- 1914–1935The years the mine worked, with a clean-up in 1936
- 21.7 millionTonnes of ore mined, 1914 to 1936
- 321,546Tonnes of copper
- 6.6 millionOunces of silver
- 2,500People in the town at its height
Hidden Creek named its levels for their height in feet above the sea: the 700, the 530, the 385 and the 150, then Zero at the sea itself, and on below it. This page goes down through them in the same order.
1889
Level 700 · Copper float, late May 1889
A Piece of Copper on the Shore
In late May 1889 John Flewin, the mining recorder for the north coast, went into Goose Bay with Charles Todd and picked up a piece of copper-stained float. It took him eleven years to find the ore it came from: on 19 May 1900 he located a large body of it and staked the Bonanza claim.
The next summer his son, W.R. Flewin, went up Hidden Creek with a prospector named McMillan and George Rudge, and on 1 August 1901 they staked eight claims on the copper they found.
For nine years the claims changed hands, and no one could make a go of them. The estate of Marcus Daly, the Butte copper king, took an option and let it go, and a company Flewin formed had to sell by 1908. Two more men from Butte, M.K. Rodgers and T. Hodgins, bought the property and kept the work going until 1910. Then Granby came looking.
Charles Todd, 1889 · as John Flewin remembered it
“…even if we discovered a large body of ore it would be impossible to do anything with it for years to come, unless it was a gold proposition.”
Staked 1 August 1901 · by W.R. Flewin, McMillan and George Rudge
- Gamma
- Rudge
- Revenge
- Donald
- McKinley
- Manson
- Alpha
- Kenneth
The eight Hidden Creek claims, as the National Mineral Inventory card records them
1910
Level 530 · Granby buys Hidden Creek
Granby Comes North
Granby had made its name at Phoenix, in the Boundary Country, and by 1910 the mines there were nearing the end of their life. The company needed a new mine to keep its smelter going. After searching British Columbia, Washington State and the rest of western Canada, it settled on Hidden Creek, bought the controlling share in 1910, and in 1911 named the new town Anyox.
Everything had to come in by sea. Granby built the mine, a railway down to the water, a smelter, powerhouses, wharves and a town for the people who would run them all. The mine was opened by six tunnels, and its miners worked by candlelight until 1914, when they changed to carbide lamps they bought themselves.
1914
Level 385 · The smelter, March 1914
The Smelter Is Blown In
In March 1914 the blast furnace of the new smelter was blown in, rated at 2,000 tons of ore a day, under a brick stack 50 metres tall. Ore came down from the mine on three kilometres of railway, behind steam and electric locomotives. Two powerhouses ran it all: one on water held back by a dam, of rock and timber at first and later of concrete, and a steam plant, fired with gas and tar from the coke ovens, to carry the town through the low water of winter. In 1924 a concentrator was added, and by 1932 it could take 5,000 tons a day.
Below ground, the mine grew level by level from the 700 down. The main haulage ran through the 385 and the 150, and the deepest workings went on below the sea.
The Mine
Hidden Creek · six tunnels to start
Levels named in feet above the sea, from the 700 down past Zero.
Ore, by rail, from 1914
The Smelter
Anyox · blown in March 1914
2,000 tons of ore a day, under a brick stack 50 metres tall.
Blister copper
South by Sea
About 99 per cent copper
Barged to Seattle and refined in New York; later at a new refinery at Tacoma.
The Works
Old photographs of the works · sources on each
Frank · on the powerhouse, 2017
“It just really is an astonishing building in every way.”
1920s
Level 150 · The town at its height
A Company Town at Its Height
At its height Anyox was home to about 2,500 people. Most of the miners were single men, and 300 of them lived in two great bunkhouses on the flats; the families lived in rows of two-storey company houses up the slope. There were two hospitals, three churches, schools to Grade 11, a movie theatre, a three-storey general store, a 45-room hotel with a library, and a newspaper. People played hockey and tennis, and golf on a nine-hole course laid out on the smelter’s slag.
Nothing green grew near the smelter. Its fumes killed the forest around the inlet as far as Alice Arm, and the men who worked in it were called the gas-eaters. A first fire, in 1923, blew up the powder magazine and sent the town running for the harbour; it was rebuilt with hardly a pause.
