Pilot Bay smelter site

 ruins, smelter, interesting place

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As you cross Kootenay Lake on the "longest FREE ferry ride in the world", you can see two old brick smokestacks on the eastern shore. This is the site of the Pilot Bay smelter, which was built by the Kootenay Mining and Smelting Company of Idaho to treat the rich silver-lead ores found throughout the region. A townsite was built nearby with two hotels, butcher shop, general store, and many homes. The smelter only operated for less than one year (December 1895 to Sept 1896) before closing due to its remote location, the high cost of shipping coal and coke, and the plant's inability to treat the mixed lead-zinc ores. The smelter and townsite became a ghost town.

All that remains are the two brick chimneys, some concrete foundations and scattered bits of metal and machinery, and the old wharf, submerged just below the lake's surface.

More than a century later, the site still smells of sulphur from the ores and smelter slag left behind on the site. The beach is stained rusty red for quite some distance from the mineral ores and concentrates that were abandoned after the smelter shut down. In the late 1940s an observant geologist realized there was value in the abandoned ores and bought title to the property. Over 4 years he shipped about $270,000 worth of minerals from the site and made a handsome profit.