Barkerville is an authentic and faithful historic restoration of a 19th century gold mining town in British Columbia. Declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 1924, Barkerville is the largest living history museum in western North America. Not only are most of the original buildings still in tact, there are period correct townsfolk (called costumed interpreters) that provide a glimpse of life in the old west, including a blacksmith shop with a smith producing wrought iron items in front of your eyes. At Barkerville, the ring of the anvil is not from a speaker system.
The town’s mining roots are visible at the welcome sign
Blacksmith in Barkerville
The town Apothecary
The townsite is impressively large and provides a wealth of activities for the whole family. To give you an idea of the size of Barkerville, I wrote down some numbers from the brochure: 1130 acres, 107 heritage buildings, 62 replica buildings, 4 cemeteries, and 200,000 period artifacts. As someone interested in archeology, I could have spent days here. I particularly enjoyed a very detailed description of how to date glass bottles by how they were manufactured. You could literally spend hours in just this one building looking at the finer details of old glass bottles.
A map of the buildings & services in Barkerville
Barkerville buildings include log cabins
A kitchen in one of the homes on display
The daily programs offered during our visit
Being a full service tourist destination, Barkerville also provides a number of gastronomic options to keep everyone fueled, from a confectionery (did not try) to a Chinese restaurant (did try). Goldfield Bakery was surprisingly good (I have low expectations for bakeries), offering a mouth watering selection of tasty treats and breads made fresh daily. We each tried a crescent, Karla chose almond and I tried chocolate, both were flaky and buttery, somewhat like a croissant. We had lunch at Lung Duck Tong Restaurant, one of a few places that serves full meals. We arrived just as a large party was being seated and the waitress kindly noted our service would be very slow and we may want to come back later. Appreciative of this fact, we continued exploring for another hour before returning, just as the large party was existing the establishment. The waitress apologized profusely for suggesting we leave earlier, but we loved her candidness that allowed for more touring time and ended up leaving a larger tip than normal.
Some of the cabins were on the short side, author on the porch for scale
They offer stagecoach rides
Barkerville also holds a number of special events on location throughout the year. Two that caught my eye are a Ghostly Halloween Town Tour on October 31 and an Old Fashioned Victorian Christmas December 10-12. I’m normally not the type for overwrought period displays (think Disney World) but I’m thinking the folks here can pull it off.
A church is located near the entrance
The town sawmill
The entrance price is a reasonable $15/person, but was “pay whatever you can afford” for our visit in mid September. Don’t worry, there are numerous gift shops and artesian vendors that will be more than happy to take your hard earned money. We very much enjoyed our stay here, spending the good part of a day and wishing for more despite the soggy conditions. If you’re planning on also taking in some of the hiking trails, I would consider staying a night or two in a nearby campground or motel as the round trip drive from the nearest city (Quesnel) is 170 km of twisty road.
