Kokanee Springs

Kokanee Springs

Then came the beginning of what is called the Kokanee Springs development, another version of

the Fairmont Hot Springs. The developers had millions of dollars in financing by a big oil

company in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

The whole process started when one of the company’s drillers visited the area. He bought a

summer home and decided that the area was so nice that a big resort should be built. He talked

the local property owners into optioning up about thirty small farm holdings, letting them believe

he wanted them for his logging business. In reality, he was fronting for this oil company. He

talked these local property owners into financing a lot of property. The land was all optioned

before anybody got wind of what was really happening. I guess the landowners were happy to

sell their property. I never did hear of anybody who really complained about what was

happening.

Kokanee Springs ended up with over seventy thousand acres: nice property that had been

developed by small land holders, orchards, hobby farms, and ordinary residences in the Crawford

Bay area. Once the developers bought the land, they started thinking about what they were going

to do with it. They decided to build a golf course. I was hired to survey the golf course and put in

the irrigation and other services. They had also hired a professional, semi-retired, older

gentlemen who did not like to get out and trek through the bush to figure out where all the

fairways would go. One of my men started doing it and just casually checking in with him.

I had to reprimand my assistant since he did not really know much about golfing. I criticized him

for taking on the other fellow’s job. My employee's job was to drag this professional golf course

architect out there and make sure that he decided where things were going. There is an expert out

there on almost everything. You've got to find this person and make sure they do their job. This

chap was not doing his job. Nothing went wrong on the thing, but it was quite a chore for me. I

was concerned about the quality of the golf course. It was going to be rated as a professional golf

course—much higher than the amateur-designed one at Fairmont Hot Springs.

Not all the people working on this golf course were slackers. The designer was a professional.

He wanted to make sure that everything was done to his design. I remember that they were going

to have the clubhouse on a little hill within the golf course. There was supposed to be an

escalator, but it never got built. The estimate for building a golf course back in that time in the

early 1970s was something like $360,000. The Kokanee Springs course cost over $800,000, but

the oil company did not fuss about that. The work was well done and well paid for.

Still, it was not easy. We had great difficulty irrigating some of the swampy ground. I had to

come up with an elaborate drainage system to get the water out of the boggy area. Most of the

rest of the land just required irrigation, but that part was sub-irrigated and wet.

In the end, Kokanee Springs was a nice, large resort—and quite expensive. But more was needed

to make the resort successful. The areas clearly needed a proper, more adequate highway system.

The only highway at the time came up from Creston—a twisted, paved road that was not in very

good shape. At that point, there was no international airport in the area, but one has since been

built in Cranbrook.

There was, though, a small airfield near the resort. So, a decision was made to build it into a little

airstrip, which was used by a few daredevil small airplane pilots. It remained in operation until

one of them missed his landing, went right across the highway, and hit a powerline.

The fellow was not killed. But the town decided not to promote the airstrip after that. There were

a couple of local people who had small airplanes on it, but it just was not adequate for visitors.

The next project in Crawford Bay area was a ski hill. I advocated for the hiring of a professional

planner for the ski areas. I never ever will forget how disappointed I was when, without coming

out to look at the place, the ski hill developers looked at terrain maps and decided that the best

place for a ski hill was in a location, where, in my opinion, it was impossible to build a proper

ski hill. The highway went through the middle of the planned hill. I convinced the manager that

it would be silly to develop this hill and that we should abandon it. From my work on the

Bugaboos resort, I knew that they needed professionals to look at the terrain to decide if they had

a suitable site for a resort area.

Anyway, the company paid for a helicopter, and brought Hans Moser and one of his guides in

from the Bugaboos and from Canadian Mountain Holidays. We had kind of a party up there. We

had other people with snowmobiles, but Hans Moser and the guide got the privilege of being

helicoptered all over the mountains in the area. Their report said that—and they were

backcountry helicopter ski professionals—even for an ordinary resort you needed road access

and parking lots. They said, in effect, that they did not think it was a ski resort area.

So, the whole idea of a ski resort was dropped. I had a big part in it. Knowing what I knew and

being a skier, I totally agreed with the decision that was made. It was a shame because we had

the money to do it properly. We just couldn't waste other people’s money.