We Finally Made It to Sandon—BC’s Legendary Ghost Town

Sandon is probably one of the most popular ghost towns in the entire province of British Columbia. It's a must-do for any fan of historic places so we knew we would love it and we finally made it here to see for ourselves. Sandon is nestled in the Selkirk Mountains, about 13km east of New Denver in the Slocan Valley. The town was founded in the 1890s with the discovery of silver and quickly boomed, reaching a peak of about 5000 people -- although some sources say it was as high as 10,000. A devastating fire in 1900 and the collapse of silver prices brought about the downfall of Sandon. By the 1920s the town was already approaching ghost town status. Carpenter Creek flooded in 1955 and wiped out many of the remaining buildings and, what the creek didn't take, was soon removed by looters and souvenir seekers. Today a few buildings remain, the most impressive being the old Town Hall, which was built in 1900, likely as part of the post-fire reconstruction. Like many municipal buildings of that era, it served many purposes -- town hall, jail, fire hall, and courthouse. Today it houses The Prospector's Pick, which functions as Sandon's visitor centre and gift shop. Also remaining is the Silversmith Power and Light station, which uses the water from Carpenter Creek to turn a Pelton wheel which in turn runs an original Westinghouse generator built to Nikola Tesla’s 60Hz AC specifications and has been in operation since 1897. While originally built to power the Slocan Star Mine, today it feeds into the BC Hydro power grid, bringing electricity to Sandon as well as New Denver and others. But, there's more! Sandon is also home to a number of Brill trolley buses from Vancouver's mid-20th century transit system which were rescued from the scrapyard and brought to Sandon, with the hopes of one day being restored and placed into some sort of urban transit museum. While that hasn't happened yet, the busses have become a tourist attraction unto themselves. And, of course, we have to add a couple of bonuses to our visit -- we drive further up the valley to see the site of the ghost town of Cody and then we visit the often overlooked Sandon cemetery too. It's a true DanOCan exploration with all the things we love. A more detailed write-up on Sandon's history is here: https://danocan.com/2025/09/14/we-fin... As always, thanks for coming along for the ride! ☕ Donations of any amount are greatly appreciated: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/DanOCan https://paypal.me/therealdanocan?coun... If you don't want to donate, you can still show your support through subscribing, sharing, liking, and commenting on our videos. However you choose to show your encouragement is fine with us! Be interactive — let us know you're out there. Check if you are subscribed by clicking the link: https://www.youtube.com/c/DanOCan?sub... If you have suggestions of places we should visit, please share them with us. 📬 Contact: [email protected] 🔗 Other places where you can follow our adventures: The Blog: https://danocan.com/ Facebook:   / danocanblog   Instagram:   / the.real.danocan   📱 Our travel connection solution: When we travel outside of our home area, we stay connected and avoid roaming charges by using eSIMs from Airalo. Use promo code DAN5426 and save $3 USD on your first purchase: https://www.airalo.com/ 🎥 Our gear for filming and editing: DroneOCan is a DJI Mavic Pro. Video is shot using a DJI Pocket 2 and Google Pixel 8 Pro. Video editing is done with Wondershare Filmora on a Gigabyte Aorus X16. #ghosttown #explorebc #abandonedplaces