Stories of the valley.
Two collections drawn from the archive’s accounts and the records behind them: the hard times the valley’s families lived through, and the firsts they remembered.
Tragedies and hard times
The valley's hardest days and the people lost in them, told as the records tell them, and where those records disagree.
- late January 1911 (day uncertain)Three children lost at a flooded crossing
- 24 January 1915The murder of Esther Westcott and the suicide of Julian Maes
- 17 March 1921 (St. Patrick's Day)The St. Patrick's Day shootings near Pauline
Valley firsts
Who was first, and where. When more than one family claims a first, every claim is shown with its source.
- 1885–1894 by different accounts; earliest record 1892The first settlers
- 1893 (one account: summer 1894)The first house in the valley
- winter 1893–94, 1894–95 or 1895–96 (accounts differ)The first to stay through a valley winter
Take a tour.
The map’s Story Mode tells the best-remembered of these stories one at a time, flying to where each happened in its year. The valley’s own story is there too, in seven chapters.
Valley Tragedies
The archive’s own account of the valley’s tragedies is preserved as it was first written. The stories here follow the same events through the newspapers and records of the time, and say where those accounts disagree.
Read the original “Valley Tragedies” ↗Know a story the valley should remember?
A hard winter, an accident, a first car or the first telephone: if your family remembers it, send it, and say how you know. Corrections to these stories are just as welcome.