ALONG THE COLUMBIA RIVER BETWEEN GOLDEN AND BEAVERMOUTH ARE SEVERAL POINTS OF INTEREST.
Beavermouth—Name: By the C.P.R. Company with reference to the Beaver and Columbia Rivers about one and a half miles below the station. Altitude: 2,435 feet. Here is a forsaken village. At one time a lumber mill gave employment to a considerable community. Now decaying cabins and a skeleton mill remain to tell the tale, The big mogul engines used to push the trains up the steep grades of the Beaver River Valley to the summit of Rogers Pass are kept at Beavermouth. The grade is cut along the west side of the valley and climbs nearly 1,000 feet in sixteen miles. To appreciate the difficulties of so remarkable engineering, a position should be taken on the edge of the Prairie Hills bounding the Beaver Valley on the east, from where the road-bed shows a white line against the dark background of the western slopes. With a field-grass as many as twenty bridges can be counted crossing the racing torrents. Some of these bridges are beautiful structures of steel, making one wonder how such slender combinations can support the weight of heavy trains.
At Beavermouth. Quartz Creek from the northern interior of the Dogtooth Mountains joins the Columbia River. It has been pointed out in the monograph on the Dogtooth Mountains, that a trail might be made up Quartz Valley to connect with the Canyon Creek trail from Colden. For many years placer gold mining was carried on not far from the mouth of the stream, but with no great profits. And it may be going on still, but in a very small way.
Blaeberry Crossing—Name: With reference to the Blaeberry River so called from the quantities of huckleberries (Vaccinium) found on the slopes of its valley.. Its source is in a glacier lying on the south slope of the Great Divide many miles back in the Rockies north-easterly from its mouth. The glaciers on the opposite side of the Divide are those which supply the headwaters of the Saskatchewan river, and the pass leading over it is the historic Howse Pass, a low one, 4,500 feet in altitude. The Blaeberry River has associations with the old fur-traders and explorers, both the North-West Fur Company and the Hudson's Bay Company making it a highway of trade. The route lay over Howse Pass and down the Blaeberry to the Columbia Valley which it traversed by road or river as far as Beavermouth. there following the great Columbia northward round the Big Bend.
Donald—Name: By the C.P.R. Company. Presumably after Sir Donald A. Smith (now Lord Strathcona and Mt. Royal) a director of the Company. Altitude: 2,580 feet. Location: A "siding" on the railway, twelve miles easterly from Beavermouth on the Columbia River. Donald, once a Divisional Point on the railway and a flourishing village beautiful for its situation between the grey Rockies and the dark Selkirks, is now not only a deserted village but an abandoned site. Except the old station and one or two buildings, the town has been removed piecemeal; and a scene of railway and mining industry has reverted to almost primeval wilderness, its streets overgrown with rank vegetation. It has had its "scenes, its joys, its crimes"—and its characters. Sheriff R, to wit, was
