wife Sharon and I are rebuilding it as a full home. We have jacked it up and poured a full concrete basement and finished the basement off enough to live down there. We will try and make the whole house look like it did back then. We have a new roof, new windows, chimney, replaced the robbed wiring and have new shingles for the walls. We hope to have some time this spring to finish off the outside.