It is the largest historic site in British Columbia with over 125 heritage buildings and many shops featuring Victorian-era merchandise. There are exhibits to view, gold panning demonstrations, street entertainment and costumed participants strolling around the town. There are also guided tours to Chinatown, the cemetery and the Theatre Royal. To enjoy a visit to this town from from another era will require two days if you wish to see everything. A visit to the cemetery alone will take several hours.
Travelling to Barkerville can be done on the same route taken by miners in the Cariboo gold rush days. In the late 1850's, prospectors followed the Fraser River to the creeks of the Cariboo in B.C.'s northern country as gold became more difficult to find in other areas. Billy Barker was one of those prospectors who had decided to try his luck and in 1862, struck gold.
Before long news of his gold strike spread and many thousands of miners poured into the area hoping to stake their own claims. With the arrival of fortune hunters, the town mushroomed like magic from the wilderness surrounding his site. Soon saloons, dance halls, general stores and boarding houses sprang up beside the wooden plank sidewalks and a new town was born.
Between 1862 and 1870 over one hundred thousand people had traveled the Cariboo Wagon Road to reach the gold fields of Barkerville hoping to find gold along the many creeks that meandered through the Cariboo. Built in various stages, it was 1865 before the road was completed and stagecoaches could finally travel the distance between Yale and Barkerville carrying miners and passengers to their destination in the gold rush town. The most well-known of the stagecoach lines was the Barnard Express Stagecoach Lines.
The historic cemetery in Barkerville came into being when the first person was buried on the side of a hill on July 24, 1863. Peter Gibson was laid to rest at thirty-one years of age. On a walk through this cemetery, I noticed that the average age of those buried was about 32 years. This quaint cemetery is the last resting place of some of the great and possibly not so great residents of Barkerville. Although strolling through cemeteries is not my usual form of entertainment, we found it to be very interesting. Even my grandson seemed to be quite interested.
The town managed to thrive until the 1940's when Barkerville became somewhat of a ghost town until 1957 when the B.C. provincial government began restoring and reconstructing the buildings into what they now are. At present, about one hundred buildings are original to the town with twenty buildings being reproductions. There still exists a Chinatown in Barkerville and it is now thought to be the oldest surviving Chinatown in North America.
We found that Barkerville is as interesting for children as it is for adults. It is one of those places that I would like to go back and visit again since the last time we were there, we were only able to spend one day.
*** I am sorry there are no pictures because this trip was taken before I had a digital camera.
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