Two hundred twentieth in a series on West Kootenay/Boundary place names
In 1899, postal authorities thought Creston was near the south end of Duck Lake (then considered part of Kootenay Lake). They were probably mistaken, confused over the fact Creston was briefly renamed Sirdar. But that spot did have a name: Chambers City. It shows up on Perry’s Mining Map of 1893.
While the name was short lived, we know who it was after, thanks to the Nelson Tribune of Dec. 4, 1897: “William H. Chambers, better known as judge Chambers, chief magistrate of Chambers’ City at the southern end of Kootenay Lake, during its palmy days in 1892 …”
Chambers was a real judge in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, where his courtroom was in a saloon. We don’t know anything about his early life, but he was said to be a “veteran of the wildest period of Leadville [Colorado] excitement.” He feuded with the editor of the Kootenai Herald, who he once ordered jailed for contempt.
The Tribune of Jan. 26, 1893 explained that after surrendering his judicial robes, Chambers become a hotelkeeper at the north end of the stage route from Bonners Ferry to Kootenay Lake.
“Everybody who has ever been at Bonners Ferry either knows or has heard of Bill Chambers,” the paper wrote. “In 1890 Bill was elected justice of the peace … and for two years was the most important man in all Kootenay valley. Last fall, being a good Republican, he went down in defeat with that other good Republican, Benjamin Harrison. But Bill is a hustler and does not long remain idle. He saw an opportunity to make money at the lower end of Kootenay Lake, and for him to see is to act. Within a week he had a hotel in full operation and travellers who come over the Bonners Ferry sleigh road say Bill sets up the best square meal in the whole Kootenay country. Bill is as modest as he is good-looking, and of course, will not advertise his hotel; but The Tribune is of the same political faith as Bill and is always willing to give a good party man a lift.”
The Kootenai Herald added: “Col. Long Shorty and Ex-Judge Chambers, the famed American politicians, are conducting a fashionable watering place at the head of Kootenai Lake, at a point where Sam Smith’s stages strike the lake. They cater especially to the wants of the travelling public. Which of the two individuals is chief swamper we have not learned.”
It’s not clear how long Chambers ran the hotel; no other contemporary references have been found. But historian Ted Affleck wrote in the Winter 1994-95 edition of BC Historical News: “The picture was bleak … whenever ice closed the channel as far downstream as Chambers City, as the sleigh traveller awaiting the arrival of a steamboat at that point was thrown on the mercy of the single establishment operated by Mr. Chambers. This establishment offered no refreshment other than the liquid variety. Beds, benches and chairs were non-existent. The traveller desperate to rest his feet had perforce to commandeer a bar stool and order a drink.” Affleck didn’t indicate his sources.
In 1897, Chambers headed for Dawson City. He and partner E.M. Pound located one claim on Bonanza Creek and bought interests in several others. They then brought in a third partner, Bill Hennessey, one of the locators of the Noble Five mines at the start of the Silvery Slocan rush.
Before he headed for the Yukon himself, Hennessy told the Tribune that Chambers “has got much thinner than he was when he ran the Palace hotel at Chambers City, at the foot of Kootenay Lake in 1893. Chambers and Pound have cleared up $50,000 since their return from Dawson City and would have done much better had it not been for Pound’s falling through the ice on the way out and losing several options that he held upon Klondike properties. Chambers and Pound are now in Chicago organizing a big company.”
That seems to be the last thing ever written about Chambers or his city.
Sam Smith continued to run his stage service until 1898 when a contract was let for the construction of the Great Northern Railway’s branch line from Bonners Ferry to Kuskonook.
