I actually talked with the son of a brother of this great-great-grandfather a few years ago. His father had him when he was 69, and he was 70. In those 139 years, my family had five generations, but his had two. He passed away last year.
I don't think any relatives still would be here. My ancestor was alone when he died, away from his family trying to make a living, and his uncle notified my great-grandmother that he had died via a letter written in French. I have copies of a bunch of old family letters from the 19th and early 20th century, (mostly written in French but some in English) and this was one of them.
There was apparently a huge gold fever in this area, but it mostly didn't pan out (literally!). A few people found tiny placer nuggets, but no real veins were found. I talked to a woman who tried to pan for gold here (just for fun), and she didn't find anything. Most mining here was for coal, but that died out when gas became popular and cheap.
I checked out the dam on the outskirts of town, and there were some frontier artifacts displayed near the entrance to the dam. The dam was really high-security and I had to be cleared to go in.
I climbed to the top of a hill overlooking Hudson's Hope, and some of the later pictures were from that hike.
When I got back from that hike, I did an uber-repack and took a bath with my dirty laundry (I bicycle-pedaled it with my feet in the bathtub and then hung it to dry over the heating grate in the hotel I'm staying at). Now it's dry and I'm contemplating my next voyage.
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