Off British Columbia’s busy Sea-to-Sky Highway just north of Vancouver, is the Britannia Mine Museum, which is now commemorating 100 years of Mill No.3. The towering structure, built from concrete and steel in 1923, sits on a mountainside slope next to Howe Sound. Britannia Mine Museum curator Laura Minta Holland says it is not only a provincial landmark, but a place steeped in history.
“It’s just so impressive when you walk in and it just prompts you to try to imagine what it would have been like when it was a working and operational mill building.” Minta Holland told CTV News. “I really feel it has that sense of a cathedral almost, and sometimes we refer to it as a kind of cathedral of engineering.”
Minta Holland and her team have been working for months on a special celebration to mark the mill’s centennial—an exhibit chronicling its lifespan and contribution to mining in Canada is set to open in late May.
“The 20-storey building was constructed by the Britannia Mining and Smelting Company, and took 18 months, from start to finish to complete.” said Minta Holland. While the Britannia Mine was in use following the turn of the century, Mill No.3 only became operational after another ore processing structure burned down in 1921. It is now one of the last remaining gravity-fed concentrator mills in North America.
For the rest of this article: https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/it-s-still-standing-today-b-c-s-iconic-mill-no-3-celebrates-100-years-of-history-1.6403028