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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 26
St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Lake Bennett, British Columbia
by Margaret Carter
Survival
Since Russell moved to Atlin in 1902, St. Andrew's Church, Lake
Bennett, has stood vacant while evidence of the town disappeared around
it. Tex Rickard, who passed through Bennett in 1907, commented,
The only structure surviving in anything like decent order is the
church . . ., but even this suggestion of morality amid sin and canned
vegetables appears old and sightless, for the windows are boarded and
the bell dismantled.1
Figure 73, probably taken in 1929, depicts the progress of the
destruction. The church's windows were taken to the Mounted Police
chapel in Whitehorse, then used on the air base chapel at the Whitehorse
airport.2 Its floor and interior walls have disappeared in
the campfires of passersby along with the rest of the town of Bennett.
For some reason, the exterior of the church remained relatively free of
looting, Ironically enough, the structure has been shored up yearly by
gangs from the White Pass and Yukon Railway. Today, the abandoned Church
at Bennett still stands, a memorial to the phantom gold-rush.
73 Ruins of the town of Bennett.
(Hazel Hartshorn [Gloslie.].)
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74 Bennett church.
(Provincial Archives of British Columbia.)
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