Spring Lake Camp May 20 2009

Spring Lake Camp was a logging camp in the Powell River area in the early 1900’s, with more than a dozen bunkhouses, 15 other buildings, and over 200 men who worked hard and logged harder. Sitting high in the hills and nestled beside a small lake, spring bed, this camp was a hub of activity, rail cars full of logs came and went sending wood for the mills and money for the owners. All this came to a very quick end, a forest fire that was ignited by a BC Forest Service order of slash burn lower down and farther south quickly came towards them, men scrambled for safety, some into the lakes in the surrounding area. The forest fire covered an area 15 km long, 12 km wide in a matter of 2 days, a very fast moving and quick burning one. In the wake of the fire, men emerged to see Spring Lake entirely destroyed, everything was gone, the Steam Donkey exploded sending its burner lid a few hundred feet into the air and landing in the middle of the lake itself. There was nothing left to rebuild, all the rail lines were gone, the tresles, the equipment all but burnt black, the owners walked away, the men, unemployed and years later, this is all that is left of Spring Lake.