The hotels of Pilot Bay

This week, a rare envelope from the Hotel Pilot Bay, postmarked 1897, sold on eBay for $115 US. Making it all the more appealing, it was addressed to Henry Croasdaile, manager of the Hall Mines smelter in Nelson.

Once the site of its own smelter and sawmill, Pilot Bay was busy enough in the 1890s to justify the existence of three hotels and two boarding houses.

The earliest of these, the Hotel Clark, was first mentioned in the Victoria Daily Times of June 15, 1892: “A letter from Pilot Bay, dated the 9th says … Plans are now being prepared in Victoria for a three-story hotel, to be erected on the lots reserved for that purpose.”

The same day’s issue of the Nelson Miner contained a liquor license application for the hotel from David Clark. Clark was born in 1862 in Cedar Grove, Ont. He joined the North West Mounted Police in 1882 at age 19, and served in Regina, Fort Macleod, and Calgary. In 1886, Clark married Julia Moore of Walkerton, Ont. in Duluth, Minn. They had daughters Florence and Loraine.

Clark was promoted to sergeant in 1887 and discharged in 1889, whereupon he and George W. Steele, another former NWMP officer, opened the Clark House hotel at Lethbridge. The ad seen here is from the Lethbridge News of Dec. 16, 1891.

Following Clark’s departure for Kootenay Lake, Steele kept the Lethbridge hotel up for two more years, but eventually moved to Nelson, where around 1904 he became the city’s fourth fire chief.

Beginning on Oct. 1, 1892, The Miner carried another ad for a liquor license application by Joseph Blanchard for another hotel at Pilot Bay, which is the one that the envelope above came from.

The same newspaper noted on Nov. 19: “Joe Blanchard is opening his new hotel in Pilot Bay with a dance on Wednesday next.”

Joseph was born in Quebec on Feb. 12, 1853, but but we don’t know a lot about his early life. His wife Dorita, also known as Alde, was born Dorothee Adele Poirier in 1854 in Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Que. to Edouard Ferdinand Poirier and Dorothea Dorah Wilcot. She was the fourth of their 16 children.

Joe and Alde had five children: Albany Joseph, Rosalinda (Babe), Ozalinda Elizabeth (Ozzie), Ernest, and Homer Joseph, most or all of whom were born in Albert Lea, Minn. in the 1880s.

It’s not clear exactly when the family came west, but they joined several of Alde’s siblings, homesteading southwest of Sandpoint, about 1½ miles east of the Washington-Idaho state line. (The Blanchard and Poirier families were very intermingled; consequently their genealogy is complicated.)

The Blanchards briefly homesteaded here too, and a creek and lake were named after them. Later they established what was reputedly the first hotel in Coeur d’Alene. One account called it the Lakeview, another the “Coeur d’Alene Inn, one of the old landmarks of the city and as originally established, the first hotel of any pretensions in the city.” By 1888, they were in Spokane, operating the Blanchard Hotel at 320 Railroad Ave.

Blanchard’s Hotel at 320 W. Railroad Ave. in Spokane, two lots off Monroe toward Lincoln, 1888. Standing third from left is Joe Blanchard, son Albany, wife Alde, and daughters Ozalinda (Ozzie) Blanchard, and Rosalinda (Babe). The others pictured are boarders. This hotel appeared in the civic directories between 1889 and 1892. In the latter year the address was given as 922 Railroad Ave.

(Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

The family’s move to West Kootenay in 1892 might have been due to James Blanchard (if he was in fact related) or to one of the Poirier relatives, drawn by the mining boom.

The Nelson Tribune of Jan. 12, 1893 gave us a much better description of both Pilot Bay hotels:

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Blanchard, lately of Spokane, have erected a substantial hotel of 30 foot frontage and 60 foot depth, three stories high, and finish throughout in hard plaster. It contains 30 rooms and has cost about $5,500.

