Heritage & Culture – Page 2

Camel Barn - Google Street View

Old Camel Barn

Post category:Heritage & Culture Historic Sites

Before the turn of the century, Lillooet’s famous camels were occasionally kept in this barn until it was converted into a livery barn and the News office’s horse barn. Then, George Murray made it a theatre during World War II and reinforced the hand-hewn logs with bridge timbers from the old Nine Mile railroad bridge. The building was later stuccoed and dubbed the Log Cabin Theatre. The New York Times and the show business trade journal, Variety, described it as the smallest theatre on the continent.

The Mile “0” Cairn

Post category:Heritage & Culture Historic Sites

The Mile ‘0’ Cairn was erected in 1939, marking Mile ‘0’ of the old Cariboo Road. From this point in the early stage coach days, all road houses and stopping places from here to Barkerville were known by their mileage from Lillooet – 70 Mile, 100 Mile, and so on. In 1858, Governor James Douglas ordered the construction of a wagon road from Fort Douglas on Harrison Lake to Lillooet. The Royal Engineers supervised the construction while miners with picks and shovels contracted to build the road for the sum of five English pounds each, which they received upon arrival, by land and portage, at Lillooet. 16,000 gold seekers outfitted here in the next four years, until 1863, when the Fraser Canyon route from Yale finally reached Lytton providing an alternate route.

Lillooet Visitor Centre

Post category:Heritage & Culture Hiking Resources Historic Sites Sports & Outdoor Recreation

The Lillooet Visitor Centre has relocated and is now housed within our local museum at 790 Main Street, Lillooet, centrally located in Downton Park. Here you can access a wide range of services including personalized trip planning, way-finding, and general information about Lillooet and the surrounding area.

You are welcome to contact us for information to help you plan your perfect visit.

Information about Lillooet and area businesses, attractions, and events

Maps, visitor guides, and travel information
Travel Advisories, road closures etc
Accessible washrooms for museum patrons
Public washroom with accessibility also available across from the park
Enjoy Downton Park
Explore the Lillooet Museum which is here to raise awareness of the historical and cultural importance of the region and gives our visitors the opportunity to explore this area’s extensive history.

Xwísten Experience Tours

Post category:Eat & Drink Fishing Around Lillooet Heritage & Culture Historic Sites Indigenous Experiences Restaurants Sports & Outdoor Recreation

Discover one of British Columbia’s most immersive Indigenous cultural experiences. Xwísten Experience Tours offers guided pit house (S7ístken) tours, salmon drying demonstrations, and storytelling rooted in thousands of years of St’át’imc culture and land-based knowledge. Visitors learn directly from community members about traditional food harvesting, sustainable practices, and the living heritage of the Xwísten people.

Traditional Fishing Rock & Archaeological Village Tours and The Bearfoot Grill. Visit the Bridge River Fishing Grounds, the past and current fishing area of the St’át’imc People. Learn about the traditional wind-dried method of preserving the salmon still used by its people today.

Learn more at XwistenTours.ca

Lillooet Museum

Post category:Heritage & Culture Hiking Resources Historic Sites

Glimpse into Lillooet’s past in the Lillooet Museum, itself housed housed in the former Anglican Church, St Mary’s the Virgin. The church was first built in 1860, from timber carried piece by piece on the backs of miners and mules over the rugged Harrison-Lillooet trail, then reconstructed in 1961 with the original chancel.

Browse through the collection of artifacts, including the original church service bell and melodeon, gold mining relics, Indigenous artifacts, machinery, memories of Lillooet’s pioneer days, the largest mounted Rocky Mountain Elk head ever registered in BC, and more. Take a peek downstairs to discover the old newspaper office of fiery and famed editor Margaret “Ma” Murray.

The Museum is situated in downtown Lillooet at St. Mary the Virgin, a former Anglican church. The original St. Mary’s, which was torn down in 1960, stood on the same spot and arrived on the backs of miners and their mules, who carried the timber, piece by piece over the rugged Harrison-Lillooet trail in 1860. The original chancel was incorporated in the new St. Mary’s and the melodeon and bell from the old church are displayed in the museum.

K.C. Health & Gifts

Post category:Arts in Lillooet Gift Shops Groceries Heritage & Culture Shopping

Conveniently located in town, this health food and gift store carries natural vitamins, mostly organic health foods, and locally grown products like vegetables and eggs. There is a variety of items, such as clothing, Indigenous crafts, local jade jewellery, carvings, stones, antiques, and collectibles.

The co-owner is a reflexologist and therapist, offering onsite treatments by appointment.

