Beasley’s namesake helped search for Bill Miner
May 18, 2013
Nelson Star - Beasley, the Kootenay River community between Taghum and Bonnington, is named for Harry Exeter Beasley (1863-1943), in the 1890s the superintendent of the CPR’s Kootenay branches, and by 1904 the company’s Vancouver superintendent.

When the infamous Bill Miner robbed a train at Mission in 1904, Beasley was part of the investigation and manhunt. His 6,000 square foot mansion in Victoria, designed by Samuel Maclure and built in 1912, still stands.

The earliest appearance of Beasley as a place name was in the Nelson Tribune of November 14, 1900, which described the location of a mining claim as “opposite Beasley Siding.”

It was still called Beasley Siding or Beasley’s Siding through 1908, but appeared in its abridged form the following year in the Minister of Mines report: “In the immediate vicinity of Nelson, the Queen Victoria mine, at Beasley, has been the center of great interest.”