Dave Clark has also put up a very commodious hotel on the principal street, 50 foot frontage and 40 foot depth, hard finished throughout, two stories in height. It contains 13 rooms and cost about $2,000.

The 1893 civic directory for Pilot Bay listed Clark and Blanchard as hotel proprietors. James Blanchard, whose relation to Joe is unclear, was listed as a fireman aboard the the SS Galena, a boat he had been employed on since at least the fall of 1891.

The Blanchard children attended school in Pilot Bay. Albany’s beautiful honour roll certificate from 1895 certificate survives, seen here. (While there would have been no shortage of these certificates, I’ve never seen one until now.)

(Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

In 1894, W.S. Leach was listed in the Pilot Bay directory as manager of a boarding house.

Jean Davis, who arrived at Pilot Bay in 1895, described her memory of the town 70 years later: “It was a lovely little place when we got there … There were two hotels, Clarks and Blanchards, the company boarding house called the White House, [and] a boarding house run by a family named Hardingers …”

Nothing else is known about the Hardinger house, but the Kootenay Mining and Smelting Co. leased the White House to Capt. S.C. Spaulding (whose first name, Sylvanus, was never used publicly). Spaulding turned the building into an hotel (or rebranded it as one), as noted in the Kaslo Prospector of May 9, 1895:

There are three hotels [at Pilot Bay]. Capt. Spaulding, a retired sea captain, full of many reminiscences of the time when he “sailed the seas over” keeps the big white house on the hill. Dave Clark keeps the Hotel Clark and Mr. Blanchard the Pilot Bay Hotel.

Capt. Spaulding, a mariner from Maine, for years sailed out of Victoria and was reportedly “well known in all the coast cities.”

Prior to taking over the boarding house, he managed the Davies-Sayward sawmill at Pilot Bay, arriving there by January 1892, when the Victoria Daily Times reported him “suffering from a touch of heart trouble.”

On Dec. 3, 1896, Capt. Spaulding’s heart finally gave out. He died unexpectedly at his home in Pilot Bay, age 52. He was buried in Masonic section of the Nelson cemetery and his funeral was reported as one of the largest in the city to that time. However, his grave is not marked. Immediately after his death, his wife of 29 years, the former Jane Eliza (Jennie) Herrick, returned to their old home in Rockland, Maine.

Victoria Daily Times, Dec. 18, 1896

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In March 1897, a couple from Nelson was hired to run a boarding house at Pilot Bay, which was probably the Spaulding House, although it’s a little unclear. They called themselves Mr. and Mrs. Little and stayed at David Clark’s hotel while the boarding house was being fixed up.

Clark later recalled that Mr. Little was “a disagreeable fellow and was continually nagging at the woman … Very often she came into the room in tears.”

The Littles soon left the area. It wasn’t until nine years later that their identities were revealed. They were actually Albert Horsely and Hattie Simpson, and both had abandoned their spouses and children some months before.

David Clark believed that while in Pilot Bay, Hattie “began to realize the enormity of her offence and it is likely she made up her mind to return to her lawfully wedded husband.”

Horsely (picured here, ca. 1906) subsequently took the alias Harry Orchard, which Clark figured was because Horsely met a young man at Pilot Bay named Orchard.

In 1905, former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated when a bomb exploded at his house. Harry Orchard was soon arrested and charged with the crime, which he claimed was carried out on orders of the Western Federation of Miners. Three union leaders were also charged but acquitted.

Orchard, however, pleaded guilty. His death sentence was commuted to life in prison and he spent the next 46 years behind bars. Hamarttie Simpson returned to her family in Brighton, Ont., where she died in 1953, six months before Orchard.

I’ve written before in more detail about their brief time in West Kootenay.

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After Orchard and Simpson left Pilot Bay, the Spaulding House/White House went back into mothballs until it was rumored a few months later that the idle smelter was about to be sold. The Ledge of Sept. 16, 1897 reported “The Spaulding House is being repaired and refitted throughout and will be opened under a new name next week.”

