September 23, 2018
Today, we visited Barkerville Historical Town. The first tour was an introduction tour to the town. The lady that did this tour was absolutely amazing. She was quick witted and knew the information as if she was there and personally experienced it. As a matter of fact she portrayed the roll of one of the historical people that actually lived in Barkerville. This was a very informative tour and an excellent start to understanding Barkerville.
There were many tours that took place and in between the tours I visited various buildings to see the artifacts in them. As I left the first tour I made my way around to another tour that was about the water wheel. Now one gentleman portrayed himself as a conniving gold digger and the other gentleman was the hard working miner. There was a lot of humour and again very informative.
After seeing many of the buildings in this part of town, we went to the theatre and paid a little extra to see an interesting play. It was okay and had some humour, but after seeing two other plays along my travels this one was not my favourite, they did not have much historical information in their play.
We then went to Chinatown and had a historical tour of this part of Barkerville. It was another excellent tour and very informative. A young lady from China, in period costume gave the tour and was very tactful in explaining the segregration and the discrimination.
We visited many other parts of the town and was felt quite fortunate as the streets did not have many tourists on them. It pays to go near the end of their season.
An excellent day and we get to come back tomorrow for free. This is great as there is so much to see and one cannot do all the plays or see everything in this historical town in one day, that is for certain.
September 24th, 2018
Today we took our time getting up as it was soooooo cold last night (around 1 degree Celsius), which is pretty darn cold in a tent. LOL Also, it was raining hard. We got to Barkerville (2km away from the campgrounds) around 10am.
The first historical part we went to see was the story about Billy Barker, who the town Barkerville was named after. The lady who did this story was the same one that did the introduction to the town that we attended yesterday morning. This was an interesting story as she read a summary of the key information as it was written by Billy Barker, very interesting.
We then attended another historical segment that told the story about the history of gold rush from Fraser River to Barkerville. The gentleman that did this tour was extremely fascinating and knew his information. This was an excellent explanation to the gold rush days in the area. I learned so much today … even at my age. LOL
After a lunch break, we walked up to the courthouse which was about 1 mile down a road behind Barkerville. This was nice, but not very much information was here … more information that linked to what we were told were on placards at different points along the road to the courthouse.
We then walked up to the Catholic and Chinese Cemetery. All the Chinese that were buried here had been dug up and the bones were shipped back to China to their family home towns. There were a great number of cavities in this graveyard … I often wonder why they did not fill the holes back in. I will have to research this curiosity.
There was only one grave marked that was of the Catholic section and no others were present.
Walking back to Barkerville, we stopped and talked to a couple ladies who worked here and one of them showed us a little ThaiChi … very informative again. They were indeed a lot of fun.
We walked up to the Barkerville-Wells Cemetery and walked through the old section where most of the people that were buried in this was in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s.
After going back to our campsite for supper, we drove back to Barkerville just at sunset to get some night shots. The exterior lighting in the town was not the best, but still got some interesting photo’s. I have to say it was pretty darn cool to be walking through the old ghost town and not a soul was around … creepy, but yet awesome!!!
This is an amazing place to visit and I highly recommend anyone to visit here. It is a must see.