Community Heritage Register

Places that matter to you in Central Kootenay?

The Regional District of Central Kootenay has taken an exciting step and has established a Community Heritage Register. This is a way of formally acknowledging places of cultural heritage significance that matter to the community.

Every community has those special pieces of history that will forever define the place and the people. A Community Heritage Register helps us to celebrate our past, value the present and build a sustainable future.

To develop this list of local sites, properties, events and even stories, we reached out through surveys and interviews to local residents, organizations and community groups to help pinpoint places that matter to the community, the places we can’t live without. A great number of heritage resources were put forward for nomination by the survey respondents and interviewees and numerous more were extracted from previous studies - totalling 348 individual suggestions for heritage resources in the RDCK. 

Community Heritage Register

In April 2020 the RDCK established a Community Heritage Register. At this time the Board placed 26 heritage resources on the register:

1. kp’itl’els
2. Burton Historical Park and Campground 
3. Idaho Peak Fire Lookout 
4. Slocan Valley Rail Trail 
5. J.B. Fletcher Store 
6. Townsite of Sandon including the Sandon Cemetery
7. Harrison Memorial Church - Crawford Bay
8. Brilliant Suspension Bridge
9. Sandon Internment Camp
10. Bay Farm Internment Camp
11. Popoff Internment Camp
12. Slocan City Internment Camp
13. Rosebery Internment Camp
14. Lemon Creek Internment Camp
15. Pilot Bay Lighthouse
16. City of Ainsworth Shipwreck
17. Cooper Creek Gold Field
18. Dewdney Trail (between Salmo and Creston)
19. Creston Town Hall
20. Slocan Mercantile General Store - Sandon
21. Raspberry School - Brilliant
22. St. Francis in the Woods - Queen’s Bay
23. Grain Elevators - Creston
24. Vallican Heritage Hall
25. Billy Clark Cabin - Meadow Creek
26. Merriwake Boat – Slocan
27. Lardeau Valley Museum Building
28. Historic Hotsprings Trail
29. Saddle Mountain Lookout Trail
30. Verigin Memorial Park

It is expected that new sites will continue to be added to the registry. Do you know of a significant heritage resource in the region? They can be buildings, structures or landscape features. Let us know so we can add it to our Nominated Places that Matter list for possible inclusion on the Community Heritage Register.

• Nomination Form 

Nominated Places That Matter Map

Over 350 nominations have been captured in an on-line map called Nominated Places that Matter in the RDCK which can be viewed at: RDCK Public Web Map. The different heritage resource types are marked in individual colors. When clicking on a resource pin, most will display some basic historic information or the justification for the nomination, based on the content submitted.

To explore more heritage resources check out other Community Heritage Registers in our region:

• City of Nelson [https://www.nelson.ca/664/Heritage-Planning]
• Village of Kaslo [http://www.kaslo.ca/content/community-heritage-register]
• Village of Nakusp [http://nakusp.com/discover-nakusp/history/]
• BC Heritage Register of Historic Places [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/celebrating-british-columbia/historic-places/provincial-federal-registers]

Community Heritage Register Report 

A report was prepared April 2020 that outlines historical themes and heritage values in the RDCK, a list of sites for inclusion on RDCK’s Community Heritage Register, and implementation tools and best management practises for the Community Heritage Register. This project was made possible by a Heritage Museums and Archives grant, which is funded by the Columbia Basin Truct and administered and managed by Heritage BC.

• Final Report

What is a Community Heritage Register?

Read more here: https://heritagebc.ca/learning-centre/community-heritage-register-a-resource-guide/ 

Or download the RDCK Community Heritage Register FAQ Sheet here .

Are You Interested in Heritage?

Consider volunteering to be a member of a RDCK Advisory Planning and Heritage Commission. The Commissions (one for each Electoral Area) will conduct heritage review and support activities developed to assist the Board and staff with the ongoing management and implementation of the Community Heritage Register, as well as community heritage conservation planning and activities.

Applications will be accepted as needed. Contact plandept@rdck.bc.ca or telephone 250-352-8165.

The content on this page was last updated June 17 2024 at 8:28 AM

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