The Kootenaian soon carried the ad seen here for the Lakeview Hotel, Lovatt and Eakin proprietors.

Dr. Eakin, had been Pilot Bay’s resident physician since 1895. He’d previously served in the US Army. Lovatt was Sam Lovatt, involved in sawmilling and running boats for the smelter company. He was also executor of Capt. Spaulding’s estate, which apparently consisted of $1,000, left to his wife. (It doesn’t appear that Spaulding actually owned the hotel.)

The Lakeview had at least one other proprietor, F.H. Mudd, whose business card is seen below. But I can find nothing else about him — without this card I never would have known about him. “Wise choice not to call it the Mudd Hotel,” notes Frances Roback of the Gray Creek Historical Society.

The back of the business card seen here had a sketch of a ship with the caption “The Ship That Never Returned.” It certainly wasn’t a boat that sailed Kootenay Lake. The signature is illegible but the first initials appear to be G.W.

(Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

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Joseph Blanchard’s hotel continued to operate throughout this time, although he was in the news more often on mining matters than anything to do with the hotel. He and brother-in-law Joseph Poirier had the Lucy claim on White Grouse Mountain near Sanca, a mining boom town further down the lake.

In 1897, he opened another hotel at Sanca. Two years later, his liquor license application was denied. The commissioners felt it was unnecessary, as there was a second hotel there, operated by Emma Turner. Blanchard’s hotel probably didn’t survive the decision.

The 1899 civic directory listed David Clark and Joseph Blanchard as hotelkeepers at Pilot Bay. Additionally, James Blanchard was listed as a blacksmith and E. Blanchard (Joe’s son Ernest) was listed without occupation. Plus, there were two more hotelkeepers: M.J. Patton and Mrs. E. Turner — the same Emma Turner who had the hotel at Sanca.

Did she and Patton work at one of the existing Pilot Bay hotels, or were these new? It’s unclear, but the answer is probably the former, since the only liquor license applications for Pilot Bay between 1899 and 1901 were in the names of Blanchard and Clark.

Turner subsequently married former Pilot Bay resident William Ginol and took up ranching near Sanca, at what became Ginol’s Landing.

Charles E. Perry completed the Pilot Bay townsite survey on Nov. 30, 1892. The plan was cancelled on Nov. 8, 1962.

Blanchard, who also raised pigs, suffered a blow later that year when an outbreak of hog cholera claimed a dozen of his animals. Worse still, on Dec. 28, 1899, Joe’s wife Alde died at Pilot Bay, age 45. Her health had been failing for months, although a visit to Halcyon Hot Springs the previous summer was said to have done wonders. Her death registration gave no cause of death. It just indicated she “was found dead in bed.” A surviving handwritten note from her granddaughter Helen suggests she had been sick for a month. She was buried in Nelson in a grave that is still marked.

Ozzie, John (Joe), Babe, and Ernie Blanchard, date unknown. This might have even been taken inside the Hotel Pilot Bay. (Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

Meanwhile, David Clark’s hotel played a minor role in one of West Kootenay’s deadliest disasters: when the SS City of Ainsworth called at Pilot Bay during bad weather on Nov. 29, 1898, a wedding party was going on at the hotel. Capt. Allan Lean was reluctant to stay long, lest he lose crew members to the festivities.

The SS City of Ainsworth is seen in a lantern slide that sold this year on eBay.

So the ship pushed off into the night — and got caught in a storm. The boat capsized, taking nine lives with it. Later, while being hauled into Crawford Bay by the tug Kaslo, the line snapped and the Ainsworth sank.

David Clark photographed the boat moments before it slipped from sight. Clark also found the ship’s compass on the beach, which came loose from its stand and drifted ashore. He later presented it to Capt. John Paterson as a souvenir, although its present whereabouts are unknown.

In 1899, Clark reported to Calgary for medical examination to be shipped off for the Boer War. He passed and was headed east to join his contingent at year’s end. We don’t know anything about his war experience, except that he survived and returned to Canada.

