Kyle Kusch/Arrow Lakes News
If you’ve ever driven the highway through bucolic Trout Lake, chances are that you’ve probably never noticed the cemetery on your left as you enter the village.
To be fair, it’s a rather inauspicious entrance: tucked in behind the Highway 31 sign opposite the intersection with Westside Road is a small sign tacked to a telephone pole. Beside it, a small trail disappears into the forest. After a short walk of around 30 to 45 seconds, you’ve climbed 25 feet above the roadway. Thanks to some volunteer work, the trail isn’t really that difficult, fortunately. Suddenly, the trees open up (well, slightly), and you find yourself standing directly upon two graves belonging to the Jacobson family. You’ve reached the Trout Lake Cemetery.
The cemetery dates at least to the turn of the century, the apex of the silver mining boom in the upper Lardeau. At the time, this patch of forest would have been well away from the main Trout Lake City townsite, located nearly a kilometre to the south at the head of the lake.
Of the 29 marked graves in the cemetery, the earliest headstone dates to 1900. The number of graves here, however, is far more than 29. Most of these graves were marked with wooden headstones or crosses that slowly decayed in the humid forest. Many more people were buried with no marker at all.
According to the gravestones present, the cemetery began declining in the 1920s and fell out of use after World War II. Two more bodies were interred here more recently in 1986. The forest has long since reclaimed the bulk of the gravesites. Visitors must navigate through a maze of towering cedar trees and ferns to see many of the headstones first hand.
To the north of the cemetery, a path leads into a stunning patch of Interior wetbelt forest that separates the cemetery from the highways yard.
Today, the cemetery is maintained by volunteers from the Trout Lake Community Club. In September of 2011, a commemorative plaque was placed along the trail to the cemetery bearing the names of all of the people known to be buried there. Sadly, with so many unmarked graves, and none of the oldtimers left to identify them, it is likely that the true number of people laid to rest at Trout Lake will never be known.
Linda Wall of the Community Club has marked a few of the unidentified graves with wooden poles, and some of the more fragile wooden headstones have been relocated to storage in hopes that they can be reproduced or refurbished to give the deceased the lasting memorials they deserve.
For now, however, the graves, along with their occasional visitors, merely enjoy the solitude of the Interior forest.
