Silver City (Silverton)

Silver City (officially “Silverton”) was a frontier boomtown at the base of Castle Mountain in the Bow Valley; a town that died because it was built on a hoax.

The great hoax. In 1881 prospector Joe Healy claimed rich copper and silver deposits in the cliffs of Castle Mountain. Swindlers Patton and Pettigrew orchestrated a “salting” operation at the Homestake Mine; firing silver-bearing ore into the rock with shotguns or planting high-grade samples from other regions to deceive investors. By 1883, with the Canadian Pacific Railway reaching the area, Silver City exploded to 3,000 residents: the Grand Central Hotel, two general stores, six saloons, a pool hall, and an NWMP barracks. The bubble burst within two years. The “deep veins” were empty limestone; investors fled, the CPR moved the station, and by 1885 the town had vanished; a ghost town of empty shacks.

Geology. Silver City sits at the Castle Mountain Thrust Fault, where older Precambrian and Cambrian limestone and shale (Eldon Formation) were thrust over younger Cretaceous rock. Silver typically forms in igneous or metamorphic hydrothermal veins; the sedimentary cliffs of Castle Mountain could not support the deposits Patton and Pettigrew promised. What prospectors saw was often galena or iron pyrite (fool’s gold).

Joe Smith’s vigil. One man stayed. Joe Smith, an original 1882 prospector, lived in a small cabin among the rotting remains for over 50 years; trapping, hunting, small-scale prospecting, and trading with travellers on the developing motor road (now the Bow Valley Parkway). He became a local curiosity, a living relic. In 1937, aged 90, he was moved to a nursing home in Calgary; his death marked the final extinction of Silver City.

Later chapters. Just east of the townsite, the Castle Mountain Internment Camp (1915–1917) held “enemy aliens”; mostly Austro-Hungarian and Ukrainian immigrants; forced to build infrastructure including parts of the Banff–Lake Louise road. In 1923 Hollywood used the ruins as a set for the silent film The Alaskan; the production repaired old shacks to depict a fictional Alaskan mining town before abandoning the site again.

Visiting. The site lies in Banff National Park near the Rockbound Lake Trailhead on the Bow Valley Parkway (Hwy 1A). From the trailhead, follow the main trail ~0.5 km; a short detour at Silverton Falls junction leads to the creek that supplied the town. The townsite is the flat, forested area between the parking lot and the base of the cliffs. Nature has reclaimed it; look for cellar depressions, clearings where the main street ran, and rusted artifacts (leave everything in place). No standing buildings remain.