Book The King of Sandon Awarded
Greg Nesteroff of Trail is the recipient of the BCHF Community History Award for his book called “The King of Sandon: Murder, Myth, and the Man Behind B.C.’s Greatest Ghost Town.” The book was selected for the honours as part of the 2026 BC Historical Federation Historical Writing Competition.
Congratulations Greg, on bringing this multi-decade project to fruition!
In one of the most extraordinary mining towns of the West, he was the richest and most powerful man—and he guarded personal secrets that have stayed clouded in mystery for over a century.
In The King of Sandon, Greg Nesteroff tells the tale of John Morgan Harris, drawing on new discoveries and previously undisclosed information to present the fullest profile to date of a man who built a whole city as a monument to himself: from the truth of his birth in the slave states of the American South, to a trail of undisclosed violence left behind in multiple hometowns, to his years refashioning himself as the feudal lord and benefactor of Sandon, British Columbia. That Sandon existed at all—and continued to exist long after the end of the Slocan silver boom—was a testament to his single-minded ambition, sometimes at the expense of all else.
Harris’ story is the story of the city he was synonymous with, and of B.C. and the West in microcosm: part colonial imperialism, part Old West melodrama, part boom-and-bust saga, part cautionary tale, and part rebirth and restoration.
Greg received the prize at the BC Historical Federation conference in Vancouver on May 30.