Get out your bugles and beaver pelts: a portion of the Hudson's Bay Fur Brigade Trail runs right through where we are located!

The trails at Lake Okanagan Resort Stables are ripe with horseback riding history! They are some of the earliest routes used to traverse the Okanagan Valley.

Local First Nations peoples (members of the Okanagan Band) established the routes hundreds of years ago, and allowed the passage of the Hudson's Bay Fur Brigade in the 19th century. The brigade was a pack-horse train of up to several hundred horses. They made the journey from as far north as Fort St. James, down to the Columbia River in what is now Washington State, and back again, twice every year. The return journey took approximately 8 weeks.

From local author Elizabeth Pryce's historical fiction novel, Skaha Crossing:

"More than three hundred horses left Fort Kamloops that spring of 1835, laden with rich furs of all kinds, bound for Fort Okanogan. When it was time to move out, the trapper was among the first to swing into his saddle, take up the lead lines of his two pack horses and follow the commanding call of the brigade bugle."

When you are making your own journey over our trails, take a moment to think about the ancestors that may have made the same exact journey past the same trees one sunny day 150 years ago!