While the remains of this once magnificent boom town are far from awe-inspiring today, it's quite a trip walking down the now empty streets knowing that they were once bustling with excitement and enormous prosperity. In 1886 Granite Creek contained 9 general stores, 14 hotels and restaurants, 2 jewelers, 3 bakers, 3 blacksmiths, 2 stables, a shoemaker, butcher, chemist, attorney, doctor and 8 pack trains. Throw in a hoard of hopeful prospectors, shelter and storage for each, and you had a total of ~200 buildings crammed into what was once the third largest city in British Columbia. The town never contained a school, church, nor a governing body. The jail didn't even have bars on the windows. Most of the town was destroyed in a fire in 1907 and the boom was short lived, besides a desperate drifter here and there the town was deserted by 1915.

There is a rumor that a Scandinavian prospector living in the town recovered 300 ounces of platinum from the creek and buried it in a bucket south of his cabin, visible from the cabin door. After the fire of 1907 his cabin is long gone and with it, the location of his buried platinum cache. Nobody knows for sure if the story is true but if such a stash of platinum were discovered today it would be worth nearly $450,000 CAD.

Below is a photo of the town in 1888.



I drove out to the town site for the first time last weekend. All that remains today is the partial ruins of a few prospector cabins and the Granite Creek Cemetery, containing the remains of many of the original prospectors who lived there.

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