Johnny Harris - Sandon's dominant entrepreneur
R.H. Trueman - photographer extraordinare
'Colonel' Robert Thornton Lowery - a newspaper editor with attitude
"Knights of the Green Cloth" - gamblers, card sharks and Sandon's saloons
The "soiled doves" of "Lower Sandon" - the infamous Red Light District
Eugene Petersen - "The Mayor of Sandon"

One of the wealthiest and most powerful men to ever live in Sandon, J.M. Harris was the subject of countless stories and endless speculation. A native of Loudon County, Virginia, Harris was secretive about his past history in the United States, and consistently refused to reveal more than a handful of facts about his life south of the 49th. Of course, this simply fueled the rumors, many of which grew more elaborate as the years passed. Today it is difficult to separate the many myths from the man, but certain facts are well-known.

Harris arrived in the valley from the Coeur dAlene area of Idaho in 1892, at the age of 28. In later years, rumors circulated that he was forced to flee to Canada after killing a man in the United States, and even that Harris was not his real name, but Harris refused to either confirm or deny these stories.

What is known is that Harris was attracted to the Slocan by tales of the fabulous silver strikes that were being discovered there. When he arrived at the junction of Carpenter and Sandon Creeks, numerous homes and stores had already been built on the valley floor to accommodate the hundreds of treasure-seekers already flooding into the valley. None of these early settlers had bothered to stake land for a townsite where they had built; legally, they were all squatters, a fact that the quick-witted Harris was soon to exploit.

Shortly after his arrival Harris staked the Loudon Claim, named after his birthplace, on the floor of the valley. After registering his claim, Harris informed the squatters, most of whom had arrived before him, that they must move their stores and dwellings off his land, or else buy them back from him. The earlier settlers were understandably outraged at this development, feelings soon ran very high, and a flurry of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits were filed. Harris had the law on his side, however, and his Loudon Claim eventually became the downtown core of the City of Sandon. Harris subdivided the surface rights to his claim, which he then sold to squatters and new arrivals alike, thus vastly increasing his wealth, virtually overnight.

With his rapidly-increasing fortune, Harris went on a building spree, constructing hotels, office blocks, and the growing city's original power plant, the Sandon Water Works and Light Company. The remains of this plant are still visible today. Eventually, his real estate empire grew to include mines such as the rich Reco Claim, which at one point in 1897 produced over $200,000 worth of ore in a single week.

Of his many properties, probably the most elegant and well-known was the Hotel Reco. Located at the junction of Carpenter and Sandon Creeks, the Hotel Reco was certainly the most luxurious accommodations in the city, where Harris entertained millionaires and mining magnates. Four stories tall, with a tower reaching to a fifth level, the Hotel Reco featured 75 rooms with hardwood floors and tinted walls, and a 100-person capacity dining room. There was a call bell system, hot and cold water in all the rooms and a bathroom on each floor. A steam heating plant and a cold storage room were installed, and the kitchen, which featured a broiler and ranges, was located in an addition which was separate from the main building.

However, Harris' fortunes took a sudden turn in 1900. Already the population of the city had begun to dwindle, as declining ore prices, labour strife, and news of the fabulous gold strikes in the Klondike combined to lure men and investment away from the city. On May 3, 1900, disaster struck both Sandon and Harris in the form of a devastating fire which gutted most of the downtown core. Losses were estimated at $750,000, and included many of Harris' properties, such as the Hotel Reco and the ornate Virginia Block, which housed Harris' own offices. A lifelong gambler, Harris did not carry fire insurance, believing it amounted to betting against himself, and as a result his personal losses were catastrophic.

Travelling in the United States at the time, Harris was alerted to the disaster and returned immediately to oversee the rebuilding of his beloved city. One of his first actions upon arriving was to begin the renovation of the only building in the downtown core to survive the fire, an old livery stable that had been saved through an incredible effort by the townsfolk. Harris had the original building gutted and expanded, and within 60 days he had re-opened the structure as the new Reco Hotel.

Determined to rebuild, Harris used his own still-substantial wealth to construct numerous other buildings in the downtown core, including a new Virginia Block. Nevertheless, neither the Reco Hotel nor the Virginia Block approached the finery of the original structures that they replaced. The remains of the rebuilt Reco Hotel and Virginia Block are still visible in Sandon today.

