Long after the well-worn trails of the Indigenous Peoples and the Hudson’s Bay Brigade Trail were established, there arose a need for a wider and more stable roadway throughout the Okanagan. Thus, the work of the ““Okanagan and Mission Valley Wagon Road” was undertaken in 1875.
Okanagan historian, F.M. Buckland, recalls in his book “Ogopogo’s Vigil”:
“The contract to construct a wagon road from O’Keefe’s by way of Priest’s Valley, ‘Vernon’, to Okanagan Mission was let in 1875. It was called “Okanagan and Mission Valley Wagon Road”… The road was built in two sections. Section 1 was designated as “from Mission Valley (Kelowna) to ‘the railway’* on Long Lake” … Section 2 was designated as “from the ‘railway’ to O’Keefe’s Ranch at the head of Okanagan Lake.”
The Okanagan Historical Society also reports:
"In those early years there were practically no roads, only narrow trails, in most parts of the valley, so late in 1875 the provincial government called for tenders to build a wagon road from the Catholic Mission in the south to O'Keefe's Ranch at the northern end of Okanagan lake. Philip Parke was the successful bidder, for a price of $23,000, and by the fall of 1876 the entire road for a length of thirty-eight miles was completed.” OHSR 23:116
The building of the road was no easy feat as described by the 23rd Okanagan Historical Society Report:
“There were no power driven tools or machines in use at that time and the task of constructing the road was accomplished by men with hand tools and horse drawn wagons and scrapers. Altogether there were eleven fourteen foot wide wooden bridges to build, with a combined length of 543 feet, as well as considerable rock had to be hand drilled.
Eighteen miles of forest had to be cleared to a width of thirty feet and over 300 feet of corduroy laid. A considerable amount of cribbing and walling was necessary, while the entire length of thirty eight miles was graded to a width of eighteen feet and ditched on both sides."
In March 1898, a family by the name of Clement decided to move from the Vernon area to Kelowna (then known as Mission Valley). One of the sons, Percy, recalls part of the trip:
“The road climbed steadily for the first four miles through a district which several years before had been reserved for the residents of Vernon to pasture their cows, and was called the Commonage…After reaching the highest point, the road descended for some distance by many crooks and bends until it reached the shore of Long Lake, now named Kalamalka.”
A Lake Country Museum article states: “The prerailway economy developed within the context of this horse and buggy transportation system.”
The Caribou Wagon Road had been completed in 1865 from Barkerville and connected the north to Kamloops via steamers on the Thomson and Spallumcheen Rivers. Now the Okanagan and Mission Valley wagon road connected Kamloops to the rest of the Okanagan Valley. It became a great asset to the Okanagan furthering trade and transportation.
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*“The Railway” or "Railroad" is the former name of the isthmus between Wood and Kalamalka lakes in Oyama. For more information on it read the Lake Country Museum’s article.
Sources & Further Reading:
Ogopogo's Vigil by F.M. Buckland
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