Barkerville Designated A Provincial Historic Park 65 Years Ago

2024 marks a big year in the history of Barkerville Historic Town and Park.

It was on January 12, 1959 that it was designated a Provincial Historic Park under the authority of the of the Park Act.

Manager of Public Programming & Media, Stewart Cawood said before that, Barkerville was basically just a town and very quickly becoming a ghost town.

“The mining industry had really started to dwindle out here. The only population that was substantial was mostly a seasonal population otherwise there were just a handful of people.” Cawood said, “So the people that were here banded together and petitioned to the Government to have it maintained as a Historic sight.”

Since 1959 Cawood said a lot of the buildings have been either restored or have been actually reconstructed using old plans, or photographs, or even oral history, in order to get the designs of those old buildings.

“The town has grown from what it use to be by the addition of these refurbished buildings. Some buildings that have moved away have come back to Barkerville over the years. Now we’re a Historic sight with 107 original buildings but about 130-140 buildings in total uptown.”

In 1959 Cawood noted that was about the time Barkerville was becoming a tourist attraction.

“In the 60’s was when they started making that big push to refurbish the buildings that were still here, some were moved up to what we now call New Barkerville as residents were being moved out of town as Barkerville was going through this sort of middle period between people still living here and visitors starting to come visit.” Cawood said, “So official visitation didn’t really start until the 1960’s, any visitation here before that was just people coming to visit an old ghost town essentially.’

Cawood added that Barkerville Historical Town and Park was designated a National Historical site in 1924, so we’re coming up on our hundred year anniversary which we’ll be doing some special celebrations this summer.