To keep its coke ovens fed, the company ran its own coal mine on Vancouver Island from 1917 to 1932. From 1928 the smelter also took ore from a second mine in the camp, the Bonanza.
Frank · from the air, 2017
“There was nothing green left standing in this whole valley because the fumes killed everything.”
The Town in Photographs
Old prints and postcards · sources on each
A Crowd at the Pioneer Cafe Undated · anyox.com The Bluebird Cafe Undated · anyox.com The Hospital Undated · anyox.com A Hospital Ward Undated · anyox.com Hospital and Nursing Staff Undated · UBC Library The Wooden Tennis Courts Undated · UBC Library The Residences of Anyox, 3 May 1919 1919 · anyox.com A Row of Company Houses Undated · anyox.com Company Houses Under Snow Undated · UBC Library
The Town in Its Own Words
Set from the originals · sources on each
The golf club’s card · 1930s
- Rule 4“A ball lying in the soft water-washed slag in the fairway may be lifted and dropped, not nearer the green without penalty…”
- Rule 3“Driftwood on the beach at the 3rd., 6th. and 7th. greens and the 7th. fairway is out of bounds…”
- And last“…high heels Must Not be worn on the course.”
Anyox, 1934
Peter Loudon · a boy in Anyox
“…the production lit the skies red each night as the coke came out of the furnaces.”
Frank · over the townsite
“It was a very modern town in every respect.”
Sea level · The Zero level
Below here the levels count down from the sea: the minus 130, the minus 220, the minus 360, and on down.
1934
Sea level · 27 November 1934
The Blast That Broke the Mine
In the winter of 1933, with copper at the bottom of the Depression, the company cut wages and the miners struck. Police came up from Prince Rupert, and upward of 300 men were ordered to leave town. Men who had heard there was work arrived to take their places.
With the ore running short, Granby tried something new. One enormous blast would bring great masses of low-grade ore down into the old workings under the glory hole, to be hauled out through new drifts below. Homes near the mine were cleared, the school was closed for the morning, and the hospital’s patients were moved.
Peter Loudon · the strike, 1933
“But the road was filled with men, hundreds of men. … They weren’t talking but you could hear their feet pounding the boards.”
27 November 1934 · as a schoolboy saw it
- 10 a.m.The whistles blow and the charges go off.
“…a disappointing boom really.”
- About 3 p.m.The rim of the glory hole nearest the school caves in.
“It looked finally as if a giant had carved a huge wedge out of the mountainside.”
Peter Loudon, The Town That Got Lost, 1973, as Sherlock and Domvile quote it
It was far too much. The miners had badly overestimated the powder the job needed: the blast shattered the ore, the new tunnels and the rock around them, which would never hold a tunnel again. Meant to lengthen the life of the mine and the town, it ended both. More than eighty years later, Frank flew his drone over the hole it left.
Frank · over the glory hole, 2017
“The problem is [they] used too much explosives, and they really fractured the rock in behind there, so they couldn’t tunnel into it anymore.”
1935
Level −130 · 31 July 1935
Shut Down in a Single Summer
The blast was meant to buy the mine time, and with copper still at the bottom it bought none. By early 1935 close to three years of the smelter’s copper sat unsold in a huge, coffin-shaped stack near the harbour. Mining stopped on 31 July 1935. A thousand people were laid off, and some 2,500 lost their homes almost overnight.
Granby shipped out the machinery from the mine, the mill, the shops, the powerhouses and the town, with kilometres of rail and the locomotives, and closed the town that September. It left ore behind: 1.8 million tons still in reserve, a third of it in the pillars that held the old workings up. A last clean-up in 1936 brought out 4,987 tonnes more.
Peter Loudon · looking back
“Anyox was born quietly but she went out with a bang – or at least the bang heralded the end.”
50 millionKilograms of copper, or close to it, stacked unsold by early 1935
1,000People laid off when the mine stopped, 31 July 1935
1942
Level −220 · July 1942
What the Fire Left Standing
For seven years a skeleton crew of about fifteen men, with a few of their families, kept watch over an empty town. Consolidated Mining and Smelting bought the property in 1937 and searched for more ore. By 1940 it had given up, and the town was to be dismantled.
In early July 1942, after a heavy thunderstorm, lightning set the dead forest on fire, and the fires raced down the valley. The forest burned, the muskeg burned, the plank roads burned and the houses burned. The crew and their families fled to a waiting barge and watched from the water as Anyox burned.
