As of April 1, Historic Hat Creek Ranch will be under new management.
The Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport — which has responsibility for the site north of Cache Creek — has announced that the St’uxwtews Pesuten Heritage Society, a non-profit organization led by Bonaparte First Nation (BFN), has been awarded the contract for the management and operations of Historic Hat Creek Ranch.
The contract also includes responsibility for managing and operating the McAbee Fossil Beds site east of Cache Creek, and runs through March 31, 2030.
“We’re not making any big changes,” says Deb Arnott, senior project manager for BFN. “The plan is to open Historic Hat Creek on May 1 and have it open through the end of September.
“At this time we’re working on planning and staffing. We’re going to do our best to add on to existing programs, spend time on the Indigenous interpretive site at Hat Creek, and work on the sister site at McAbee. We want them to complement each other, which makes so much sense. We want people to go to the fossil beds site and do the hike, then go to Historic Hat Creek and participate in programs there.
“The goal is to keep visitors in our region for two or three days to support the region and the other businesses and programs out there.”
Historic Hat Creek Ranch features one of the few remaining original roadhouses built along the Cariboo Waggon Road in the 1860s. Owned by the Jackson family for many years, when it operated as a working ranch, the site was bought by BC Hydro in the 1970s when there was a possibility of extracting coal on a large scale from the nearby Hat Creek Valley. When those plans fell through the site was purchased by the provincial government, and since 2003 it has been managed by the not-for-profit Friends of Historic Hat Creek Society.
The McAbee Fossil Beds site is one of the finest Eocene Epoch fossil beds in the world. In private hands until 2012, it was taken over by the province that year, declared a heritage site, and closed to the public. In 2019 BFN took over management of the site, and since then trails have been constructed to give visitors an overview of the area.
READ MORE: McAbee Fossil Beds site ready to reopen to the public
Staffing has been an issue at the site, which has only been open sporadically and inconsistently since 2019. Arnott says that getting signage along the highway and at the gate is a priority, and that they hope to have the site open for visitors at least five days a week.
“We’d like to see seven days a week, but we need to look at when the demand is. We’ll be analysing surveys from last year to make sure the hours fit the need of our visitors.”
Allowing for electronic payments at the site is in the works, along with a dedicated website and the ability for people to purchase tickets online for both McAbee and Hat Creek so they can plan visits in advance. “If they’re coming here they’ll have the opportunity to go to both sites.”
READ MORE: First trail completed at McAbee Fossil Beds site
At Historic Hat Creek the plan is to not make any changes to the historic heritage of the site. “We want to stay with that, as that’s the expectation of people coming to the site, and they want to experience that,” says Arnott.
“We want to add programs to the core, and raise the profile of the Indigenous interpretive site. We’ve heard that people want to see more hands-on activities there. We’ll consult with Elders about how they can participate and work with youth to get drumming and dancing out there and work on that knowledge transfer.”
Arnott says they’re also looking at the restaurant hours: “We’ve heard from people staying at the site that they’d like breakfast, and dinner for late arrivals, and the community would like to see more options, so we’ll have to see what that looks like. Stagecoach rides are another expectation of visitors, and we’re working on that aspect.”
There are also infrastructure issues that need to be addressed, but Arnott says that staffing is a challenge for all the businesses in the region, particularly when those businesses are seasonal.
“We’re trying to get away from the word ‘job’ and are telling people this is a career. We want to do some tourism training at the site, make it an opportunity for young people to look at this as a career, not as a seasonal job. We would love to see Historic Hat Creek as 12 months a year so it’s a steady full-time job, so let’s try to find a way to extend the site so people can make a career in our region.”
BFN will be ramping up marketing for both sites this year, to try to encourage more area residents to visit. “Locals feel it’s out of sight, out of mind,” says Arnott. “But people want to learn more about the heritage, the Gold Rush Trail, Indigenous peoples, the history of the site and buildings.
“We hope people will get to know the site and love it because of the stories. That would be incredible, but we have to make sure people know about it. People are excited about this, and its nice to see Bonaparte First Nation members with big smiles.”
Anyone interested in learning more about positions at Historic Hat Creek and/or McAbee can email Arnott at arnottd@telus.net.