Never one to back away from a risky gamble, however, Harris remained optimistic about Sandon's future, and remained in the city that he had worked so hard to develop. As the Great Depression set in, he purchased competitors businesses, buildings and properties, always convinced that the tide would soon turn.

An unrepentant 'ladies man', in the 1920s Harris married a woman from Alberta who was 40 years his junior. For the next 25 years, Harris and his wife, Alma, lived in the declining splendour of the new Reco Hotel. The Reco continued to operate throughout Harris' life, and during the 1940s he employed a number of Japanese-Canadian internees in the hotel. However, even Harris must have realized the glory days were long past as the number of guest dwindled until only he and Alma were left.

In 1953, at the age of 89, Johnny Harris died at the New Denver hospital, two years before the destructive wash-out that devastated the downtown core once again. At his request, his body was transported back to Loudon County, Virginia for burial. Much of what remained of his once-vast empire was sold by his widow, who continued to live in Silverton until her death in 1988. Today, remnants of Harris' personal property are scattered among collections across North America, but over time some of his personal effects have been returned to the city that he loved, and are on display in the Sandon Historical Society's museum.

Probably more than any other photographer of his generation, Richard Henry Trueman worked tirelessly to record the vast expanses of southern British Columbia. With his heavy glassplate camera in tow, Trueman climbed mountains, forded creeks and endured all manner of hardships to capture the the images he wanted, particularly when it came to his two greatest subjects: railroads and steamships. Some of his most stunning photographs focus on the rail and steamship lines that operated in the Slocan at the turn of the century, such as his famous shot of a K&S locomotive stopped at Payne Bluff.

Born in Ontario, Trueman travelled extensively through Alberta and British Columbia before settling down, somewhat, to three studios in Vancouver, Sandon and Revelstoke. The booming city of Sandon and the surrounding area with its great concentrator mills and tram lines and spectacular scenery captivated Trueman, and his artistry and attention to detail still stand out, nearly a century later. TruemanŐs photographs, usually printed as platinotypes, sparkle with clarity and sharpness, and many of the most beautiful photographs in the Sandon Historical Society Museum collection are his work.

By chance, Trueman happened to be in Sandon at the time of the catastrophic May, 1900 fire, and his 'before and after' shots are striking. He returned repeatedly to Sandon to capture the rebuilding efforts, and it is largely through his dedication and skill that such an excellent photographic record of this period survives to this day.

Reco Avenue in Sandon was one of Trueman's favorite scenes, and the photograph above is a fine example of his work. It is worth noting that everyone in the photograph is dressed in their 'Sunday best', right down to the little girl with her pet dog on the steps to the right of the photo. As well, all the subjects are obligingly turned to look at the camera. It is apparent that, with his fine eye for composition, Trueman has carefully posed the entire street! This is not the only case of Trueman posing a vast scene for his camera, and most subjects were more than willing, as he was a noted photographer throughout the Canadian west in his day.

R.H. Trueman's work in British Columbia spans a little more than 20 years, from about 1890 until just before his death in Revelstoke in 1911. He left the province and the country an enduring legacy with his photographs, and our historical record has been vastly enriched by his talent and dedication.

A diminutive man, R.T. Lowery stood only about five feet tall, but other than his height, there was nothing 'small' about the man. What Lowery lacked in height, he more than compensated for with his attitude. Brash, opinionated and combative, Lowery was a crusading pioneer journalist who argued with wit and skill on behalf of those who could not defend themselves, such as illiterate hard-rock miners and women forced by lack of skills or education to become prostitutes.

Born in 1859 at Halton County, Ontario, he gained his first newspaper experience in Petrolia before being lured to the wild frontiers and silver fields of British Columbia. His first newspaper in the Kootenays was the Kaslo Claim, which lasted a mere 16 weeks before the 'silver panic' of 1893 caused the bottom to drop out of the silver market, and business in the young town dried up to a mere trickle. "The financial panic frosted the roses in the Slocan and made Kaslo look like a torn poster in a wet ditch. I barely escaped with my life", Lowery commented wryly.

