PRINCETON

Is a small town situated at the junction of the Similkameen and Tulameen Rivers and at the junction of Highways #3 (Crowsnest) and #5A, at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, 136 kilometers east of Hope.

Princeton was originally known as Vermillion Forks for the red ochre on the banks of the Tulameen River, used by the local First Nations people, who used it to make paintings and for trading purposes.

During the 1840s, several teams of miners, fur traders, and settlers used the community to connect and establish several trails from here to the Pacific Coast. In 1859, John Fall Allison, who Allison Pass, about 40 kilometers west of here on the Crowsnest Highway is named after, established a ranch and year later, when Canada’s governor at the time, James Douglas laid out a townsite, he chose the name “Princeton” in honor of Prince of Wales’ visit to eastern Canada in 1860.

During World War 2 (WWII), the Kettle Valley Railway linked Princeton to Vancouver, and near the end of the 1940s the Hope-Princeton Highway; (a stretch of the Crowsnest Highway between Princeton and Hope) was built making this small town of about 3,000 completely dependent on automobile traffic.

Princeton was once a very booming community with copper, gold, coal that was all mined in the town’s early days. Copper mining was revived in mid-August of 2011 after the town will open a new open-pit copper mine near the outskirts of town. In the first 12 years of operation, this mine will produce well over 100 million tonnes of copper annually at a cost of $450,000,000 and employ about 250 people. When the copper concentrate is mined it will be trucked to the Port of Vancouver and then shipped to Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in Japan where it will be melted down into “actual copper”. This mine is expected to give Princeton a significant population and housing boom within the next few years. 

Logging along with tourism, are the major economic resources. Princeton became famous, for infamous train robber, Bill Miner who robbed numerous trains belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway, and whom lived in this area around 1904.

Princeton’s climate is marred by four different and diverse seasons, warm and dry summers, cool and mild winters. During the summer months, the nights cool off impressively to be comfortablly enough for sleeping. The Cascade Mountains in the valley block signifacant amounts of precipitation from falling especially both in summer and winter, for this reason Princeton obtains an annual estimate of 356 millimeters of precipitaion a year. On the other hand, the high area surrounding the community does receive a fair amount of snow during the winter months and driving with caution is recommended especially along Highway #3 from Princeton to east of Osoyoos due to the fact there are 4 mountain passes (Anarchist Summit, Sunday Summit, Allison Pass and the Richter Pass) along this stretch of highway. Winters here average about -10 degrees Celsius and summer temperatures average about 25 degrees Celcius. Moreover, in the summertime with warm days and cool evenings, its common for Princeton to get an occasional thunderstorm from time to time in addition with the dry barren hills that surround the town, a forest fire is also not out of the question.

For the traveler, Princeton’s downtown is somewhat small but it does center around several blocks of Bridge Street and Vermillion Avenue (its two main downtown streets) as well as some businesses along Highway #3 (Crowsnest Highway) including a couple of fast-food restaurants, couple of gas stations and a tourism information center.

Princeton’s population: 2,677