You don’t have to travel far to find Canada’s largest ghost town. In fact, it’s right here in BC.
Anyox was once a booming mining town and now sits abandoned and largely destroyed. The ghost town is nestled on the shores of Granby Bay, about 60 kilometres of Stewart.
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About Anyox
Long ago, the remote valley was a common hunting and trapping area for the Nisga’a people. The name Anyox actually translates to “hidden waters” in the Nisga’a language.
Anyox reportedly had no rail or road links to the rest of the province, with all connection served by steamships that travelled to Vancouver and Prince George.
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In its heyday in 1914, Anyox had a population of almost 3,000 residents. This is the time when the mine and smelter were put into full operation — with copper and other precious metals mined from the nearby mountains.
The town had a curling rink, golf course and a hospital. And in the spring of 1918, Granby Consolidated built the first wooden tennis court in Canada there.
During that same year, incoming ships brought the Spanish flu to the town. Dozens of residents of Anyox died from that flu epidemic.
But it was the Great Depression that drove down the demand for copper and ultimately forced mines to shut down.
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The town was abandoned by 1935 and has remained that way ever since.
Most of the machinery was removed from the town in the 1940s and all of the structures were destroyed in wildfires around that time.
The town was the subject of a documentary in 2022, called Anyox. There’s also a couple of notable names born in the town of Anyox, including former Vancouver mayor Jack Volrich and Olympic athlete Reid Mitchell.
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