Undaunted, however, Lowery soon packed up his small printing press and assorted equipment and moved on to Nakusp, where he began printing The Ledge. In all, Lowery owned and operated some 10 or 12 Kootenay newspapers in different towns over the years. Commenting on the tendency of Lowery's and other small area newspapers to 'wander', the editor of the Bonner's Ferry Herald wrote, "It is hard to keep track of the Slocan newspapers - they appear to be on wheels." Indeed, this characterization more often than not appeared to be true.

By 1894, Lowery had moved The Ledge to New Denver, but soon the booming growth in Sandon had convinced him to sell that paper and relocate to the heart of the silver fields. On September 26, 1896, Lowery, along with J.J. Langstaff, former editor of the Trout Lake Topic, printed the first edition of what was to become Lowery's most famous newspaper of all, the Sandon Paystreak. Its first issue was filled with news of Sandon's rapid growth: "The sound of the carpenter's hammer is everywhere heard in Sandon, and building operations are being vigorously prosecuted on every side. Some very tasty dwelling houses are being erected, and the liveliest and busiest town in the Slocan country is every day assuming a more urban-like appearance than is usually met with a mining centre. Some 20 buildings, dwellings and otherwise, are now under construction, and more are contemplated."

In appearance, Lowery was said by some to resemble 'a country parson', while others described him as rather more dapper than that. He was reputed to always dress with the greatest of taste, wore a small neatly-trimmed goatee, smoked two-bit cigars, and peered determinedly through steel-rimmed glasses. And although he was known far and wide as 'Colonel' Lowery, he admitted himself that it was a title he assumed, rather than one he had earned for military service. Despite this minor affectation, Lowery never lost sight of his dedication to the 'common' men and women who were his most ardent readers and supporters.

Arguing on behalf of safer working conditions for the miners, Lowery wrote:

"The miner is the backbone of every mining camp. It is upon the money that he earns that we, who live in the towns hard by, get our daily bread and other luxuries. It is for him principally that the saloons are fitted up in gorgeous style. It is for him that the storekeeper is waiting so that he may pay his bills. It is through his hard work that many men of capital are enabled to ride in carriages and dine with dukes in Europe. He gets $3.50 a day in the Slocan, and for this amount he pounds a drill and lacerates rocks in the darkness of the tunnel or shaft. He occasionally is assisted up the Golden Stairs by a premature blast, and sometimes gets introduced to St. Peter by the aid of a snowslide. Being of so much value to the community, his life should be freed from danger as much as possible. One way to do this is to have all buildings at the mines built in such a manner as to obviate the danger from slides, and render it unnecessary for men to flee for their lives, as has been done during the past week.

Miners may be plentiful, and some capitalists may think that their lives cut but a small figure, but we think different.We want every one of them to have a chance to die in bed, and we urge upon all owners the necessity of seeing that their employees are protected from the danger of slides in every way possible. Take our advice, boys, or when the slides come again, some of you may have to push clouds instead of holding the end of a drill."

Lowery definitely had a talent for writing with flair and style, and delighted in using this talent to skewer hypocrites and high-handed organizations such as the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Indeed, his condemnations of the CPR were so frequent and caustic that the rail line refused to carry his newspapers, and in place of a ticket issued him a lifetime 'tie pass' (the right to tromp down the tracks, counting the ties.

Lowery's style earned him many enemies among the rich and powerful, but he remained unrepentant and pugnacious as ever, and could give as good as he got with even a short paragraph:

You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It is also a fact that you cannot make a good, honest and pleasant citizen out of a petty, spiteful, nosey, vindictive, gluttonous individual. Such fellows by accident are sometimes elevated to high positions, when they should be sawing wood in a penitentiary or looking out from the windows of a lunatic asylum.

We would rather be a frog and live upon the green scum of a swamp than supinely sit and not use our pen in the defence of liberty and justice. The good have nothing to conceal and have only admiration from a trenchant editor. It is only the sneaking, cowardly, dishonorable, back-biting and black-mailing curs that writhe in mental agony when the editorial harpoon tears away their masks, exposing their detestable acts to the gaze of an outraged and indignant world.

However, despite Lowery's many admirable qualities, he had several serious character flaws as well. Like so many newspapermen of his time, he was a two-fisted drinker who tended to indulge in semi-regular boughts with the bottle. His alcoholism would remain with him for most of his life, and resulted in periodic sessions in hospital for the feisty little editor. Indeed, on more than one occasion, The New Denver Ledge reported that: "Col. Lowery was discharged from hospital this week, the 'same old thing'".

