HERITAGE FEATURE
OLD TOWN
Walk southwest along Fernie ’ s 2nd Avenue from the crosswalk at 4th Street and you will see some of Fernie ’ s oldest surviving buildings . Now lost to fires , floods and time , Fernie ’ s earliest roots are just a little farther to the south .
In the last decade of the 19th century coal was king and the railways were connecting Canada from coast to coast . The very first settlement between Crow ’ s Nest and the Kootenay River had humble beginnings . An A-frame tent was photographed near where the wagon road crossed Coal Creek in August of 1897 . Within a year , as mining activity rushed into the Elk Valley , one ‘ unlovely ’ lane flanked on either side by rough log shacks had sprung up , but the location was already falling out of favour . Poor drainage and constant smoke from the new coke ovens made this a dreary place to live .
Although life was rough in those early days , it never got out of control . Major Saunders took care of law enforcement for the North West Mounted Police and any disturbances at the Coal Creek Saloon were quickly dealt with .
The shacks themselves were often small enough that visitors could see over the rooftops by standing on tiptoe . One visitor in 1905 was so enamoured by the art and utility of a simple door that he wanted to carry it away to put on display . The reason for his fascination ? The door held the shack ’ s only windows : two whisky bottles framed in the timber .
The three hotels established in Old Town – the Coal Creek , Victoria and Waldorf – along with a smattering of businesses including the London & Liverpool ( later the Trites & Wood Mercantile ) were quickly either replaced or relocated to the new townsite , which was laid out by the summer of 1898 . Other businesses like the Fernie Brewery , which arrived in 1900 , existed at this location until 1959 . Fernie ’ s neighbourhoods ebb and flow , but Coal Creek will always lie at its heart .
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