A concise history of the town of Oliver.

The town of Oliver sits astride the highway leading to the border with the USA some 20 minutes away, most of the traffic is freight trucks, wealthy elderly Canadians fleeing the wicked winters and Hells Angels, hundreds of them all dressed in black and riding the cleanest shiniest Harley Davidsons I have I seen outside of a showroom.

The highway follows a river valley through the mountains and back in the 1890s gold was discovered, not only in the river but up in them there hills. Word soon got out about the huge nuggets being washed down from the mountains and very soon a shanty camp was built and named Fairview. It soon transpired the stories of nuggets bigger than your head were true, they were just stories.

The majority of the prospectors left for greener grasses while 275 hardy diggers remained to scratch a living from the river. The area supported quite a few small gold operations and hard working miners and prospectors all need feeding. As usual, the obligatory beef farms were established and a few fruit and veg farms took advantage of the fertile glacial soil in the valley. The problem was, the area is desert which by definition gets little in the way of rain and there is only so much water one can transport from the river to the crops by horse and cart!

Now it gets interesting. Some disenchanted miners began to dig a small ditch leading from the river at the top of the valley and heading into the few farms, the plan was to sell running water to the farmers for crop irrigation. The price asked was so high that the farmers increased the price of their crops. The beef farmers felt their share of water had decreased and got a bit annoyed. Then, the indian tribes had a pow wow because all this river activity and diversion had upset the salmon migration and the fishing ceased. 

All hell broke lose. The miners beat up the cowboys, the cowboys called the farmers names and the ditch diggers fled when the indians began putting war paint on their faces and lighting fires for smoke signals. All the miners ran away after some of their fellows were found drowned in the river leaving the workings abandoned.                

The cowboys blamed the crop farmers who in turn blamed the cowboys for the loss of their income so they began to remedy the situation by shooting each other while the indians watched quietly from the mountain forests.

The premier of the British Columbian government, John Oliver, dispatched a squadron of his finest troops to the valley to restore order which was quick and brutal.  Most of the surviving cowboys took their cows to some other gold rich and prosperous town while the fruit farmers felt compelled to stay on their rich fertile farms and protest to John Oliver about the problems of growing fruit in the desert for customers far away.  

It was widely agreed that Okanagan fruit was the finest in Canada because of the soil and favouring climate, however, the lack of moisture was a deciding factor in what happened next.

Premier Oliver was an intelligent man. He saw the value of the valley as a fruit producing tax generating employment opportunity so in 1927 his government funded an ambitious irrigation scheme costing millions of dollars. His engineers carved a concrete lined canal of 25 miles from a glacial fed lake, a series of viaducts, tunnels and even a siphon system for the higher farms. They named it "The Ditch". The natural river was returned to its former glory, the fruit farmers were happy and the indians put away the war paint.

The valley exploded!   Fruit including apples, peaches, peppers, tomatoes, cherries, melons, plums, apricots, grapes and probably many other fruits and vegetables are grown here today. The valley is festooned with vineyards producing world famous wines as well as distilleries.

Oh, the whole point of this is, as a mark of respect to the premier, the town of Fairview was renamed Oliver after the man announced the irrigation water will remain free of charge to the farmers. He was hereafter known as "Honest John".

Pictures of the abandoned gold workings.

The Ditch.