400px|thumb|right|Anyox, British Columbia in 1911

Anyox was a small company-owned mining town in British Columbia, Canada. Today it is a ghost town, abandoned and largely destroyed. It is located on the shores of Granby Bay in coastal Observatory Inlet, about south of (but without a land link to) Stewart, British Columbia, and about , across wilderness east of the tip of the Alaska Panhandle.

Early history

The remote valley was long a hunting and trapping area for the Nisga'a, and the name Anyox means “hidden waters” in the Nisga'a language. The first Europeans in the area were the members of the Vancouver Expedition, who surveyed the inlet in 1793.

Nisga'a legends told of a mountain of gold, attracting speculators for years. In 1910, the Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Company (Granby Consolidated) started buying land in the area. They soon found gold. and Vancouver.

The company town was a very large operation, with onsite railways, machine shops, curling rink, golf course and a hospital. In the spring of 1918, Granby Consolidated built the first wooden tennis court in Canada for additional recreation. The same year, incoming ships brought the Spanish flu epidemic to Anyox. Charles Clarkson Rhodes, the Chief Accountant for the Granby Consolidated operations in Anyox, died on October 29, 1918, while he was helping to treat patients in the Anyox Hospital. Dozens of workers and residents of Anyox died from the flu epidemic.

In the early 1920s, the concrete pioneer and dam engineer John S. Eastwood designed a hydroelectric dam, which, at high, was the tallest dam in Canada for many years. Anyox was partially destroyed by forest fires in 1923, but the townsite was rebuilt, and mining operations continued. Acid rain from the smelter denuded trees on nearby hillsides, which became bare.

The Great Depression drove down the demand for copper. This was effectively the beginning of the end for Anyox. Operations continued but were steadily scaled down while the company stockpiled of copper, three years of production, which it was unable to sell.

During its 25 year existence, Anyox's mines and smelters produced of gold, of silver and of copper.

Notable residents

Former Vancouver Mayor Jack Volrich was one of the 351 people born in Anyox, as was Thomas Waterland, MLA for Yale-Lillooet from 1975 to 1986.

Reid Mitchell, who represented Canada in basketball at the 1948 Olympics, was also born in Anyox.

Denny Boyd, a Vancouver Sun reporter and Order of British Columbia recipient.

See also

  • Kitsault

References

  • Pictures of Anyox today
  • Anyox mining history with many period photos, at Western Mining History. Accessed 5/15/2026