Fort Steele: The Golden Era

B.A. Robinson was a freelance reviewer from Toronto.

Fort Steele chronicles the story of an area around and north of Cranbrook, British Columbia, where a major gold strike took place in 1984. This discovery led to an influx of prospectors and settlement which resulted in the founding of three major centres. Joseph’s Prairie (Cranbrook) survives; Fort Steele and Fisherville no longer exist. The short lives of Fort Steele and Fisherville (1864-1905), and their deaths by natural causes (exhaustion of the gold veins) and political and financial opportunism, is a fascinating story. Crammed with wonderful vignettes of gunfighters, rustlers, gamblers, Fenians, miners and the North West Mounted Police, the book is rich with characters who never make school history texts. The reader might “overload” on the names and incidents, but what fun to read.

Fortunes were won and lost; it is easy to imagine Fort Steele at its height in 1897 with its 4,000 inhabitants, an Opera House, a Shakespearean reading society. Looking at the clear photos, the trails, even as they exist today, seem narrow and intimidating. No wonder pack animals, including camels, slipped down cliffs or drowned in the flooded rivers. By 1902 there were only 150 people left in Fort Steele. Now it exists only as a park. Anyone who still thinks Canadian history is dull and uninteresting should make this book a priority. It will change your mind.