What stood afterward was concrete, brick and steel. Most of it stands still.
Now
Level −360 · Frank’s Anyox
What the Forest Is Taking Back
Anyox is one of Frank’s two favourite mines; the other is Phoenix. In June 2017 he spent a week there, filming the ruins from the air and the old workings underground, and he went back in 2018.
Frank · on the first trip, 2017
“It’s just a huge site, the most awesome place that we’ve actually ever visited, and we spent a whole week there.”
The forest has come back over the hills the fumes killed. The powerhouse still stands, and so do the smelter stacks, the dam, the brick kilns with their last bricks still stacked inside, and the concrete ore bins the trains once ran over. The slag has been quarried for abrasive since 1990. Underground, the old workings are flooded and caving, and the timbers and ladders are heavy with the minerals that have soaked into them.
The town’s cemetery lies in that forest too. In the summer of 2021 the Canadian Rangers and their youth program, with help from a mining company at Alice Arm, cleared away trees that threatened its graves, and they honoured the grave of William Alexander Hogg, a soldier of the Great War. Born in Belfast in 1884, he made Anyox his home after the war and died on 20 June 1925.
Frank · on what the builders left
“It’s pretty neat to see just how much pride they took in the engineering and how they built stuff … it’s kind of a shame that Mother Nature is taking it back.”
What is left down there
Anyox · A flooded drift, yellow with minerals Anyox · Water over a mineral dam Anyox · Through the chute timbers Anyox · Two bulbs still in place Anyox · An old shovel
Frank left one thing behind for a season: a bat monitor for BatCaver, a Wildlife Conservation Society Canada program in which cavers set out monitors in caves and old mines to learn where bats spend the winter. It listened for months, and he picked it up on his next trip.
And Anyox’s story may not be over. In February 2026 an exploration company reported that its drill holes had found a new body of copper-rich rock, far below the lowest level of the old mine.
Film No. 110 · About an hour
The Very, Very Best of Anyox
Frank’s own pick from his Anyox films: the townsite from the air, then the best of what he found underground. “This is the best show I’ve ever produced,” he says at the start.
Jump Into the Film
The ledger
Every Year the Province Counted
Tonnes of ore mined each year from 1914 to 1936, from the province’s own production table. The best year was 1934, the year of the blast. The last 4,987 tonnes, in 1936, were the clean-up. Point at any year to read it.Touch the chart and slide along it to read any year.
1934 1,580,601 tonnes mined, the biggest year, and the year of the blast
- Tonnes mined
- The biggest year, the year of the blast
- 21,725,524Tonnes of ore mined
- 121,297Ounces of gold
- 6,632,986Ounces of silver
- 708,888,031Pounds of copper
- 5,000Tons a day through the concentrator by 1932
Every year’s figure, as a table
| Year | Tonnes mined | Tonnes milled |
|---|---|---|
| 1914 | 236,601 | 236,601 |
| 1915 | 586,028 | 586,028 |
| 1916 | 663,109 | 663,109 |
| 1917 | 711,656 | 711,656 |
| 1918 | 778,243 | 778,243 |
| 1919 | 587,368 | 587,368 |
| 1920 | 728,163 | 728,163 |
| 1921 | 813,561 | 813,561 |
| 1922 | 775,379 | 775,379 |
| 1923 | 760,490 | 760,490 |
| 1924 | 950,166 | 228,517 |
| 1925 | 1,055,284 | 377,652 |
| 1926 | 1,094,430 | 546,136 |
| 1927 | 1,241,988 | 957,062 |
| 1928 | 1,280,167 | 1,106,487 |
| 1929 | 1,451,581 | 1,316,647 |
| 1930 | 1,291,099 | 1,272,758 |
| 1931 | 1,343,276 | 1,343,276 |
| 1932 | 1,488,744 | 1,488,744 |
| 1933 | 1,275,564 | 1,275,564 |
| 1934 | 1,580,601 | 1,580,601 |
| 1935 | 1,027,039 | 1,030,393 |
| 1936 | 4,987 | 4,987 |
The ledger counts tonnes. The men the mine killed are still being counted: their names are being gathered from the province’s annual reports, one year at a time, for this page. If you hold a name that belongs here, write to Frank.
