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Osoyoos tourist information
Osoyoos tourist information
The Osoyoos area has long been home to the Okanagan people (who speak the Syilx language), an Interior Salish people who still live in the valley, from the head waters of the Okanagan Lake, downstream to near the Okanagan river's confluence with the Columbia River in present-day Washington, though the traditional territory once encompasses the entire Columbia River. Like many places in the British Columbia Interior, the Osoyoos area was named by the Okanagan people. Osoyoos (O-sue-use) or (Sou-yoos) in the Syilx language describes a "narrow" waterway or where land almost meets, which refers to the cinched waistline of the 19km long Osoyoos Lake (5km of which is in the USA). The Okanagan people are thought to have first lived in the area around 3500 to 4000 years ago. There are indications that non-native travellers may have been here in the 1500’s, and also that Spanish conquistadors came here searching for Eldorado: they got as far as Kelowna before they and most of their horses died during a severe winter. It was not until the early 1800s that trappers and traders arrived, followed by gold miners and then ranchers. A fairly young place, in terms of settlers, who found the area too hot and dry in the summer. The first commercial orchard was planted in 1890, and when the South Okanagan irrigation canal was built in 1919, the town of Osoyoos began to grow and was thus incorporated in 1946.
The Okanagan Basin area around Osoyoos is an area of notable ecological significance. Habitat types include wetland/riparian, grassland/shrub-steppe, coniferous forest, and rugged terrain. This wide assortment of habitats supports extensive biological diversity. Nearly half the bird species in Canada are found here along with many plants that exist nowhere else in North America, or in some cases the world.
Osoyoos is situated just north of the Canada-US border, and the border crossing is the busiest in British Columbia outside of the Lower Mainland.
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Osoyoos Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.