Heritage Interpretive Panels

I'm part of a committee in charge of creating heritage interpretive panels to be placed along the biking/walking trail from the Community Centre to the Illecillewaet River. A couple of years ago, a panel about Farming in Revelstoke was placed along the walking trail a short distance along from the Worker's Memorial. Currently, we are working on panels about Sternwheelers, the Forest Industry, the Railway, and First Nations. It's a good opportunity to share the rich history of this region with locals and visitors alike. Today we were talking about the Railway panel and brainstorming ideas about what elements should be in the panel. We talked about the impact of the railway on Revelstoke, and how it has defined this community. Revelstoke was once one of the major centres in the interior of the province, and that was because of the importance of Revelstoke as a railway divisional point. Revelstoke connected the east-west traffic of the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline with the traffic from the south along the Columbia River. Because of this connection, Revelstoke was made a customs port, even though we are close to 200 miles north of the American border.

In early tourism brochures, Revelstoke was cited as one of the easiest points to reach. Nowadays, it is considered difficult to reach, because of our distance from an international airport. We also talked about the number of Royal Visitors that came to Revelstoke in the days when they made their trips across the country by train. The Prince of Wales, who later became Edward VIII, visited Revelstoke in 1919 and 1927. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) visited in 1939 as part of their cross-country trip, and Queen Elizabeth II visited as Princess in 1951 and as Queen in 1959. Revelstoke is no longer as likely to see a Royal Visit as current trips are planned around the international airports.

The development of road travel and air travel in other parts of the province had an impact on Revelstoke's development. While the rest of the province was being opened to road travel in the 1920s and 1930s, Revelstoke lagged behind, because the Big Bend highway from Revelstoke to Golden was not completed until 1940. Even then, it was a treacherous highway, and could not be kept open in the winters. It was not until 1962 that the Rogers Pass highway was completed.

The photograph at the top of this post shows the Revelstoke CPR yards around 1912.

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