Undoubtedly, however, the most distressing aspect of Lowery's character was his naked racism toward Chinese workers. True, this attitude was not uncommon in British Columbia during this time period, and Lowery was merely reflecting a commonly-held view that because Chinese labourers were often willing to work for lower wages than other workers, they brought down everyone else's standard of living. Nevertheless, his unrelenting bigotry toward the Chinese, while understandable in the context of his times, leaves today's reader with a feeling of distaste.

As the years passed, Lowery was once again on the move with his printing press. In 1906 he packed up his equipment and his pet bulldog, Keno, and moved on to Greenwood, where he ran another paper for 14 years. His health was deteriorating, however, and he suffered from dropsy, likely as a result of his years of alcohol abuse. By 1920, with his best years behind him, he sold his last newspaper and retired to Grand Forks where died on May 20, 1921 at age 62. His funeral in Nelson, BC was a crowded affair, and many of his old friends and subscribers turned out to pay their respects to the irascible old editor.

A lifelong bachelor, Lowery left no children or family behind, just some of the most well-written and entertaining sketches of early mining camp life ever put to paper. Today, some historians have compared his writing favourably with that of Bret Harte, Mark Twain and renegade newspaper publisher Bob 'Give-em-hell' Edwards of the Calgary Eye-Opener. Without a doubt, he was one of the most fearless and uncompromising newspaper men of his time, and he has left us an invaluable glimpse into the lives of the miners, gamblers, prostitutes, business people, and ordinary citizens who populated the Silvery Slocan.

In 1892 there was only one hotel in Sandon - the original Sandon Hotel, a rough two-storey log structure. By 1898, with hundreds of transient miners arriving every week, the number had shot up to at least 29, with numerous other buildings also providing lodging facilities. These hotels varied widely in their accommodations and tone, ranging from the Pend O'Rille, which advertised 'the best 25 cent meals in town', to the high-class Hotel Reco, which served chilled French champagne. With the exception of one hotel, however (the Goodenough Hotel) they had one thing in common: they all featured saloons that catered to the thirsty miners.

The rich silver mines not only attracted hundreds of miners, but also a large number of professional gamblers and card sharks, determined to separate the miners from their money as fast as possible. Before long, Sandon had earned a reputation far and wide as 'the Monte Carlo of Canada'. Poker, blackjack, roulette, faro, craps, slot machines - all were popular games of chance offered around the clock in the city's many saloons, and many miners learned the hard way that 'easy money' did not come so easily after all. Nevertheless, there were never any shortage of candidates at the tables, eager to try their luck on the dice or the cards. 'Colonel' R.T. Lowery, editor of the Paystreak, recognized this tendency, writing:

In the West, many young men are in the habit of coming to town every little while and blowing all their money upon yellow liquor, the green cloth and the woman in red. After a few days of hilarity they usually sober up broke, grow repentant, and then hit the hills for another stake, fully determined that they will never again sip the booze, shuffle the cards or trifle with the painted face of commercial love. As time goes along and their pile grows bigger, the memory of past misery fades, and back they come to camp and history repeats itself. Strange lives to lead. Up in the snow, driving steel for months and saving every dollar. Then, a few days amid the wild delights of a mining camp, and then the dark tunnel again with nothing in sight but a brown taste and an upper stope haunted by green snakes and turkeys wearing gum boots.

The professional gamblers and con men who flocked to Sandon were a determined lot too, and were not deterred by setbacks, even serious ones. The morning of May 4, 1900, following the devastating fire which burned the entire downtown core, these hardy souls reportedly set up their poker tables and games of chance in the middle of the streets, amid the still-smoldering ruins, and the gambling continued with virtually no interruption.

Gambling shut down and Knights of the Green Cloth are on the hike. Second dealers in Sandon are at a discount now. Their occupation is gone. No more the little stacks of reds and blues pass back and forth at the behest of the fickle goddess of fortune. No more the roulette wheel burr nor the faro king reigns where dead game sports bet 'em to the rafters and lucky ikes double shoot the turn. It's all off now. Chips that pass in the night are valuable only as souvenirs, and the agitation for the free and unlimited coinage of poker checks is only a matter of ancient history. The dealers, boosters, chair-warmers, pluggers, crappers, professional rubber-neckers, markers, rimmers, crimpers, short card men, Montana sleeve artists and other members of the sporting fraternity will have to turn their backs on the classic shades of the Silver City, and with heavy hearts and tear-stained eyes hit the long array of ties to the land of exile.

