Brief
History of Mount Layton Hot Springs Resort
Lloyd Johnstone,
a resident of Lakelse Lake for the past 71 years, recalls the hot springs past
which included a railway roadhouse, bath houses, and a planned town site, parts
of the area's history unknown to many Northwest residents.
He explained
that the hot spring's history as a tourist attraction began in 1907, when his
father, Bruce Johnstone, gained title to the land as a preemption (homestead)
site while he was working as a federal fisheries officer in a sockeye salmon hatchery
at Lakelse Lake.
He and another
fellow, Hank Boss, a telegraph operator, went into partnership and decided to
develop an area of the hot springs. The motivation for a development, at what
was then a relatively remote site, was supplied by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
At that time they were building a railway to Kitimat. It was supposed to come
through Telkwa Pass and was going to go right by where they highway is now. The
railway promised a bright future for the area.
Bruce Johnstone
started building what was basically a roadhouse in anticipation of the coming
rail traffic, the area surrounding his property was subdivided into a townsite
and the railway built a "haul road" into the area which is now Old Lakelse
Lake Road. The boom came to an abrupt halt, however, when the railway chose Prince
Rupert as a terminal rather than Kitimat; but Johnstone still believed a branch
line would be built to Kitimat and put his money into the land.
Johnstone stayed
and ran the hotel at the hot springs from 1910 until 1929 and it was actually
quite successful. He catered mostly to people with rheumatics and so on. The next
phase of tourist development in the area was built in 1929. Johnstone built a
hotel on the lakeshore just below Oli's Beach.
The development
consisted of two substantial log buildings, a hotel and a bathhouse. In what must
have been one of the curiosities of the time, the bathhouse had big enamel bathtubs,
and a pipeline from the main hot spring all the way to the lakeshore with an eight-inch
wooden wire-bound pipe.
Even with the
worldwide economic difficulties of that period in history the operation was "quite
successful", and tourists with rheumatic types of ailments took advantage
of the therapeutic values of the hot springs water, right on the shores of Lakelse
Lake, from 1929 until 1936 when disaster struck.
The great depression
came along in 1929, just about the time he built the place, but the final straw
was in 1936. There was a flood of the Skeena River which washed out all the way
from Kwinitsa to Kitwanga. Consequently, nobody could get into this area and nobody
could get out - so the whole summer was written off. Johnstone had a small mortgage
on the place worth about $8,000 and if folded in 1936. He lost everything. Bruce
Johnstone developed another small resort area on the lakeshore that same year,
but the hot springs laid dormant from 1936 until 1958.
When Lloyd
Johnstone returned to the lake in 1945 following the end of the Second World War
he "picked up the pieces" by buying back the original 310 acres, which
included 13 hot springs, but before an opportunity came to develop the property,
he sold it to Ray Skoglund in 1958.
Ray Skoglund
developed the operation that most people would remember, and it operated from
about 1960 to about 1978 when the big flood came. The creek jammed up and the
water came through the buildings and pretty well wrote them off. That ended the
second major development on lot number 684, and the hot springs were dormant a
second time - until Bert Orleans bought the property and started building the
Mount Layton Hot Springs Resort.
Lloyd Johnstone
pays a great tribute to Bert and his wife for the superb job they have done in
developing the hot springs today, and is sure it will be a great asset to the
north.
