Tenacity, the Story of
Hedley, Then and Today begins
with the 1898 Gold Rush boom
in the Similkameen Valley;
where hundreds of men and
women came in search of
fortunes, or a wage paying
job and a touch of luck.
Today the community continues
with generational lineages
| that span not only the past
hundred years, but those
families whose earliest
ancestors came to the
Similkameen Valley thousands
of years before, the Upper
Similkameen People.
To grasp the tenacious
character of those who built
Hedley, one only needs to
| look thousands of feet above
the town where the Nickel
Plate Mountain meets the sky,
where wooden structures cling
precariously to the mountain
strata; a place where hard
luck was won and lost at the
Hedley Mascot Mine, and
below, in Hedley City where
the dreams of riches in gold
| were matched by the reality
of life in a geographically
remote location and on lands
that have reputedly been
cursed by a Similkameen
medicine man.
Community memories,
including written history,
shared stories and
photographic evidence, paint
|