By Cheryl Jahn

Historic tourist sites set to open

May 14, 2025 | 3:49 PM

NORTHERN BC – Huble Homestead is just one of a series of tourist draws opening up this Victoria Day long weekend.

“We’ve got demonstrations,” says Krystal Leason, Executive Director of Huble Homestead. “We’ll have Tracey making cheese. We’ve got Dave from Silver Tree Woodworking coming to work on the lathe. We’ll have ice cream-making demonstrations. We’ll have the maypole dances, as is customary. And then we’ve got lots of fun new things in the general store.”

And speaking of historic sites, Barkerville will be opening at the end of May, which is bit earlier than is usual.

“In order to protect our seasons and to be fiscally responsible, we shortened our seasons the last few years to the 100 days from the beginning of June to the week just after Labour Day,” says Stewart Cawood, Manager of Public Programming for Barkerville. “And that was mainly just to be able to protect the fact that we want people to continue to come here and that we can still have programming and all those things that people love. But this year we did decide to bring back the soft opening of opening up on the May long weekend.”

Barkerville had a tough year last year with a wildfire that shut them down and threatened their very existence. But it’s business as usual.

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“Each year, we try to change up what the acts are so that there is something new for repeat customers who come each year. But I think there may be some friendly favourites that people are very aware of. I don’t want to say or not, but I do think that our hobby horses are in rehearsals as we speak,” says Cawood.

Along with Barkerville and Huble Homestead, two other sites have been identified under the banner of Northern Routes. They also include the Fort St. James National Historic Site and the Valemount Museum. And this is just the beginning for all those sites.

“We’re open every day from Victoria Day weekend until Labour Day, and we have public events throughout the summer,” explains Leason. “So we’ve got other events like Dominion Day on July 1, Kids Carnival on July 20, we’ll have Homestead days on the August long weekend and of course Potato Festival at the end of the season when the fall rolls around. We moved to fall hours and so we have a couple more events throughout the fall.”

And the question everyone wants answered is out of Barkerville. Have you every found gold?

“There was one time I was working on the water wheel, and there was a piece of gold in there,” says Cawood. “It was a very, very small thing that I had never seen before. And I had gold fever instantly. And I had to pan that dirt out and find it. And I was right. There was just the tiniest, minuscule fleck of gold that was in the water. So there is still gold and then there hills.”

From this weekend forward, there is no shortage of history for you to take in.