Plans to relocate the historic 153 Mile Store above the Williams Lake Stampede Ground have stalled.
An impasse has developed between the heritage society wanting the project and Williams Lake Indian Band (WLIB), who is opposed to it.
The Cariboo Heritage Park Society has been trying to find a home for the 153 Mile Store for the past three years.
Built in 1914, the historic Gold Rush-era store was gifted to the City of Williams Lake by the Patenaude family in 2015.
Pinchbeck Park, which overlooks the Stampede Grounds, was identified as the ideal location roughly two or three years ago, said society president Anita Crosina.
Crosina said they had hoped to partner with WLIB on the future heritage park to bring together First Nations history, ranching and the Gold Rush era.
“We are frustrated,” Crosina said Wednesday, adding she’s hopeful the project will still move forward.
“There are plans for a whole heritage village there. It could be an awesome tourist attraction.”
Holding the project back, said WLIB Chief Willie Sellars in a news release issued Wednesday, is “a large archaelogical site containing a feature known as a pit-house or kekuli” within the area proposed for development.
Read more: Pre-settler evidence reviewed as Williams Lake eyes Stampede Grounds for heritage park
Sellars said the pit-house and surrounding land was used by Secwepemc ancestors as a place of habitation, and the pithouse is ‘hundreds, or possibly thousands, of years old.’
“Can it be that hard to find a way to avoid destroying this site and balance the interests of both the First Nations and the Heritage Park Society?” Sellars added. “We are all for promotion of the City of Williams Lake and for the creation of jobs and opportunity. Everything we have done and continue to do demonstrates that. All we’re asking is that the City find a way to avoid destroying the pit-house site, and we are otherwise in full support of what the City and the Heritage Society are proposing to do on Pinchbeck Hill.”
Crosina said the society has a plan to keep the area of concern intact during development of the site and put it back in the same exact location, just lower, and make it a feature of the site.
Read More: HAPHAZARD HISTORY: Louis Crosina and the 153 Mile House Store
The two-storey log store was closed and its contents preserved exactly how they were left when the store’s owner, and close family friend of the Patenaude family, Lil Crosina, died of a heart attack behind the counter in the store in 1963.
“It’s a time capsule from 1900 to 1963,” Roger Patenaude told the Tribune during an open house about the project at city hall in 2019. “The store supplied logging, supplied mining, supplied ranchers, (traded with First Nations) so there was everything in that store. I don’t think there is anything you can’t say in that time period that didn’t go through that store.”
Read more: Heritage society hopes to secure and lower pit house on Pinchbeck Hill to accommodate historic store
Originally the City had looked at relocating the store next to the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin when it was located on Fourth Avenue North near Williams Lake’s downtown.
However, when Vantage Living was building Cariboo Place, the City sold the land and building to Vantage and the museum was relocated to the Tourism Discovery Centre on Highway 97.
The WLIB noted that as the store was constructed post-1846 it is not a protected feature under provincial legislation. The pithouse site, WLIB noted, is protected by the BC Heritage Conservation Act.
With files from Angie Mindus
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