Is That a Building Way Up There?

The little dot called Hedley, on Hwy#3, about 30 klms from Keremeos, had an old gas station on a tight corner that forced us to slow down enough to look down one of the streets and see the words ‘museum’ as we drove by yesterday.

When we were checking into Gold Mountain RV last night we asked about the town.  The park owners were very convincing that we had to go back and visit the town and so convinced us to stay another day.  The museum is free (donations), has a tea room, book sales and souvenirs. They also recommended the gold mine tour.  What mine?

 

So today we explored a piece of BC mining history and researched the birth and near death of a town.  What a wonderful place.  We drove through the old streets snapping pictures. This town is much larger than it appears from the highway.  The evidence of its prosperity in past years is everywhere but hidden behind trees and shrubs and the height of the mountains where the work took place. 

Picture of high mountain mining buildings
taken through the lens of the telescope
on the deck of the museum

Old shanty shacks still exist, lots of mobile homes in all stages of despair but there were also many complete restorations of early homes.  

About 50% of the houses/lots are for sale, the other 50% appear to be owned by retired folk who are happy to live in this quiet little haven with two good sized cities an hour away in either direction.  They have a volunteer fire department with a brand new fire truck, a really rustic restored hotel and restaurant with a delicious looking menu of delicacies.  Complete photo album of town shots.

Lunch was homemade Borsht and Mushroom soup along with a fresh baked Foccashia bread (I don’t know how to spell it and neither does Bill Gates) was a whopping $5 and coffee was $1.50. Reservations were recommended for the live folk band tonight.  Tickets are $10 and beer is $4.

We toured the museum for a couple of hours, read the history, had tea, were amazed at how a town could grow into a city and then die when the mines closed in the middle 50s.   Mounted proudly on one of the walls in the museum were four movie posters.  This little town has been used many times for major and minor productions.  I can't say we have seen any of them but we plan to now. Complete photo album related to the museum and town history.


Enough folks were retired and enough farm land had been developed to keep a small core of residents.  They had a school for many years but that is gone now too.  Tourists and retired escapees are the sustenance of the town now.  They even have a Monk named Leon that we got to meet.

The natives have resurrected the mines into tourist attractions and operate tours from the end of June till early Sept.  We were too early. Tom, a volunteer at the museum tea shop, let us pepper him with questions and it was obvious he loved giving the answers.

This is a wonderful little town and a piece of BC history that is worth visiting and donating to.  It was worth a lot more than the ticket price of a movie in the big city.