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travel / great places / canadian snapshots / okanagan valley
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Okanagan Valley
Come with us as we explore British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, located in the province's southern interior.
It is a region ripe with fruit, culture and great Canadian scenery. The name Okanagan is the English reference given
to the Interior Salish First Nations tribe who first settled in the valley. Derived from a Salish term translated roughly
as place of water. Click on a topic to find out more about this vibrant region.
Location
Lying 400 kilometres east of Vancouver along the Canada-U.S. border, the
famous Okanagan Valley stretches approximately 20 kilometres by 250
kilometres in the B.C. Interior. It makes up only the small northern tip of
a western desert that extends intermittently between the Coastal Mountains
and the Cordilleras into the Great Basin Desert of Oregon.
From Vancouver via the Trans-Canada, either join the Coquihalla Highway, go
north to Merritt and east on Highway 97c to Kelowna, or stay on the
Coquihalla until Kamloops and head south on Highway 97 (from the east, turn
south at Sicamous). Highway 97 joins the valley's municipal centres and
provides excellent views of orchards and vineyards as it winds along
Okanagan Lake's clay cliff shoreline. From Vernon to Osoyoos, the highway
stretches 180 kilometres.
The valley's four main centres, from north to south, are Salmon Arm (in the
north Okanagan),Vernon, Kelowna, and Penticton. With the smaller towns and
communities, these cities make up the B.C. Interior's most populated area.
Development continues to expand with industrialization (agriculture,
manufacturing, construction, transportation and retail), and tourism doubles
the valley's population during the summer months.
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