Greenwood Tunnel

Just to the west of my town is the ‘city’ of Greenwood. It bills itself as the smallest incorporated city in Canada. A  few years ago it had the ‘best water in the world’ as decided by people from some other place. Pretty neat.

Well, just like Grand Forks, Greenwood is a former smelter town along Highway #3. And it has a few fragments of past infrastructure hanging around. Aside from the smelter chimney and slag pile the single most photographed landmark is a fragment of a tunnel from the former path of the highway.

To find out more click on the pic of the sign to the right. Essentially this tunnel was built in 1913 to allow highway traffic to pass under the railway. Now the rail bed is the Trans-Canada Trail and the tunnel has become a landmark.

In 2000 the city had a Millennium Project – seeing as people from all over the world are expected to be traveling the trail it was decided to cover the tunnel with flags from different nations. 210 flags to be exact. 14 years have passed by – weather and graffiti artists have had their way with it … but you can still see many of the flags. Click on the image below to see the zoomified version