Hyder is a small community at the mouth of the Salmon River, on the western shore and near the head of Portland Canal, about 75 miles (121 km) northeast of Ketchikan and 2.5 miles (4 km) south-southwest of Stewart, British Columbia. Portland Canal is a fjord approximately 71 miles (114 km) long that forms part of the southern border between Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. The Nisga’a called the inlet Kʼalii Xkʼalaan, with xkʼalaan meaning ‘at the back of someplace.’ The upper end of the inlet was the ancestral home of the Tsetsaut, a people decimated by war and disease until their few survivors were taken into Nisga’a protection as slaves. The fjord was first charted by Captain George Vancouver in 1793 and named in honor of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. During the American-Canadian Boundary dispute, placement of the international boundary along Portland Canal became contentious because of the Klondike Gold Rush and Canada’s desire to retain a seaport. In 1896, Captain David du Bose Gaillard of the US Army Corps of Engineers received orders to build four masonry ‘storehouses’ along Portland Canal. The purpose of these buildings remains uncertain, although they appear to have been intended to assert territorial ownership over the canal. Gaillard left Washington, D.C., immediately, requisitioning the lighthouse tender Manzanita in Oregon and hiring 22 workers. With all supplies except masonry, he proceeded to the head of Portland Canal and supervised construction of Storehouse No. 4—also known as the Eagle Point Storehouse—which had interior dimensions of 10 by 15 feet (3.0 m by 4.6 m) and stone walls 12 to 18 inches (30 to 45 cm) thick. Three other storehouses of similar construction were built at Halibut Bay on the west side of Portland Canal, at Lizard Cove on Pearse Island, and at Manzanita Cove on Wales Island.

Originating at the terminus of the Salmon Glacier in British Columbia, the braided Salmon River flows 14 miles (22 km) south across the Alaska–Canada boundary to the head of Portland Canal. Named in 1868 by Staff Commander Daniel Pender of the Royal Navy and captain of the Beaver, the river gained attention in 1898 when metal-bearing lodes—chiefly gold and silver—were discovered in its upper basin on the Canadian side, with similar finds on the Alaskan side by 1901. A mining community established at the river’s mouth in 1907 was named Portland City after the fjord, though the discoveries received little notice until a 1909 boom in the Canadian mining district spurred the creation of Stewart and 12 miles (19 km) of railroad. In 1914, the US Post Office informed residents that their town’s name was too common, prompting its renaming as Hyder after mining engineer Frederick Hyder. Hyder soon became the sole access point to the silver mines and the main port for miners. A commercial ore body at the Premier Mine in 1918 spurred claims on both sides of the border. Hyder’s boom continued in the 1920s as the Riverside Mine on the US side produced gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc and tungsten. Operating intermittently from 1924 to 1950, it developed 6,000 feet (1,829 m) of tunnels. Mills sprang up at Silbak-Premier, Big Missouri, and Dunwell, British Columbia. Premier grew into a large gold mining camp from 1918 to 1953, with bunkhouses, generators, concentrators and cookhouses on a remote hillside. Its cable aerial tramway, one of the longest at 12 miles (19 km), ran from Premier to Stewart Harbor, crossing the southeastern tip of Alaska at Hyder. A drop in silver prices in 1928 led to a decline; by 1932 only the Silbak-Premier and Riverside mines operated intermittently, and by 1956 all significant mining had ceased except at the Granduc Mine. Westmin Resources reopened the Premier Mine as an open pit operation in 1987.

Rich mineral deposits lie within the Coast Mountains, but the Granduc Operating Company’s attempt to exploit a copper deposit near Leduc Glacier in British Columbia underscores the challenges of mining in harsh terrain. The deposit was discovered in 1931, and exploratory work in the 1950s was based at a self-sufficient camp at Leduc Glacier, accessible only by plane landing on a glacier runway. The camp featured bunkhouses, a dining hall, a recreation hall, an auditorium, offices and a powerhouse. The mine was established in 1964, but production did not begin until 1971. Transporting ore through rugged, ice-covered terrain to a dock near Stewart proved difficult. An 11-mile (18 km) tunnel was driven beneath Berendon, Frank Mackie and Leduc Glaciers to carry ore to a concentrator mill near Berendon Glacier’s terminus. From the eastern portal, ore was trucked along a road that follows Salmon Glacier’s margin, crosses the international boundary and descends the Salmon River to a dock at Hyder. Both portal camps were initially supplied by tractor-hauled sleds over glaciers, a method feasible only in winter when snow cover made crossings safe. At the eastern portal camp, annual snowfall exceeded 80 feet (25 m), creating an extreme avalanche hazard. In February 1965, an avalanche swept away the western portal camp near Leduc Glacier, killing 26; the camp was never rebuilt. The incident underscored the inherent risks of mining in such extreme environments and served as a stark reminder of the operational challenges faced in the region. The Granduc operated from the tunnel’s eastern end for nearly 20 years. Fluctuating copper prices forced periodic closures, yet the mine remained an economic powerhouse before closing in 1984. Total production from 1971 to 1978 and from 1981 to 1984 included mining of 15.5 million tons of ore from which 124,048,961 grams of silver, 2,000,061 grams of gold and 190,143,710 kilograms of copper were recovered. In 2010, Toronto-based Castle Resources Inc. acquired the property and advanced plans to resume production. Today, the prospect of restarting operations underscores the enduring appeal of the region’s mineral wealth. Read more here and here. Explore more of Hyder and the Salmon River basin here: