This article is about the region in British Columbia. For the extended cross-border region inclusive of Washington state, see Okanagan Country. For other uses, see Okanogan.
The region is known for its sunny climate, dry landscapes and lakeshore communities and particular lifestyle.[4] The economy is retirement and commercial-recreation based, with outdoor activities such as boating and watersports, skiing and hiking. Agriculture has been focused primarily on fruit orchards, with a recent shift in focus to vineyards and wine.
The region stretches northwards via the Spallumcheen Valley to Sicamous in the Shuswap Country, and reaches south of the Canada–United States border, where it continues as Okanogan County. The Okanagan as a region is sometimes described as including the Boundary, Similkameen, and Shuswap regions, though this is because of proximity and historic and commercial ties with those areas.
Etymology
The name is derived from the Okanagan-language place name ukʷnaqín.[5] An alternative explanation from Washington is ‘People living where you can see the top’, ostensibly of Chopaka Peak in the Lower Similkameen.[6]
The area was occupied by Pleistoceneglaciation, and a widespread mantle of glacial drift covers the underlying bedrock.
At the end of the Pleistocene, marginal lakes formed along the sides of the melting ice lobe and streams deposited their loads in them as deltas and accumulations of silt.
These accumulations now form the white cliffs which are particularly prominent along the southern end of Okanagan Lake.[7]
The Okanagan has a mild, relatively dry climate that varies depending on latitude. Most of the Okanagan lies within the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains to the southwest. Areas in the north end of the valley receive more precipitation and cooler temperatures than areas to the south. Generally, Kelowna is the transition zone between the drier south and the wetter north.
The Okanagan north of Kelowna has a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb) with warm, sometimes hot summers and cold winters with highs around freezing, though mild by Canadian standards. Precipitation is well distributed year round. Some regions of the Okanagan, most notably near Kelowna, border on an inland oceanic climate due to it having an average temperature slightly above −3.0 °C (26.6 °F) and below 0 °C (32 °F).[8][9]Dry forests of ponderosa pine and low grasses dominate the valleys and mountains in this region.
Between 2000 BCE and 1900 CE, the climate and vegetation of the Okanagan had changed little. However, historical records from the Pacific Agrifood Research Station in Summerland indicate that the Okanagan climate had warmed by about 1 °C between 1908 and 1994.[11]
The Okanagan Valley is home to the Syilx, commonly known as the Okanagan people, 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 and the Upper Nicola to the north of that, though the whole of their traditional territory encompasses the entire Columbia River watershed and includes areas east of the Okanogan River in Washington, i.e. the Colville Reservation. At the height of Okanagan culture, about 3000 years ago, it is estimated that 12,000 people lived in this valley and surrounding areas. The Okanagan people employed an adaptive strategy, moving within traditional areas throughout the year to fish, hunt, or collect food, while in the winter months, they lived in semi-permanent villages of kekulis, a type of pithouse.[12] Today the member bands of the Okanagan Nation Alliance are sovereign nations, with vibrant natural resource and tourism based economies. Their annual August gathering near Vernon is a celebration of the continuance of Syilx life and culture.
In 1811, the first non-natives came to the Okanagan Valley, in the form of a fur trading expedition voyaging north out of Fort Okanogan, a Pacific Fur Company outpost at the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers. Within fifteen years, fur traders established, known as the Brigade Trail via the Cariboo Plateau and Thompson Country to Fort Kamloops and through the Okanagan, from Fort Alexandria at the southern end of the New Caledonia fur district in the Central Interior to the north, to Fort Vancouver, the HBC's headquarters in the Columbia Department, for passing furs between New Caledonia and the Columbia River for shipment 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, bisecting Osoyoos Lake. To avoid paying tariffs, British traders forged a newer route that bypassed Fort Okanogan via the Fraser Canyon from Spuzzum up over the Cascade Mountains, then via the Nicola, Coldwater and Fraser rivers to Fort Langley instead of to Fort Vancouver, which had come into being in American territory. The Okanagan Valley did not see many more outsiders for a decade afterward.
