Osoyoos Snapshot

The first important thing to know about this charming lakeside town is how to pronounce its name. The name Osoyoos comes from the word sẁiẁs which is pronounced ‘soo-yoos’, meaning ‘narrowing of the waters’ in nsyilxcan, the local Okanagan Nation language.

During the period of European colonialism of what became Canada and the United States of America, thousands of miners looking for gold and farmers driving herds of livestock crossed the 49th parallel from 1858. This resulted in the building of a customs house in Osoyoos in 1861, with John Carmichael Haynes becoming the tax collector.

Osoyoos was incorporated as a Village on January 14, 1946 and became a Town on June 30, 1983. Today, with a population of just over 5,000, agriculture (fruit trees, vegetables and grapes for wine) along with tourism are the community’s largest economic sectors.

Every summer the population more than doubles as tourists flock to the sunkissed lake and numerous wineries in the area.

Because of its dry sunny climate in summer and mild winter the town is a retirement haven and also a magnet for ‘snow birds’ from the prairie provinces each winter. Seniors (age 65 and over) comprise 43 per cent of the town population with the average resident aged 55.4 years (2016) compared to 40.8 years for the rest of the population of British Columbia. The average age of the Osoyoos senior population is second in B.C only to Qualicum Beach’s 60.1 years.

Although many people claim the town is located in a desert, Osoyoos actually gets 10 cm too much rain each year to be an actual desert and is known more properly as a ‘semi-arid pocket desert’.

In 1865 the Dewdney Trail – a 720 km trail connecting Fort Hope (now Hope) to Fort Steel in the East Kootenays – passed through the narrows where present-day Osoyoos is situated with this trail forming the basis for much of the Crowsnest Highway 3.

The area around Osoyoos has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the entire country and is home to over 100 rare plants, and over 300 rare invertebrates.

And the most asked question of all: How did Anarchist Mountain get its unique name? No one is quite sure to be honest, but we’ll give you our favourite.

Legend has it that an early settler, and ‘wild Irishman’, named Richard G. Sidley who was appointed Justice of the Peace and Customs Officer in 1891 and the first postmaster at Sidley in 1895, named the mountain after an eccentric prospector and purported cattle thief named John Haywood. Apparently Mr. Haywood like to carry a stick of dynamite in his boot and when asked why, he would say it was because he was an anarchist.