Posted:
May 22, 2021
Restoration adds to visitor experience at Sullivan Mine
In a dark tunnel, a train comes to a halt; suddenly, a spotlight appears, and passengers watch as it settles on a miner at the rock face. He drills into the wall, recreating a scene from the historical Sullivan Mine before guiding visitors through a refuge station.
In its heyday, the mine featured 480 km of tunnels and 60 km of railway. Once the largest lead /zinc producing mine in the world, the former Sullivan Mine site now features Kimberley’s Underground Mining Railway, home of the Underground Interpretive Centre Tour. The popular interactive guided train experience takes visitors on a journey through the property and back in time. The most recently restored component on site the powerhouse will be unveiled when the exhibit opens this spring.
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One-industry towns face a formidable and familiar hurdle when that industry, for reasons of economics or obsolescence, goes kaput. For one soon-to-be fading settlement in the Kootenays region of southeast British Columbia, the answer was schnitzel, schnapps and sauerkraut.
In the 1970s, confronting the inevitable conclusion that its mineral resources would soon be spent, the alpine community of Kimberley embarked on an ambitious scheme of downtown renewal. With mock-chalet facades, an outdoor pedestrian mall known as the Platzl and no shortage of hanging flower baskets and lederhosen, it reinvented itself as “the Bavarian city of the Rockies.”
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Kimberley, B C , turns Bavarian to become tourist destination montrealgazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from montrealgazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.