Saltery Bay – Powell River Road Connection

In the early days of Powell River, the town consisted of a mill, no roads anywhere except within the Townsite, only logging trains left it. There were however lots of homesteads north and south of this townsite, the Phillips, the Zillinki’s, Donkersleys to name a few. These people that settled north and south of Powell River could only get to the townsite by boat, unless they wished to walk through a rapidly changing landscape of logging there was no other choice.

As Powell River grew areas such as Cranberry, Wildwood started to appear with road connections, soon enough it spread out and such areas like Southview, WildeRoad, Okeover, Lund were being connection north of Powell River, south became, Westview, Grief Point, MunsonVille, Black Point but for many many years no road went past Black Point itself, it was all logging.

A road was pushed through to Stillwater since logging trucks became more widely used and more and more people moved south. It took a ferry system to expand the road to Saltery Bay, this was a rough area to create a road, it had to go up and over a mountain past Thunder Bay, down through Kents Land and into Saltery Bay.

You may be wondering why the history lesson here, if your still reading of course, but this road back in the day for Powell River was an essential link to the outside world, this road would mean people could leave by driving to go to Vancouver, this road took a long time to build and when it was near complete the only vehicles to travel it were the construction vehicles that were making it.

Now, during the construction, Mr Kent knew he could soon drive to Powell River instead of getting in his boat, so he planned it, walked the road, saw how high up it went and thought about a vehicle he wanted. So through word of mouth which was large back then he found a Willy’s Jeep on Denman Island and bought it, he then had it shipped to Vancouver on a barge, from there he had it put on a ship bound for Powell River. After arriving at Powell River the timing was perfect, the road had just started going through his own property so he went by boat to Powell River and picked up his jeep and drove it back home. This Willy’s jeep was the first personal vehicle to travel the new road from Powell River to Saltery  Bay, and today, it is still there.

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Today its owned by Clive Kent, the son, he plans maybe one day to restore it, and then I am very sure he will drive it yet again on the very road it came to the homestead from, who knows, maybe he can take it back to Denman Island again.

enjoy the rest of the pictures.

About OldFart

I was born in Powell River, British Columbia and have been a part of it since 1965.
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