Cottonwood House

On the way to Barkerville, only a about 20miles from Quesnel is Cottonwood House. Another preserved historic site that was on the stagecoach route to Barkerville (which in its heyday 1870 was the biggest town north of San Fransisco and West of Chicago!). Another warm up for the “olden days” at Barkerville.



You get a guided tour through the old cottonwood house which was interesting. This 100+ year old house still has a lot of the original furniture and fittings from the early 1900s. This house was a stop on the stagecoach line, so had a shop in the front, and office, lodgings for up to 30 men in one room, and a fancy formal guestroom with parlor out the side.

Upstairs was the kids bedrooms (there were 5 boys and 4 girls - so a boys room and a girls room) as well as a small school room. There was a large window from the school room that the luggage (those big heavy boxes they called luggage) could be lifted straight up into the second floor without having to carry them upstairs.

There are various other buildings around the site as well. All in all a nice way to spend a crisp June morning. Kids had fun exploring the root cellar and chasing ground squirrels. Though they were exceptionally well behaved, in our guided tour of the house.

There is an RV park associated with Cottonwood House. So, though I write this parked in their RV parking lot, there is a chance we will be staying there tonight.

Addendum: Somehow the day ended up with me under the RV undoing screws that seemed impossible due to the lack space. The sad part was they were the screws to valve for the black water tank! Anyway, we had planned ahead it was drained and clean and hadn't been used again for weeks. Le was trying to solve the problem of a slow leak that was getting past the valve and was always sitting waiting when we opened the cap when draining.

We thought that the seals or the blade of the valve might have got broken when the can got stuck down there. But after undoing everything, perhaps the seals had been dislodged, but the blade is fine. So we got it back together and got on the road to Barkerville, with a day to spare for Canada Day.


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