---

Requiem for a gambler . . .
The day Morris Butterman cashed in his chips

by Col. R.T. Lowery

In '97 there were flush times in the Slocan. The overflow of the Rossland boom swished through the silver camps and coated them with gold. The wash struck Sandon the hardest, and for months that town had its Cairo-like street literally paved with dollars and playing cards. Sandon is built in a gulch between high mountains, o'er which the sun occasionally rubbers the burg. In those days it was a hot locality. All night long the pianos shrieked below the 'dead line' while above it the booze factories had no keys. The clinking of glasses kept time to the rattle of chips and cries of 'That's good,' 'I'm fat!' 'Put in with yo', etc. Those were the days when it cost many a plunk to look at your hole card, and chubbers were under the table. Gamblers were thicker than 'coons at a cake wal', and a flash of sunlight made the lower end of the camp look like a switch-yard with all the danger signals on fire. The camp never closed up. It was one long carnival of cards, wine and women. When one shift went flewey another took its place, and Canada's Monte Carlo never blinked an eye.

About this time, Morris Butterman hailed the camp. Morris had no yellow in him, and packed more than 60 years on his broad back. He had been a gambler for nearly half a century. He had faced the tiger in Montana, shot craps in New Orleans, dealt stud on the old Mississippi and peeped from behind fours in many a draw game. So when he hit the camp he was not afraid of anything in sight. He dealt faro in the Bucket of Blood Saloon and kept his shirt bosom ever white. For a long time his meal ticket had figures on it, and then the splits came. The crash in silver, and then the strike, soon made Sandon look like a dirty deuce in a new deck, and the old gambler went up the hill to cook for a while, but he did not suit and wandered back again, broke, but sad, silent and proud.

Several of the boys noticed that he did not eat regularly, and proffered him aid, but he shook his head and stayed pat. One day, about five in the afternoon, he passed through the Bucket of Blood to the stairway on the rear to his room. As he mounted the steps he turned and took a long look at the bar and Handsome Jack. Late the next afternoon Jack went upstairs to the old man's room and found him dead. He had put on his best clothes, got under the blankets, took a swallow of poison and cashed in. And thus Morris quit the game - a philosopher. Old, broke, and nothing behind the deal, he preferred to pass up, rather than burden his friends.

With more time, and a pen trained to run romantic, I could have painted a tale from the last deal in this gambler's life that would have touched many a soul, but I throw it in as we go to press, and let it go as it looks. It's real. Just a dash of tragedy in the fever of mining camp life.

Many of Sandon's original settlers came 'over the line' from the United States, and in many ways the city had more in common with the frontier cities of the American 'wild west' than the more sedate neighbouring communities. Serious crime was never a major problem, however; there were never any shoot-outs in the streets, and in the entire history of Sandon there was only ever one murder. Nevertheless, there were plenty of 'rowdier' elements in the city, ranging from the high-rolling gamblers in the downtown saloons to the bootleggers and madames who lived in Sandon's infamous 'red light' district.

Known locally as 'Lower Sandon', the red-light district was one of the largest in the Canadian west, with dozens of brothels and 115 'working ladies' plying their trade. One of the better-preserved areas of the site today, Lower Sandon lay on the west end of the city, past the present bridge over Carpenter Creek. The buildings in this area ranged from small shacks to large, comfortable houses with all of the most up-to-date conveniences of the day.

In the 1890s, men outnumbered women in Sandon approximately 10-to-one; for many of the 5,000 or so men who lived in the city and surrounding hills, these "painted ladies" were the only female companionship they were likely to have the opportunity to meet. As a result, these women provided lonely miners with companionship and opportunities to socialize, as much as prostitution. Indeed, many of the women who worked in Lower Sandon ended up marrying and leading "respectable" lives in their later years; even one of the early mayors of Nelson is reputed to have met his future wife while she was working in Lower Sandon.

