Ranches on BC's Interior

As we headed west on the Yellowhead highway, we left the snowy Rockies and the Columbia mountain range behind.  As we drove, the sky opened up on the arid plateau in central BC. There were large scenic ranches that  reminded me of my great uncle Bill on my mother's side.

In Bill's teens and early 20s, he was a well known bronc rider. When he married and settled down in the late 1940s, he and his wife Margaret established a ranch a couple of hundred kms north of here on Francois Lake. They didn't have a vehicle and rode horseback to operate the ranch. To reach the ranch, they had to take the train west from Prince George, then a boat several kms across and down Francois Lake.

After uncle Bill's death, his wife Margaret wrote a book describing their adventures. The scenes described and pictured in that book are similar to the ranches we passed.

Today, there were mountain sheep grazing alongside the cattle which I'm sure was a common sight back then.

Someday on another trip west, we hope to visit their old ranch site. But until then, Margaret's book and these pictures are our connection to their ranch life from that time and place on BC's interior.

Click here for the next story in this series:
http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2018/04/a-mountain-experience.html