Kimberley Nature Park
Area History

In the early 1970's the City of Kimberley redrew its boundaries to include the Kimberley Ski Resort. In the process, a large piece of forested land between the St. Mary's Lake Road and the Resort became part of the town. Most of this area has been designated by the City and recognized by the Province through a License of Occupation, as the Kimberley Nature Park..

(If you have ever wondered why the trails and sites in the Nature Park have the names that they do, visit our Place Name Page.)

Twenty thousand years ago, most of the Rocky Mountain Trench and its tributary valleys lay under almost two kilometres of ice. In the Kimberley area, two glaciers came together, the main Trench ice sheet and a smaller one flowing out of what is now the St. Mary's River valley. The glaciers themselves - and the rivers and lakes that formed as they melted - have helped to shape the Kimberley Nature Park. Some of the landforms in the Park are a result of bedrock formations while others are made up of sediments that were deposited after the ice age.

The earliest human use of the park area was by the Ktunaxa (Kootenay) people, who have lived in this valley for 10,000 to 12,000 years. We don't know a lot about their use of the area and we hope to learn more in the years ahead. We know they picked berries on North Star mountain and may have hunted in the area. At least one archaeological site - a chert quarry for spear-point material - exists in the area and more may be discovered.

Early European settlement brought exploration for minerals and some of the trails in the Nature Park are remnants of old mineral exploration roads. Some of the earliest productive mine workings in Kimberley were on North Star Mountain and there a number of sites in the Nature Park where exploratory shafts were dug but didn't pan out.

Logging was also a part of the Park's history in the early part of the century. Some of the trails we now use for hiking and biking were built by loggers to access stands of trees. Old stumps with notches for the early loggers' springboards can still be seen in parts of the Park and it is interesting to note in places just how big some of those trees were, in comparison to the trees currently on the sites.

One of Kimberley's first ski hills was located on Myrtle Mountain and a ski lodge was built at its base.

The ski lodge was built in 1938 by the Kimberley Ski Club at the base of Myrtle Mountain at what we now call Myrtle Junction. The building was of log construction and sported a large stone fireplace to warm the tired skiers. The structure was dismantled and moved to Meadowbrook, just outside Kimberley, in the 1960's.

The picture on the left was taken near the ski cabin looking up Myrtle Mountain. The picture below was taken from half way up the hill looking down on the cabin. There was no tow at the Myrtle Mountain ski hill, skiers climbed up and then skied down. A generator supplied electricity for lighting and there was some night skiing even then. The hill was used during the war years in the late 30's and early 40's but after the war, the increasing popularity of the sport required a move to the much larger North Star Mountain where the current resort is located.

(Many thanks to Roy Musser for above 3 photos.)

In recent decades the Nature Park has been used mainly for outdoor recreation. A network of old roads has been maintained and expanded by several generations of local volunteers. Long before the idea of a park even originated, several retired Kimberley residents spent long hours building and maintaining trails in the area. Now people use these trails to hike, jog, walk their dogs, x-country ski, mountain bike and enjoy nature. Special events, such as the annual Mother's Day Walk are hosted by the Nature Park Society, local schools use the area for biology classes and outdoor recreation and the local Volksmarch club has a 10 kilometre route in the Park.

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