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1903 was a year of change for Pilot Bay and its hostelries. Although the smelter had been closed since 1896, things bottomed out when the Davies-Sayward sawmill also shut down.

On June 11 of that year, The Kootenaian announced that James (not Joseph) Blanchard, had sold the Pilot Bay Hotel to Mr. Cogle and taken over an hotel at Salmo. Two weeks later, the Nelson Tribune added: “David Clark of Pilot Bay has removed to Morrissey Mines and Joseph Blanchard of the same village has removed to Salmo.”

In 1904, John (not Joseph, nor James) Blanchard was listed in the civic directory as proprietor of the Northern Hotel at Salmo. In 1905, John’s name also appeared in the liquor license application. But the 1905 and 1910 civic directories both list Joseph as the hotelman. His great great granddaughter Lorraine Laffoon is quite sure John and Joseph are the same guy. (James was someone else, but the mention above was probably a mistake.)

The Blanchard family at Pilot Bay, 1905. (Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

Morrissey Mines was a coal mining town south of Fernie. There David Clark started another Clark House (the ad seen here is from the Morrissey Despatch of April 29, 1904), but it’s not clear if the Pilot Bay building closed in his absence.

The 1904 and 1905 civic directories show no hotels at Pilot Bay at all. The 1906 Mercantile Agency reference book lists “Coyle, Fred … Boats & Hotel.” This should read Fred Cogle, the Mr. Cogle who leased the Pilot Bay Hotel from Blanchard.

Cogle’s wife, the former Emma Hanson, reportedly worked in one of the Pilot Bay hotels and perhaps that’s where they met. They wed in Kaslo on April 29, 1899. His age on the marriage registration was given as 34 and hers as 39, but she was probably ten years older than him.

Emma was from Norway and was previously employed in a Trondheim hotel that catered to royalty. There’s an anecdote in Ted Affleck’s Kootenay Lake Chroncles about how Emma greeted the Prince of Wales during an unscheduled layover at Procter in 1927.

Soon an arresting figure, garbed in gala attire of the 1880s issued from the home of Fred Cogle, swept down to the railway tracks, curtsied and engaged the Prince of Wales in animated conversation about Trondheim, the ancient coronation seat of Scandinavian kings.

With another curtsy, Mrs. Cogle — “a decided eccentric” — departed, much to the astonishment of the assembled townsfolk, who rarely saw her or heard her speak.

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After leaving Salmo, Joseph Blanchard returned to Pilot Bay. We know this because on Jan. 3, 1906, son Albany, 24, married Mable Lucken, 21, at the Blanchard home there. Albany had been living at Priest River, Idaho for the previous five years, but in addition to his father, his siblings Ernest and Ozzie were still at Pilot Bay. They were listed as the official witnesses on the marriage registration.

But Albany was soon struck with a severe attack of typhoid fever and “wasted away considerable of his former self.” He died barely six months after his wedding, at home in Priest River, age 24.

Obituary of Albany Blanchard, unknown newspaper, July 1906.

(Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

That is the last sign of the Blanchard family in Pilot Bay. Joe Blanchard later homesteaded at Chester, Montana, where three of his children moved. Around 1911, in failing health, he moved to his old home at St. Damase, Que., near Montreal, hoping a change of climate would help. He was planning to return to Montana when he died unexpectedly of diabetes on April 20, 1913, age 60.

He was survived by his children at Chester — Ernest, Homer, and Rose — as well as daughter Ozzie in Coeur d’Alene.

Joseph Blanchard obituary, unknown Coeur d’Alene newspaper, 1913.

(Courtesy Lorraine Laffoon)

The Blanchard family received some belated recognition in Idaho near the spot where they once homesteaded. In 1908, the post office, established five years earlier as White, changed its to Blanchard, after Blanchard Creek. (Although it would have made equal sense to rename it Poirier.)

