OKANAGAN

The 'Okanagan' (IPA: ), also known as the 'Okanagan Valley' and sometimes as the 'Okanagan Country' is a region located in the Canadian province of British Columbia defined by the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Canadian portion of the Okanagan River. As of the year 2001, the region's population is approximately 297,601. The primary city is Kelowna. The name derives from an Okanagan language word ''S-Ookanhkchinx'' meaning "Transport toward the head or top end". The region is known for outdoor activities such as boating and watersports, snow skiing and hiking as well as for orcharding and, much more recently, the wine industry.

Contents

History

Geography

Geographic features

Major highways

Adjacent regions

Communities

Demographics

External links

References

History

The Okanagan Valley is home to the Okanagan Nation, an Interior Salish people who live in the valley from the head of Okanagan Lake downstream to near the river's confluence with the Columbia River in present-day Washington, as well as in the neighbouring Similkameen Valley,though the traditional territory encompasses the entire Columbia River watershed. They were hunter-gatherers, living off wild game and berries and roots for the most part but travelling north or south to fish salmon runs or to trade with other nations.Today the member bands of the Okanagan Nation Alliance are soveriegn nations, with vibrant natural resource and tourism based economies. The annual August gathering near Vernon is a celebration of the continuance of Okanagan life and culture.
In 1811 came the first non-natives to the Okanagan Valley, a fur trading expedition voyaging north out of Fort Okanogan, a Pacific Fur Company outpost at the confluence of the Okanagan and Columbia rivers. Within fifteen years, fur traders established a route through the valley for passing goods between the Thompson region and the Columbia River for transport to the Pacific. The trade route lasted until 1846, when the Oregon Treaty laid down the border between British North America and the United States west of the Rocky Mountains on the 49th parallel. The new border cut across the valley. To avoid paying tariffs, British traders forged a route that bypassed Fort Okanogan (by then in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, which had merged with the Northwest Company, which had bought the Pacific Fur Company) via the Fraser Canyon, following the Thompson, Nicola, Coldwater and Fraser rivers to Fort Langley instead. The Okanagan Valley did not see many more outsiders for a decade afterward.
In 1859, the first European settlers arrived when Father Charles Pandosy led the making of an Oblate mission where Kelowna is now. In the decades that followed, hundreds of ranchers came from all directions to settle on Okanagan Lake. The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858 eventually encouraged more settlement as some prospectors from the United States took the Okanagan Trail route on their way to the Fraser Canyon, although at the height of the rush the American adventurers who used the route did not settle because of outright hostilites from the Okanagan people, whom a few of the parties traversing the trail had harassed and brutalized. A few staked claims around the South Okanagan and Similkameen valleys and found gold and copper in places. A mining industry began in the southern Okanagan region, and more farmers, as well as a small service industry, came to meet the needs of the miners.

Fruit production is a hallmark of the Okanagan Valley today, but the industry began with difficulty. Commercial orcharding of apples was first tried there in 1892, but a series of setbacks prevented the major success of commercial fruit crops until the 1920s.