BC Geological Survey, MINFILE production detail report · Open Government Licence – British Columbia
The Anyox Record
Take the Whole Record With You
One PDF, made to be printed and kept. It carries this page’s story with its photographs, and the province’s MINFILE record for Hidden Creek.
- Part 1The story of Anyox, 1889 to today, with the photographs
- Part 2The ledger, 1914 to 1936, year by year
- Part 3The MINFILE record in full: summary, capsule geology, production 1914 to 1936, bibliography
The Anyox Record · PDFComing soon
Record card
- MINFILE No.
- 103P 021
- Status
- Past producer
- Also known as
- Anyox · Anyox Mine · North Hidden Creek · West Shear · the orebodies Number 1 to 8
- Worked
- 1914–1935, with a clean-up in 1936
- Commodities
- Copper, gold, silver; cobalt and zinc recorded
- Camp and division
- Anyox camp · North Coast · Skeena Mining Division
The provincial record, last edited 11 April 2012, as extracted 28 September 2026 · Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – British Columbia
Questions
Five Questions People Ask About Anyox, BC
Is Anyox, BC a Ghost Town?
Yes. Mining stopped on 31 July 1935, the company closed the town that September, and in July 1942 a forest fire burned what was left. What stands today is concrete, brick and steel: the powerhouse, the smelter stacks, the brick kilns and the dam. Nothing on this page is a guide to any of it; the films are the way in.
Why Did the Anyox Mine Close?
Copper fell to the bottom of the Depression, and on 27 November 1934 a huge blast, meant to bring down great masses of low-grade ore, shattered the rock the mine still needed. With close to three years of copper stacked unsold, mining stopped on 31 July 1935.
What Happened to the Town of Anyox?
Granby shipped out its machinery and closed the town in September 1935. A skeleton crew of about fifteen men stayed on with a few of their families. Consolidated Mining and Smelting bought the property in 1937, searched for more ore and gave up, and in 1940 the town was to be dismantled. In early July 1942 lightning started the fire that burned it down.
How Much Copper Came Out of Anyox?
The province recorded 708,888,031 pounds of copper (321,546 tonnes) from the Hidden Creek mine between 1914 and 1936, with 6,632,986 ounces of silver and 121,297 ounces of gold, from 21,725,524 tonnes of ore.
How Is Anyox Connected to Phoenix?
Through the Granby company. Granby made its name at Phoenix, in the Boundary Country, and bought Hidden Creek in 1910 to keep its smelter going when the Phoenix mines neared their end. When Phoenix closed in 1919, experienced men were needed at Anyox, by Granby’s own account. Frank counts the two as his favourite mines.
Sources and records
BC Geological Survey, MINFILE 103P 021 (Hidden Creek), record summary and production detail report, and 103P 257 (the slag) · The National Mineral Inventory card for Hidden Creek · R. Sherlock and J. Domvile, “Great Mining Camps of Canada 2: The History and Geology of the Anyox Copper Camp, British Columbia”, Geoscience Canada, volume 34, with the words of John Flewin (Canadian Mining Journal, 1924) and Peter Loudon (The Town That Got Lost, 1973) as it quotes them · Granby Mining Company, Mineral Industries in Western Canada: Phoenix (CIM, 1974) · BC Geographical Names · Photographs of 1917 by Leonard Frank (Vancouver Public Library), as reproduced by Sherlock and Domvile · Photographs of the town from UBC Library Open Collections, and the library’s post of 4 April 2023, with Peter Loudon’s words as it quotes them · Photographs of the town from the Anyox Hydroelectric Corporation’s gallery on anyox.com, with the golf club’s score card and local rules and the cemetery’s care in 2021 · Frank’s Anyox films, 2017 and 2018 · BatCaver, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada · An exploration company’s news release of 23 February 2026 · Photographs of Anyox today: from Frank Schlichting’s archive.
Where Frank’s films and the record disagree (the year of the fire, the size of the town), the page follows the record. Updated 28 September 2026.
The record isn’t finished
Did your family live at Anyox? A photograph, a letter or a name from the cemetery would help this record.
Letters from a Retired Madman
One Photograph. One Story. Once a Month.
Frank picks one photograph out of the archive and tells the story of the day it was taken.
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