In 1912, the Blanchard Trading Company was established by Lewis Poirier, a brother to Alde Blanchard, who had been there since the 1880s. Later the store was passed on to Lewis’ son Fielden, then to Claude Blanchard, one of Alde and Joseph’s grandsons.

Blanchard, Idaho is today an unincorporated community in Bonner County. Its population on the 2010 census was 261. Three other place names honour Albeni Poirier, a brother to Alde: Albeni Falls, Albeni Cove, and Albeni Highway.

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In 1906, the Canadian Metal Co. Ltd. bought the Pilot Bay smelter and Bluebell mine that year and began concentrating zinc for shipment to a new smelter at Frank, Alta.

As a result, David Clark closed his Morrissey hotel and returned to his old hotel at Pilot Bay, “having escaped from Morrissey Mines with only the loss of his hair,” as The Ledge put it. (Years later, the same paper explained: “Dave always wore his hair long and looked like a real Buffalo Bill.”)

The last sign of Clark at Pilot Bay is in June 1907. Around 1909, he moved to Parkdale, Alta., northwest of Lethbridge, and had a hotel and farm there. He was still in business as of September 1913.

Harry Mawdsley talked about him in a 1964 interview with Imbert Orchard, transcribed by the Gray Creek Historical Society:

I got a letter from him when he lived in Parkland. He had some farmland there. He had quite a bunch of wheat planted and thoroughbred horses. He was doing pretty good. That was the last letter I got from him. He figured if the wheat crop that year turned out good, he’d have it made. I never heard from him afterwards. He’s dead now anyway.

Clark died in Calgary on Nov. 12, 1923, age 60. Here’s his obituary from the Calgary Herald of four days later.

Clark’s grave at Nanton is still marked.

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The old Lakeview Hotel, formerly the Spaulding House, formerly the White House, got a new lease on life after 1905 when Margaret McLellan took it over. She came to Nelson in 1892 from Nova Scotia to join her husband Alfred, who was working at the Silver King mine.

In 1894, they pre-empted land about a mile north of the Pilot Bay smelter (one of the two remaining smokestacks is pictured below in 2002). Alfred got a job at the smelter while his wife and children looked after a herd of cows. One of the children, Hazel Mae, was born at Pilot Bay on Dec. 19, 1901.

Another McLellan family lived at Pilot Bay, John and Mary Jane, who were probably Alfred’s brother and sister-in-law. They had a daughter, Esther Janet, born at Pilot Bay on Jan. 11, 1897 and delivered by Alde Blanchard and Margaret McLellan.

Alfred and Margaret took over the Anglo-American hotel in Ainsworth in 1902, then were drawn a couple of years later, like David Clark, to Morrissey, where they started another dairy.

Alfred died suddenly of a heart attack in 1905, leaving Margaret to raise eight children, six of them 16 or younger. Again like David Clark, they returned to Pilot Bay and operated what was once again called the White House Hotel. But they were only there for a few months until the zinc concentrator closed.

They then moved back to Nelson and ran the Sunnyside Hotel at the west end of Baker Street. In 1911, Margaret married Ike Lewis, who pre-empted a large ranch on the flats north of Creston. Widowed again in 1932, Margaret married Harold Spence of Boswell in 1941. She died in 1946.

Boswell resident Jessie Hepher wrote that Margaret was an inspiration to her:

Whatever hardships we encountered, we knew that Mrs. Lewis had met and overcome many more difficult ones in her lifetime. She had a hardy pioneer spirit, coped masterfully with her own problems and remained ever willing to help others in difficulty.

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No hotels listed are listed at Pilot Bay in 1910, 1914, or 1918, the only years during that span with available civic directories.

In 2007, however, Tom Lymbery of Gray Creek had a visit from Wesley P. Walton and family, who wanted to learn more about his grandfather, Joseph Blanchard. Walton brought along two jaw-dropping pictures of the hotel, seen here, which caused much excitement in local historical circles.

