Kettle Valley Railway

The Kettle Valley Railroad (reporting mark KV) was a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway that operated in the Thompson-Okanagan region of southern British Columbia.

It opened in 1915 and was abandoned in portions beginning in 1961, with the final segment falling into disuse in 1989.

Much of the railroad's original route has been converted to a multi-use recreational trail, known as the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, which carries the Trans-Canada Trail through this part of British Columbia.

The Kettle Valley Railroad was built out of necessity to service the growing mining demands in the Southern Interior region of British Columbia. When the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) completed the transcontinental railroad in 1885, the route cut through the Rocky Mountains at Kicking Horse and Rogers Passes, then followed the Fraser River for the remainder of the distance to Vancouver. This selected routing was significantly to the north of the mining towns within the Southern Interior. Those critical of the CPR believed that the railroad should have been routed along the Dewdney Trail, through the southern portions of British Columbia in order to fulfill politician pledges to keep Americans out of British Columbia should they ever attempt to dominate mining operations in British Columbia's South. However, geography was the main reason the CPR followed the transcontinental railroad route that it had selected. Too many mountain ranges stood between Alberta and Vancouver in the southern portions of British Columbia, and CPR had selected what they felt was the path of least resistance.

Once silver was discovered within the region in the spring of 1887, thousands of Americans flooded into the B.C.'s Southern Interior, and essentially took control of the region. These miners quickly found that it was much quicker and cheaper to get their supplies from the recently completed Northern Pacific Railroad that transited through Spokane. Once word caught on, British Columbia's Southern Interior essentially became a commercial annex of the United States. Provincial and Federal officials quickly agreed that a second railroad dubbed the "Coast-to-Kootenay" railroad within British Columbia was required in order to help preserve Canadian sovereignty of British Columbia, and to also retain the valuable mining revenues within Canada.

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