This Scenic Mountain Valley Might Have More Abandoned Towns Than Anywhere Else In North America

North America is a vast and diverse continent, but there is a common thread throughout: ghost towns. While one state is known for having the most ghost towns in the U.S., British Columbia takes the black-frosted cake as the region with the most ghost towns in North America at 1,500. So, it's no surprise that this province is home to an area that may have one of the highest concentrations of ghost towns on the continent: the Valley of the Ghosts in the West Kootenays. Located between Slocan Lake and Kootenay Lake below the Selkirk Mountains, the Valley of the Ghosts and the surrounding Kootenays were the site of one of Canada's biggest silver booms after the ore was discovered in the area in 1891. 

Sandon, British Columbia's most fascinating ghost town, became known as the "Monte Carlo of North America," with its dozens of hotels, saloons, and the biggest red light district in western Canada. More towns followed, like Cody, just next to Sandon, and Retallack and Zincton, along Highway 31A, and the area grew even more once the Kaslo & Slocan Railway was built in 1895. This amazing feat of precarious mountainside engineering connected Kaslo with Sandon, allowing the mining bubble to grow...until it burst.

Nearly all of the towns were abandoned by the mid-20th century, until several gained a brief new life as internment camps for Japanese Canadian citizens during World War II. In the ensuing years, Canada would send about 22,000 Japanese citizens from the west coast of British Columbia to remote ghost towns like Sandon and Kaslo in 1942. Once the war ended, these sites became abandoned yet again, and now, you can visit them by taking a road trip around the Valley of the Ghosts.

A good focal point in the Valley of the Ghosts is Sandon, once the area's beating heart. Less than an hour from charming Kaslo, the "Little Switzerland of Canada," Sandon had factories, breweries, a bowling alley, and even a soda-making company. Over 5,000 people lived there in its heyday, but the town went bankrupt by 1920 due to the falling prices of silver. Plus, the frantic building of Sandon stripped the mountainside of its trees, leaving the town susceptible to devastating floods, and a fire in 1900 drove even more out. By the time 953 Japanese Canadians were sent to Sandon in 1942, the town only had a population of 50, and in this Buddhist-only internment camp, some folks built a temple near city hall.

These days, only a handful of people still live in Sandon, a well-preserved ghost town with a small museum and about two dozen abandoned trolleys sent by Vancouver in 2000. Besides that, Sandon has something that nowhere else does: a hydroelectric plant with a generator installed by Nikola Tesla that's the only original Tesla power station in the world still running. It's been going strong since 1897.

When driving along Highway 31A, you'll see abandoned buildings in various states of ruin, the last remnants of towns like Alamo, Zincton, and Three Forks. About 20 minutes from Sandon on Highway 31A is an eye-catching old building whose side is covered with a grizzly bear mural. This marks the old town of Retallack, formerly known as Whitewater, a 19th-century mining town with hotels, a school, and a barber shop that was abandoned by the 1950s. The mural is meant to raise awareness of the grizzly habitat surrounding the area, as the highway has historically been an animal corridor.

The best way to explore the Valley of the Ghosts is to begin either in New Denver or Kaslo and drive east or west on Highway 31A. Although Kaslo isn't a ghost town, it does capture the history of the area with sites like the world's oldest intact sternwheeler that you can visit. Those interested in the history of the Japanese Canadians interned in these towns of the Kootenays can visit the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver, the only interpretive site of its kind in Canada. There, you can see original shacks from some of the camps as well as a Buddhist shrine made at the time.

Getting to the Valley of the Ghosts is no easy feat, unless you're actually a ghost with the ability to pass through walls and zip around this earthly plane. For more corporeal folks, you'll have to reach this part of the Kootenays by car. The charming city of Nelson, with over 350 historic buildings (including the supposedly haunted Hume Hotel built in 1898), is an hour from Kaslo and just under 1.5 hours from New Denver. The closest airport is the West Kootenay Regional Airport, with service to Vancouver, and it's about 1.5 hours from either location. The nearest international airport is Kelowna International Airport, which has flights from Seattle, Los Angeles, and all around Canada, and is 3.5 and 4.5 hours away from New Denver and Kaslo, respectively.