Destruction of old Peachland home offers chance to revisit history

One of the remnants of old Peachland is set to fade into history at the site of New Monaco.

For years, people driving in and out of the small Central Okanagan town would have passed by an increasingly dilapidated farm house, sandwiched between Highway 97 and a turnoff from the Connector.

It was taken down last week as the first notable changes related to the massive New Monaco development take shape.

Peachland historian Don Wilson said the end of that 75 year old structure is simply a sign of the times. The development that has been 15 years in the making is set to double the town’s population.

“I think Peachland is changing — the whole valley is changing —and becoming more densified,” he said.

“For many years Peachland was a small-town of less than 500 and then there was a big jump in the 70s and it’s been growing ever since.”

According to a 2024 report from BC Statistics, Peachland's population is projected to increase from about 6,000 to 9,074 by 2046, a 47 per cent increase.

It’s a far cry from what was when that home took in its first residents.

Wilson said the farmhouse was built around 1949 for Maitland V Fetherstonhaugh, another valley pioneer, and his wife, when marriage linked their family to the Drought family.

The Fetherstonhaughs owned the land above what’s now the Coquihalla and the Droughts owned much of what fell below — thus the name Drought Hill. A remnant of a historic family though, ironically, the moniker matches the topography of the area nicely.

“The Droughts came in the early 1900s, around 1904, I think,” Wilson said.

That is when Drought brothers, Henry, John and Albert with their wives and children arrived in the Okanagan from Morris, Man., to make a new life.

Henry built a large house on the upper Drought property near Trepanier and Henry and John planted orchards.

“Their land was farmed from way back in the early days of the last century — it was a fruit farm.”

Descendants of the family kept it for years and in a section below Highway 97 is still in the family’s possession.

The stories about people who made a life in the area through farming, and other means, are abundant at the town’s museum.

Wilson said the area is rich with stories from its past, which is why it’s well suited to the sign that tips its hat to that notion with the sign that greets visitors with a welcome to “Historic Peachland.”

“In Peachland we lost 17, which is more people per capita, than any town in Canada in the First World War,” he said.

Peachland was also home to B.C.’s first female mayor in the 1940s.

Stella Gummow became the mayor of Peachland when her husband died, and left the role vacant.

“She later became an official in Victoria and she chose the Dogwood as B.C.’s flower,” Wilson said.

It was also home to Peter St. John, known as the Earl of Orkney, a hereditary title connected to the islands of the same name off the northern tip of Scotland. He received the title through a strange quirk of family fate after his elderly second cousin once removed, Cecil Fitzmaurice, died and the title passed to him.

The infamous Eddy Haymour was also Peachlander. He threatened politicians, held people hostage, fought in court and even drove away his own family in pursuit of his goal to open a theme park on rattlesnake island.

The Peachland Museum is at the end of Beach Avenue, where Wilson is a historian.