The Mines · British Columbia
Find a Mine by Area
Type a town, a lake, a mountain or a camp, or a mine’s name or MINFILE number, and the map goes there. Every pin opens its record.
Not signed in: every pin sits at its camp.
Exact positions, taken on site, are for readers on the list: sign in on any card, no password.
Frank’s record
The Province’s roads and trails
Warnings and signal
Kept in this browser only. Nothing here is sent to Frank or anyone else, and a phone keeps its own.
This browser won’t keep anything just now (a private window, or storage switched off), so the notebook empties when you leave.
Nearly full: past 200 the oldest entry drops out.
Nothing kept yet. Press Keep on a mine’s card, one of the province’s MINFILE points, a spot you right-clicked or one of your own marks, and it waits here for your next visit.
Your track
Your breadcrumbs, drawn on the map in red: recorded only while the map is following you with the screen on. The GPX file opens in a handheld GPS or a phone’s map app.
Your lines
Lay out the day’s run yourself: press Draw a line, then click along the roads and trails. The map gives the distance, the climb and the descent, and the profile, from the same elevation tiles as the height readout. Kept in this browser only; save it as GPX for the handheld. You draw the line — this map never draws a route for you, and never to a mine.
Share the plan copies a link that carries your lines and marks and the view: whoever opens it sees the same picture and can add it to their own device. It goes only to whoever you send it to.
From your GPS
Lay a GPX file from your handheld, or from any map app, over this map: its waypoints and tracks, read here and kept in this browser only. Nothing is uploaded. You can also drop the file onto the map.
This browser couldn’t keep the file (too big, or storage switched off): it shows for this visit only.
Your photos
A photo taken with location on carries where it was taken. Choose one and it goes on the map there, with a small copy kept in this browser; the photo itself goes nowhere.
This browser couldn’t keep the photo: it shows for this visit only.
Beyond British Columbia the map is OpenTopoMap’s; the Province’s roads, trails and advisories end at the border. Your position, marks and cards work the same.
Squares where a phone on this map had data; deeper green, more reports. A blank is unreported, not dead.
- Anyox North Coast · Copper · Silver · Gold · Anyox Camp Worked 1914–1935
- Phoenix Boundary Country · Copper · Gold · Silver · Phoenix Camp Worked 1900–1919, open pit 1959–78
- Union Boundary Country · Gold · Silver · Lead · Zinc · Copper · Franklin Camp Shipped ore 1913–1947
- Yankee Boy Boundary Country · Gold · Silver · Lead · Copper · Zinc · Hardy Mountain Camp Shipped ore 1899–1942
Phoenix Camp
Deadwood Camp
Hardy Mountain Camp
Franklin Camp
Anyox Camp
Sent to .
Open the message on this device and tap its link: it brings you back to this page, on the list and signed in.
Nothing within a minute? Look in Promotions or Junk. ·
Positions
Where the Pins Come From
Taken on Site
Most positions were recorded at the mine with a GPS. Where the province’s MINFILE record puts a mine somewhere else, the pin’s card says by how much.
Sent In, Then Checked
Readers send positions too. Each is checked against the sender’s photo or track log and the record before it goes on the map, and its card says who sent it, if they asked to be named. GPS tips for a good position.
Some Pins Stay at the Camp
A pin stays at its camp when the land is private, the ground is unsafe, bats winter there, or a family asks. Own the land a mine is on? Tell us, and its pin stays at the camp. Openings and ways into the workings are never shown.
Works and Sites
An ink square is something left on the ground from the mining days that isn’t a mine on the record: a cabin, a boiler, a tramway tower, a mill foundation, an adit with no name yet. Found by Frank or sent in by a reader, checked, and given a short page of its own. Found one? Send it in.
Do Not Do What Frank Does
Never go into an abandoned mine. Bad air that gives no warning, rotten timber, hidden shafts under loose ground, rock that fails without a sound. Look from outside, and take nothing. Frank films so you don’t have to go in.
This map is a resource, not something to rely on alone. It tells you where you are and what is on file; it cannot tell you that a road is passable, that the ground is safe, or that you will have signal. Carry a map and compass of your own, tell someone where you are going and when you will be back, and turn around when the day or the weather says so.
Into the bush: the same map lives at map.frankschlichting.com, where you can download an area — the map, the Province’s roads and trails, the hillshade — and carry it where there is no signal.
The men these mines killed are remembered by name on In Memory →
- Positions
- Recorded on site, WGS 84
- The Province’s Record
- MINFILE, BC Geological Survey. Its points are often tens or hundreds of metres from the workings.
- Roads and Trails
- The Province of British Columbia’s Digital Road Atlas, forest tenure roads and recreation lines. A road or trail on file is not a road or trail open or passable.
- Trails’ Uses
- Recreation Sites and Trails BC’s record of each managed trail — its activities, access, upkeep and closure notices (Open Government Licence – British Columbia), as the site read it on November 7, 2026. A listing is the Province’s record, not a permission for today.
- Active Logging
- The Province’s harvesting authorities (Open Government Licence – British Columbia), the active ones in view, read live when the layer is on. An authority to log is not a crew on site.
- Snowmobile Areas
- The Province’s Snowmobile Management Areas for mountain caribou, under the Wildlife Act’s Motor Vehicle Prohibition Regulation (Open Government Licence – British Columbia), as the site read them on November 7, 2026, their edges simplified to about 50 m. Check the current regulation and the signs before you ride.
- Place Names
- BC Geographical Names
- Weather
- Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), asked only when you press Weather here on a card
- Advisories
- Read live when the layer is on: BC Parks’ public advisories; the BC Wildfire Service’s fires and the Province’s bans, Recreation Sites and Trails BC’s closed sites and trails, and DriveBC’s events (Open Government Licence – British Columbia); Avalanche Canada’s forecasts. Shown as they stand, linked to their source; this map adds nothing to them.
- Signal
- Readers who chose to share, through the map’s home: the squares their phones had data in, counted; no names, no times, nothing finer than 400 m. A text usually gets out where data does, and sometimes further.
- Map
- Drawn by this site from © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); OpenTopoMap (CC BY-SA) where the site’s own map is off
- Elevation
- Terrain Tiles (Mapzen, on AWS Open Data), from SRTM and the national elevation data
That’s the whole deal. Frank picks one photograph out of the archive, tells you the story of the day it was taken, and signs off until next month. A short P.S. points to what’s new on the site, and that’s it.
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