Ntqwixw

Post category:Heritage & Culture Stories of our Past

Written by Jane Carrico

“For every family in the country – that’s all they use…the salmon…financially, there’s no price you can put on it for you and your family”

Elder Edward Napoleon

“The St’át’imc way of life is inseparably connected to the land. Our people use different locations throughout the territory of rivers, mountains and lakes, planning our trips with the best times to hunt and fish, harvest food and gather medicines. The lessons of living on the land are a large part of the inheritance passed on from St’át’imc elders to our children. As holders of one of the richest fisheries along the Fraser River, the St’át’imc defend and control a rich resource that feeds our people throughout the winter and serves as a valued staple for trade with our neighbouring Nations. The St’át’imc can think of no better place to live.”

Nxekmenlhkálha lti tmícwa, St’át’imc Land Use Plan

“Fishing brings you back in contact with who you are… get back in touch with your identify… your roots… where you come from”

Elder Rose Whitley, 1990

Declaration of the Lillooet Tribe

Post category:Heritage & Culture Stories of our Past

(May 10, 1911)

To Whom It May Concern:

We the underwritten chiefs of the Lillooet tribe (being all the chiefs of said tribe) declare as follows:

We speak the truth, and we speak for our whole tribe, numbering about 1400 people at the present time.

We claim that we are the rightful owners of our tribal territory, and everything pertaining thereto.

We have always lived in our country; at no time have we ever deserted it, or left it to others.

We have retained it from the invasion of other tribes at the cost of our blood.

Our ancestors were in possession of our country centuries before the whites ever came.

It is the same as yesterday when the latter came, and like the day before when the first fur trader came.

We are aware the B.C. government claims our country, like all other Indian territories in B.C.; but we deny their right to it.

We never gave it nor sold it to them.

Miyazaki Heritage House

Post category:Heritage & Culture Stories of our Past

Written by Jane Carrico

In 1877, Irish immigrant Caspar Phair hiked the Cariboo Road from Yale to accept the position of schoolteacher in Lillooet. The same year, Cerise Armit Eyre graduated from finishing school in England and arrived to join her mother & stepfather on a farm near Pavilion Lake that is still a working cattle ranch today.

Caspar & Cerise were married in 1879 and the following year, the first of their two sons, Arthur William Armit “Artie” Phair, was born. Casper came to hold almost every official position in the area including Government Agent, Gold Commissioner, Magistrate, Chief Constable, Coroner, Fire Chief and Game Warden.

Caspar hired master builder William Duguid to build his family a fine home in the Second Empire Style featuring a mansard roof, bell-cast eaves and four unique mansard-roofed dormer windows. They named their home Longford House. In 1887, Cerise bought a general store on Main Street and the Phairs settled into a prosperous and refined lifestyle in the heart of a wild, frontier town.

By age eighteen, Artie was running the family store but the Phair family fortunes rose and fell with the boom and bust economy of Lillooet.

Caspar & Cerise passed three months apart in 1933. Like his father, Artie came to fill many of the town’s official positions including Coroner but scandalized the townsfolk by letting the manicured gardens of Longford House become overgrown and unkempt while he roamed the rugged mountains surrounding Lillooet taking photographs and collecting butterflies and curios. Without him, much of the area’s history would not have been recorded.

In 1944, Artie was taking pictures in Bridge River when he met Dr. Masajiro Miyazaki who was interned there with his family as the result of WWII policies that removed Japanese Canadians from the west coast. The town was without a doctor at the time so Artie drafted a petition signed by many of the town’s leading citizens that allowed them to move into Lillooet.

The Pacific Great Eastern Railway

Post category:Heritage & Culture Stories of our Past

Written by Jane Carrico

“There was a time in this fair land when the railroads did not run. When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun.”

Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Railroad Trilogy

Construction of the historic Pacific Great Eastern Railway was an epic undertaking vital to the development of 20th Century British Columbia. Promises it would transport endless stands of timber north of Squamish to Howe Sound, open up vast Cariboo ranchlands and join the cross Canada railway system in Prince George fueled a landslide victory in the provincial election of 1912.

Private investors planned the PGE would cross the Fraser River at Lillooet and began construction in two sections – a commuter line serving North & West Vancouver and from the steamship docks at Squamish northward to Clinton. By 1915, the tracks reached Lillooet but bypassed the town by crossing the Fraser on a wooden trestle south of the Seton River.

The wild, remote and rugged Coast Range terrain proved to be “no child’s play” to cross and very expensive. Despite fiscal management that could “squeeze a nickel ’til the beaver screamed” and a $10 million loan from the BC government in 1916, the investors defaulted. By 1918, the government owned the PGE. They pushed the rail bed north to Quesnel by 1921 but the dream to reach Prince George became sidetracked.