View of the Okanagan Valley from the hills above Kelowna
In 1859, the first European settlement was established when Father Charles Pandosy led the making of an Oblate mission at Okanagan Mission, now a neighbourhood of Kelowna. 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 hostilities from the Syilx, 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, with another trail from Fort Hope to newer goldfields at Rock Creek and Wild Horse Creek in the East Kootenay, skirting the US border and crossing Osoyoos Lake at Osoyoos, which was a customs post and also the location of the gold commissioner's office. The Dewdney Trail, surveyed and built by Edgar Dewdney, was constructed to prevent trade in the region from going north-south instead of remaining firmly under British control, and also for military mobility purposes should the need arise. In the decades following the gold rushes, ranchers, mostly on military land grants, came to settle on Okanagan Lake; notable ones included the Coldstream Ranch near Vernon, the Ellis Ranch, which formed the basis of the City of Penticton once subdivided, and the Richter Ranch, which continues in operation today, in the mountains between the Town of Oliver and the Village of Keremeos in the Similkameen.
A mining industry began in the southern Okanagan region, with Fairview, now an empty benchland on the western side of Oliver, the best-known and largest of the boomtowns created in the later part of the 19th century. 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.
In 1936, the grower-owned BC Tree Fruits Cooperative was established to store, package and sell Okanagan fruit.[13]
SS Aberdeen
Until the 1930s, the demand for shipping fruit and other goods did drive a need for ongoing operations of the sternwheeler steamboats that serviced Okanagan Lake, operated by a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway, linking the Southern Mainline with the original transcontinental mainline at Sicamous: the SS Aberdeen from 1886 and then the SS Sicamous and SS Naramata from 1914, and others. The Sicamous and Naramata survive as a tourist attraction on Okanagan Beach on the north side of Penticton, the Sicamous serving both as a museum and also an event facility. Other steamboats operated on Skaha Lake to the south of that city. The club lounge and wheelhouse, without any keel or hull, of the SS Okanagan are in the same park as the Sicamous and Naramata.
While the last half-century has grown several resource-based enterprises in the region, primarily forestry, though mining had played an important role in earlier times. Favoured by its sunny climate, lakes, and winery attractions, the valley has become a popular destination for vacationers and retirees. The area also attracts seasonal fruit-picking labourers, primarily from Quebec and Mexico.[14][15]
Demographics
The population of the region was 403,950 as of the 2021 Canadian census. The three regional districts within the Okanagan and their populations were: Central Okanagan (222,162), North Okanagan (91,610) and Okanagan-Similkameen (90,178).
Statistics Canada. 2017. Armstrong, CY [Census subdivision], British Columbia and Okanagan, RD [Census division], British Columbia (table). Census Profile. 2016 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-316-X2016001. Ottawa. Released February 8, 2017.
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E (accessed April 16, 2017).
The Osoyoos and Westbank Indian Reserves have large non-native populations because of band-governed residential and commercial development on their lands. The Osoyoos Indian Reserve leases large swathes of land to commercial vineyard developments and is where 40% of wine grapes used in the Okanagan come from.
^The Main Report of the Consultative Board. Canada – British Columbia Okanagan Basin Agreement(PDF) (Report). Victoria, British Columbia: British Columbia Water Resources Service. March 1974. p. 11. Retrieved 2015-10-25. the region is both scenically attractive and climatically desirable, and has consequently experienced a rapidly expanding resident and tourist population growth
^Tales of the Okanogans: Collected by Mourning Dove; Hines, Donald M. ed, Ye Galleon Press, Fairfield Washington, 1976; ISBN0-87770-173-3; p. 15. (Footnote prepared by L.V. McWhorter and Dean Guie, possibly with material supplied by Mourning Dove.)
^John B. Theberge. "What's in a Name". Osoyoos Desert Society. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
^Ian R. Walker (2004). "Chapter 6: Climate Change, the last 15000 years in the Okanagan". In John D. Greenough, Murray A. Roed (ed.). Okanagan Geology. Kelowna Geology Committee. pp. 51–62. ISBN0-9699795-2-5.
^John D. Greenough, Murray A. Roed, ed. (2004). Okanagan Geology. Kelowna Geology Committee. pp. 71–83. ISBN0-9699795-2-5.
^ abTomic, Patricia, Ricardo Trumper & Luis L. M. Aguiar. "Housing Regulations and Living Conditions of Mexican Migrant Workers in the Okanagan Valley, BC." Canadian Issues. 78. Link (accessed April 5, 2011).
Okanagan Historical Society Reports—A visual record of the Society's Annual Report from its first issue in 1926 from the UBC Library Digital Collections
Digitized Okanagan History—A repository of digitized photographs and records related to the history of B.C.'s Southern Interior
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