MONTE LAKE

MONTE LAKE

Is a small unincorporated lakeside community, located 40 kilometers southeast of Kamloops, at the south end of the lake of the same name and along Highway #97, a highway that sets out towards the Okanagan Valley.

It was established in the 1920s, when Wilf Hanbury established a sawmill run by the Ponderosa Pine Lumber Company. The mill was then later sold off to Crown Zellerbach Canada Limited, a small forest products company based in San Francisco. For almost 30 years, a settler by the name of Henry Buff operated another mill at the south end of the lake from 1952-1980. In 2005, this mill was bought by Monte Lake Forest Products Limited who operate a 250-employee post/rail yard treatment facility producing high quality products such as orchard props, rail posts and poles.

Monte Lake and its neighbor to the northeast, Monte Creek, are both the French word “montee” which in turn means a “height of land” where it was in this area that the early fur traders crossed over from Thompson River to the Okanagan Valley.

Monte Lake is unincorporated and farming and logging are the main supporters to the community’s economy.

Monte Lake’s population: 68