The families of many of the city's more "respectable" citizens lived in Kaslo or New Denver, as the wives did not want to raise their children around these "sinful" women and the rowdier elements of the barroom crowd. This attitude was condemned as hypocritical and wrong by the city's crusading pioneer journalist, "Colonel" R.T. Lowery. Always prepared to defend the underdog, Lowery argued instead for legalization and regulation as a means to address what he felt was largely a social concern, rather than a crime. In an 1897 editorial, Lowery wrote:

It would seem more sensible and honest to face the problem of prostitution and if it cannot be suppressed and prohibited, then regulate it. Prostitution is no more a normal moral condition of womankind than leprosy or cancer are normal conditions of the human race. Go into the sweatshops and awful dens in the large cities where women, girls and children, sew garments together for 12 and 14 hours daily at a wage from 20 to 40 cents per day. Read the statistics furnished by the Commissioner of Labour each year, which tells of the miseries of the two-dollar-a-week factory operatives, of the tenement house life within whose noisome purlieu moral death stalks as a pestilence, and you will not wonder that there are so many poor prostitutes, but rather that there are so few.

It is more humane, more honourable for the municipality to take cognizance of the prostitute as an inseparable part of this barbarism we call civilization and deal with her from that standpoint, than to make the stupid pretence that she has no existence simply because the law recognizes her only as a criminal.

While the activities were never legalized, they were certainly tolerated and accommodated. Many of the women were public-spirited citizens too, donating funds to a variety of causes and charities, such as the construction of the Miners' Union hospital. Because these women's houses were all confined to Lower Sandon, however, they were spared from destruction when fire levelled the downtown core of the city in May of 1900. No doubt Lowery, whose newspaper office in the upper gulch area also survived the fire, thought it was highly ironic that so many of the "respectable" citizens had been burnt out while the brothels of the "soiled doves" remained standing.

As the city was rebuilt, these women continued to supply their services, continuing as late as the 1920s, often with a "wink and a nod" from the local law enforcement. More than one early resident clearly recalls the local BC Provincial Policeman travelling to Sandon about once a month, where he would promptly disappear into one of the houses in Lower Sandon, emerging two or three days later. Eventually, however, legal pressures forced many of these women to open "front" businesses, such as providing room and board, or laundry and lodging services.

One such madame was Fanny Pickett, the only black woman to ever live in Sandon, who opened the "Silver Bell Laundry and Lodging". She ordered a sign for her business from Kaslo, and when it arrived at the K&S station, before she could pick it up some local wit added a "y" to to the word "Bell", on both sides of the sign. Fanny was reported to be furious, but apparently she did not hold a grudge. In later years, long after she had moved to a fashionable suburb of Spokane, she was still dutifully paying her city taxes on her Sandon property.

In later years the population of Lower Sandon changed as the madames gradually moved away. During the 1960s and 1970s many of these old buildings were vandalized and damaged by "souvenir-hunters". A number collapsed under winter snowloads, and several were deliberately burned down when the road was widened in the 1970s. Today, only a handful (including Fanny Pickett's) are still standing.

One brothel in particular stands out, having been restored by a group of friends in New Denver. A two-storey French Provincial structure, it is known as the Molly Brown Brothel. Although it is not open to the public, visitors are welcome to visit the site and take photos of it and the other old structures in Lower Sandon.

Eugene Herman "Pelle" Petersen was born in Fauske, Norway. His family came to Sandon in 1922 and Gene lived here the rest of his life. After leaving school, Gene was employed in Sandon at a variety of odd jobs, including errand boy, store clerk, miner, prospector, mine owner, trapper, logger and always a practical joker. As well, Gene was operator of the Silversmith Powerhouse for over 25 years.

An avid outdoorsman, Gene knew the secrets of the forest, with its grouse, owl, deer and bear. And although he was an accomplished hunter, Gene respected and treasured the natural beauty of his surrounding.

For many years, Gene was the last remaining full-time resident of the community, and was known locally as "the mayor of Sandon". For most of that time, it was largely due to Gene's efforts that the few remaining original buildings were protected and shovelled in winter. Gene helped in the creation of the Sandon Historical Society Museum, and he was the first president of the Sandon Historical Society.

Among his many other skills, Gene was a writer and amateur poet. He wrote about his lifetime in Sandon in his memoirs, Window in the Rock, but unfortunately he died before it was published. Copies of his book are available at the retail counter in the Sandon Historical Society Museum.