Wardner

Wardner, BC, Unincorporated Place. Wardner is located at the opening of the Kootenay River into Lake Koocanusa in the southeastern corner of British Columbia. Lake Koocanusa was formed after completion of the Columbia River Treaty dam at Libby, Montana (1973). Flooding of the original townsite reduced Wardner to the status of a post office, although the local postal bureau has also closed.

Wardner was founded in 1895 by an American fortune hunter, James F. Wardner, as a construction camp on the Crow's Nest Pass Railway. A large sawmill operated there, drawing logs from the Kootenay and Bull river drainages. Today, Wardner has limited dairying and ranching on some of the best rangeland in the region, but the farming area has declined because of flooding by Lake Koocanusa. At Kootenay Trout Hatchery, 8 km north, trout, salmon and STURGEON are bred.