Incorporated as a town in 1898, Phoenix was owned by Granby Consolidated Mining. As many as 100 men from Phoenix and the surrounding mining camps (most employees for the Granby Consolidated) enlisted with the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force from 1914 to 1918.
After the war, when the company announced its shutdown, the citizens were already planning a cenotaph to honor the 15 people from Phoenix who died in the First World War. The lumber and iron were sold from the skating rink to raise $1200, enough to build the cenotaph and pay the Royal Canadian Legion branch in Grand Forks $400 to look after it. The demolition of the rink claimed a boy's life - on September 1, 1920, when the rink collapsed, seven-year-old Jackie Mattocks and two horses were killed.
The 8 ½ feet high cenotaph was erected in October of 1920 by Patterson, Chandler, and Stephen Ltd. of Vancouver. It weighed 4 ½ tons and was mounted on an outcrop of rock adjoining the former Phoenix CPR depot, which was about the highest point in the city — elevation 4,700 feet on the divide between Twin Creek and Fourth of July Creek, It stood along the main highway between Grand Forks and Greenwood. In 1956, when the Granby company resumed mining, the cenotaph was moved to its present location.
For many years Phoenix was not accessible, so a bronze plaque bearing the same names on the cenotaph was mounted on the Kettle Valley Cenotaph. Phoenix is now a ghost town, with only the cenotaph and a graveyard remaining.