The attractive three-storey Hotel Pilot Bay boasted two sets of bay windows and balconies, as well as carpenter gothic peaks. It was a far cry more pretentious than the two-storey Blanchard Hotel in Spokane and most of the early false-fronted boomtown hotels in West Kootenay.

The first image has a caption dating it to 1904, but it was probably taken at least a year earlier, since it shows Joe Blanchard, who sold out in 1903, and daughters Babe and Ozzie.

Wesley P. Walton/Gray Creek Historical Society

The other photo is a side view dated Oct. 12, 1905 and taken by Queen Studio of Nelson, whose proprietor was Allan Lean — the same man who captained the SS City of Ainsworth the night of its final sailing. An inquiry exonerated him.

This photo shows a long metal lightning rod extending from the roof, a wooden sidewalk with railing leading to the hotel, and another building next door.

Wesley P. Walton/Gray Creek Historical Society

Where did the Hotel Pilot Bay stand exactly? We can see it in the wonderful photo of the town below, taken in 1906. I’ve circled it on the hillside at centre-right. I’ve also circled what I presume to be the White House Hotel.

Wesley P. Walton/Gray Creek Historical Society

With the help of the photos, retired surveyor Garth Norris found the excavation for the basement and a bit of the foundation behind the BJ Heights subdivision, inside Pilot Bay Provincial Park (pictured here in a photo by Frances Roback).

What happened to this building and the other hotels/boarding houses? Tom Lymbery wrote in the East Shore Mainstreet in August 2008:

Whether the empty buildings were purchased by someone, there were always those on the lookout for lumber. Usually the doors and windows vanished first, and then the balance of the structure — even the nails were saved for re-use … Perhaps some of the material from Blanchard’s hotel is still in use somewhere on the lake!

The buildings were gone by 1964, at any rate, when Imbert Orchard interviewed Harry Mawdsley.

Lorraine Laffoon of League City, Texas — daughter to the late Wesley Walton, who died in 2009, granddaughter to Helen Dorothy Blanchard, great granddaughter to Homer Blanchard, and great great granddaughter to Joseph Blanchard — visited the Hotel Pilot Bay site in July 2010. She and other descendants took home a barrel hoop and brick as souvenirs. The following month, Norris and Lymbery led a memorable and well-attended tour of the site and other Pilot Bay landmarks.

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During a visit with Tom Lymbery in 2013, Fielden (Sonny) Poirier Jr. of Blanchard, a grandson to Lewis Poirier, revealed another family connection to West Kootenay:

Albeni Porier ran a cafe and hotel at Sandon called the Pend D’Orille [sic]. I found this note in the Mining Review of June 13, 1898: “Alberni [sic] Poirier of Montreal has taken over the Bryan cafe and is now down to work.”

The ad seen here first appeared in The Paystreak on Oct. 22, 1898 and ran for the next few weeks. I didn’t understand the significance of the name until I realized that Blanchard, Idaho is near Pend Oreille Lake and the Pend d’Oreille River.

When Sandon burned on May 4, 1900, Albeni’s business was one of the casualties. He was listed in The Paystreak as among the fire victims: “A. Poirier, $1,000, no insurance.”

Another Poirier sibling, Hector, was very busy in the 1890s and 1900s with various mining claims near Salmo and around Camborne and Goldfields the Lardeau.

In 1899, Hector ran an hotel in Trail in partnership with someone named Orr. They then moved to Duncan City, now known as Howser, on Duncan Lake and ran another hotel for a short time. He later moved to Stewart, in northern BC.

The Blanchard/Poirier family is now spread out, but their fingerprints remain in Pilot Bay, as well as throughout the Idaho panhandle (Blanchard, Albany Falls, Coeur d’Alene, Rathdrum), and Chester, Montana.

