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Page last updated July 7, 2008
Maquinna Avenue, Zeballos, looking toward the inlet, with the Zeballos Hotel, built in 1938 and originally called the Pioneer, in the foreground.
The cottage near the waterfront of Adolf Aichmeier--the manager of the Privateer Mine, the most profitable and long-lasting of the companies mining gold in the Zeballos valley. According to the Zeballos Board of Trade brochure, when the Privateer closed in 1948 the town's population dropped from 1500 to 35; it reopened in the 1970s as the New Privateer, reprospecting its claims, but soon closed again. Currently, logging is king; Tahsis Company built the road out to Woss, eliminating Zeballos' outport status in 1970, and its corporate successor is the largest employer in the town today. The boom boat is of the type once used to take groceries and passengers out to the Princess Maquinna, the CPR steamship that was the lifeline to the outside world in the 1930s and 1940s; boats such as this made the long run down Tahsis Inlet to the cannery community of Ceepeecee, where there was a permanent store, before the gold rush. It was hauled in from Port McNeill about five years ago by Mike Laffey and painted up.
St. Anthony's Catholic church, on the edge of town, built on a rise of land against the steep hillside. Built in 1939 by a Benedictine missionary, Father Anthony Terhaar, it is now abandoned and boarded up. Note from Roland Shanks: "St. Anthony's church caught fire in 2002 and its status is currently in limbo. Something will have to be done soon because it's a hazard and the roof will probably come down in a heavy snowfall."
Slightly further up the hill is Mason's Motor Lodge, converted from the Zeballos Hospital, which was also built in 1939 and operated by a local branch of the Red Cross Society, formed here for just that purpose, with Maj. George Nicholson as its first president. It closed in 1945, then reopened briefly in 1948. Although its exterior has been greatly remodelled, the interior corridors still look like a hospital's.
Note from Grace Darney: "There's an old hotel [in Zeballos], and what is now a newer hotel but that was once the hospital. My brother was born in that hospital, on a night when the town was going up in flames (July 1940). I visited the village three years ago and found it a peaceful spot. The road only came through in the last few decades. When my parents went there, they travelled on the Maquinna. My dad put in the electricity lines to the mine."
Note from Mary Ellen Schulz, Black Creek: My grandmother was a matron in the hospital and my parents met each other there at Ma Hammonds cafe in 1949 and were married there in 1951. Our family moved out in 1966 but when the road was finally built we started to go back there every year to visit, go fishing and explore old mines. Collecting Zeballos information has become a hobby (or maybe I should say an obsession) and I have 4 or 5 photo albums with newspaper clippings and old pictures and a couple of maps with the whereabouts of most of the over 200 old gold mines.
Note from Leslie Fisher: I read the review of your book Vanishing British Columbia in Bookworld. My husband is the owner of the Zeballos Hotel and we resided there from June 1986 to June 1996 during which time we completely restored the building trying to retain as much of the original character as possible. Just for your own information, we would like to advise you of what we know on the "adjoining two storey building that housed one of the town's brothels". There is not an adjoining two storey building...it is small original one storey house that we previously owned [this appears to be only in the BC Bookworld review]. The building next door to this house is two storey but my understanding is it was always a store with an owners' residence upstairs. (My mother vacationed in Zeballos in 1938 and shopped in it). Because brothels were frowned upon (actually never legal in BC), the "Goat Ranch" and other brothels of Zeballos were situated on the gravel road leading out of Zeballos past the cemetery in an area that is now, most often, underwater.
Photographer unknown, c.1940. Boardwalks, board roads and mud in the rainforest
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Jack Crosson, his wife Anne and daughter Charlotte about 1946, waiting for the Princess Maquinna. Above: Charlotte on the beach at Kyuquot in front of her father's postwar shack, with Snappy the dog. Jack Crosson was one of the early arrivals at Zeballos in the 1930s. His book Jack's Shack, published by Whistlepunk Books in 2000, is an excellent memoir of life on the west coast. |
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An unidentified west-coast waterfront in the late 1940s, perhaps Ceepeecee. Can anyone identify it exactly? Photos courtesy of Charlotte Crosson Granewall
Zeballos is one of those places engendering a lot of loyalty from anybody who has or does live there. There was a reunion in the town in August, 2002, not long after I was there. I'd be interested in anyone's stories the town, or about mining in general. Thanks to Roland Shanks at Zeballos.com for information and clarification.
| Wharf in
Zeballos, photographed from the deck of the Maquinna.People under the
sign from left to right, Shirley Morrison, Jack Morrison and Dave
Morrison (Dad's brother) Note from Grant Morrison, born in Esperanza (Ceepeecee) in 1953: My father waded ashore at Zeballos when he was about 19, before the wharf had been constructed. He became involved in many occupations, including working for a trucking venture run by Allan Ford. My mother arrived at the tender age of 22, by which time the wharf had been built. My mother's father was a minister and had shown her a protected life -- she'd never seen the likes of Zeballos in all its boom-town glory. Once when they were walking around, before they were married, my mother asked my father about a building located a ways from the others. "That's the goat ranch," he told her. "A few ladies raise 'em there." One year there was a flood in Zeballos, creating a real mess. One of the big concerns, especially of the single men in town, was to rescue the "goat herders," which was done in boats, by flashlight, with a degree of luck. The men brought their wet and frightened cargo back to a dry hall and served them coffee. As she handed out the mugs, she asked the Madame, "did you train your goat herders here or elsewhere, and can I come up sometime and watch them work?" Note from Marie Cox-Rogers, 2008: Zeballos holds some exciting memories for me, even though I only spent two years living there. Our family arrived when I was entering grade two and we left when I was entering grade four, so the years we lived there were 1966,67, and part of 68. The old hospital left me with some interesting memories, particularly the morgue area. As children we would go exploring in the building. There was one flash light between six or more kids, so unless one wanted to wait upstairs in the dark hallway alone, one would definitely have to catch up with the group using the flashlight to explore the lower level! Do you have any photos of the hospital exterior and interior prior to the building becoming the hotel. I doubt that I would ever be comfortable sleeping over night in that place. I could hardly stand walking past it as a child at night time!!! I whistled loudly and practically ran!!!! |
