In the early 1880s a wealthy European adventurer, William Adolf Baillie-Grohman (1851-1921), travelled to the Kootenay Region and became obsessed with developing an area far down the Kootenay River near the southern end of Kootenay Lake called Kootenay Flats, near the modern town of Creston, BC [REF].
The provincial government refused to allow the diversion.