The Northern BC Archives has many collections showing early settlers in Northern BC through the photograph collections of settlers in Fort Fraser ca. 1914 and Central Interior, Cariboo, Chilcotin, and southeast BC from 1907-1920 as well as collections on salmon cannery towns, Gold Rush towns, and mining towns that were once thriving communities but are now no longer populated. Most of these materials are photographs depicting people and daily life. There are textual materials from Barkerville in 1869 describing experiences of gold mining and textual materials on the townsite of Port Essington beginning in ca. 1870. The most extensive collection from a ghost town is that of Cassiar with more than 1625 bankers boxes of textual materials, maps, photographs, etc. describing all aspects of the mining town from its very beginnings to abandonment.