A unique piece of B.C. history is coming up for online auction in August, and potential bidders better have deep pockets.
Established in 1900 as "The Meadows", the historic ranch — one of the province's top cattle ranches — forms part of the 74,716-acre "Hat Creek Ranch Collection" in the Upper Hat Creek Valley west of Ashcroft. The entire collection is comprised of several properties containing 2,387 deeded acres, 61,531 acres in Grazing Licences, 9,518 acres in Grazing Leases, and 1,280 acres in a BC Hydro Agricultural Lease.
The collection also has multiple ranch houses, including an exclusive owner’s retreat described by CLHBid.com — which is offering the collection for auction — as "resembling the quintessential ranch homes often found in Hollywood westerns." The starting bid for the collection — which goes under the hammer on Aug. 15 — is $5.9 million.
The ranch was originally established by Philip Parke, who emigrated from County Sligo, Ireland in 1862 after gold was discovered in the B.C. Interior. He never made it to the goldfields of the Cariboo; instead, he held several jobs in the Cache Creek area before partnering with Charles Semlin to purchase Bonaparte House in Cache Creek. Three years later he sold his share in the roadhouse and purchased land northwest of Cache Creek, where he planted hay and started ranching cattle, but it was not long before he turned his attention elsewhere.
Hat Creek Valley, running from north to south roughly halfway between the Thompson and Fraser Rivers, boasted fertile valley bottom fields, abundant timber, and lush open grasslands where the grass grew as high as a horse’s belly. It was already owned, by Parke’s former employer Clement Cornwall, but Parke owned something Cornwall wanted: water rights for Cornwall’s Hibernia Ranch, near what is now Ashcroft Manor. In 1900 the two men did a swap, and Philip Parke set about establishing a ranch in Upper Hat Creek.
Philip Parke never built a permanent dwelling at The Meadows; he and his wife lived at the Bonaparte Ranch, with Philip making the arduous journey (three days if you were herding cattle; two days if you were travelling in a wagon; several hours on a horse using a mountain shortcut) between the two properties as necessary. The Parkes had no children, but in the late nineteenth century Philip’s nephew Henry arrived from Ireland, and eventually joined his uncle at the Bonaparte. Soon after that he purchased land in Hat Creek Valley adjoining The Meadows, and moved there with his family. The two properties were known jointly as The Parke Ranch, Upper Hat Creek.
Henry, his wife Isobella, and their four children lived on the Parke Ranch, first in a small log cabin with a sod roof and then in a spacious two-storey frame house built around 1910. Although they have been modernized since, the two buildings are still extant, and still recognizable as the houses seen in early photographs. When Philip Parke died in 1927, Henry took over the running of both the Bonaparte and Parke Ranches until his death in 1941. Henry’s only son, Arthur, carried on the tradition, although he and his family lived at Bonaparte, with Arthur making the still-difficult trip between the two properties many dozens of times over the next 40 years.
When Arthur Parke died in 1967 his two sons Alan and Gordon took over the properties and ran them together until 1970, when the land, machinery, and livestock were split. Alan took over the Bonaparte, while Gordon and his family settled in Upper Hat Creek at what became the Gordon Parke Ranch. Before retiring to Vancouver, Gordon Parke served as president of both the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association and the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, and in 2012 he was inducted into the B.C. Cowboy Hall of Fame, in the category “Pioneer Rancher”.
A fifth generation of the Parke family, Gordon’s son Brian, now lives in Upper Hat Creek and manages the entire ranch collection, which encompasses 31 separate land titles. The valley can support 450 or more cow/calf pairs, and 400 acres of land are irrigated.
Although travel to Hat Creek Valley was arduous in the early days of ranching there, the area is now easily accessible by road from Highway 99 northwest of Cache Creek (road access to the south end of the valley can also be had from Highway 1 south of Ashcroft). Hat Creek Valley is bounded to the east by the Cornwall Hills and to the west by the Clear Range mountains, and is close to Marble Canyon Provincial Park and Pavilion Lake.
“This is more than an opportunity to own a piece of British Columbia heartland, it's an invitation to become part of a story that has spanned generations and has barely begun,” says Tyler Ruttan, director of sales for CLHBid.com. “It’s more than just a ranch. Hat Creek offers an entire world where nature still dictates the rhythm of life, a rare gateway to a life less ordinary. It’s a place where history, heritage, and opportunities converge."
You can learn more about The Hat Creek Ranch Collection at https://bit.ly/3WoGu3P.