— With many thanks to Lorraine Laffoon, Frances Roback, Janet Schwieger, and Tom Lymbery

Garth Norris of Pilot Bay (far left), shows his copy of the 1897 townsite map to (L-R) Greg Nesteroff, Ron Welwood, and Alistair Fraser, during a 2010 tour of Pilot Bay heritage sites. Steve White photo

SOURCES

Newspapers

• Victoria Daily Times, Jan. 15 and June 15, 1892

• Lethbridge News, April 6, 1892 and July 27, 1897

• The Miner (Nelson), June 15, Oct. 1, and Nov. 19, 1892; Mar. 16, 1895; April 18 and Dec. 5/12, 1896; Aug. 7, 1897; Nov. 23, 1898

• Nelson Daily Miner, July 5 and Dec. 30/31, 1899

• The Tribune (Nelson), Jan. 5/12, 1893; Sept. 22, 1894; July 5/6, Aug. 30, Nov. 21, and Dec. 30, 1899; Sept. 14 and Dec. 1, 1900; July 19 and Nov. 30, 1901; June 27, 1903

• The Prospector (Kaslo), May 9, 1895

• The Kootenaian (Kaslo), July 18 and Dec. 8 1896; Sept. 22, 1897; June 29, 1899; June 11, 1903

• The Ledge (New Denver), Dec. 10, 1896 and Sept. 16, 1897

• The Ledge (Greenwood), May 24, 1906 and Jan. 6, 1910

• Vancouver Daily World, Dec. 12, 1896

• Kootenay Mail (Revelstoke), Dec. 12, 1896

• British Columbia News (Kaslo), Aug. 20, 1897

• Cranbrook Herald, April 30, 1903 and April 5, 1906

• Ymir Herald, Dec. 9, 1905

• Nelson Daily Canadian, June 20, 1907

• Spokane Daily Chronicle, Aug. 25, 1980

• East Shore Mainstreet, August 2008 and September 2010

Books/booklets

• Kootenay Pathfinders: Settlement in the Kootenay District 1885-1920, Edward L. Affleck, 1976, p. 77, 93, 94

• Pioneer Days in British Columbia, Vol. 3, Art Downs, ed., 1977, p. 59

• Kootenay Lake Chronicles, Edward L. Affleck, 1978, p. 116-17

• The Story of the SS City of Ainsworth, Susan Hulland, 2000, p. 41, 43, 55, 69

• My Family Memories: 1880s to 2004, Wes Walton with Serena DuBois, n.d, but ca. 2000s

• Blanchard Roots: Ancestry of Wes Walton, n.d., but ca. 2000s

Other documents

• Birth registration of Esther Janet McLellan, BC Archives Reg. No. 1897-09-697825

• Birth registration of Hazel Mae McLellan, BC Archives Reg. No. 1901-09-910584

• Death registration of Sylvanus C. Spaulding, BC Archives Reg. No. 1896-09-177166

• Death registration of Dorita Blanchard, BC Archives Reg. No. 1899-09175316

• Marriage registration of Fred Cogle and Emma Hanson, BC Archives Reg. No. 1899-09-178916

• Marriage registration of Albany Joseph Blanchard and Mable Lucken, BC Archives 1906-09178914

• BC civic directories 1892-1905, 1910, 1914, 1918

• Spokane civic directories 1889-90, 1892

• BC Merchants Agency Red Book, 1896

• History of Blanchard, Idaho brochure, 1959

• Transcript of interview with Harry Mawdsley of Crawford Bay, Sept. 8, 1964, held by Gray Creek Historical Society

Websites

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Horsley

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard,_Idaho

• http://dunhamwilcox.net/me/belfast_m15a.htm

• https://www.blanchardidaho.net/blanchard-history

• http://www.brooksideacresvacationrental.com/brookside/Blanchard_Valley.html

• http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/i/d/e/Darlene-A-Ide/GENE7-0010.html

• https://www.myheritage.com/names/sylvanus_spaulding

• https://archive.org/stream/confessionsandau00horsiala#page/14/mode/2up/search/pilot