Just off the Yellowhead Highway that bisects the province in two, the fort sits on the bucolic shores of Stuart Lake. It was founded in 1806 by Simon Fraser, the dashing entrepreneur and explorer who opened up western Canada for the British and established several fur trading posts along his route. Fort St. James was a trading center for furs that would be transported overland to eastern Canada for shipment to Europe.

Fur pelts were worth everything in Europe at the time and British royalty, starting with Queen Victoria, would be known for their gorgeous robes edged in white and black fur from ermine trapped in Canada.

In 1821, the site was named Fort St. James, possibly to inspire some devotion to God in an extremely isolated area visited by few people other than explorers, fur traders and the native Carrier tribe, known today as the Nak’azdli First Nation. For years, the fort was the capital of New Caledonia, as British Columbia was known at that time.

The Canadian parks system has preserved the fort, with all the furniture and implements set in the year 1896. Not only can one visit the various log structures used as warehouses, stores and homes during the day, but it’s possible to stay the night in the antique-laden Murray House, built in the 1880s.

The officer’s house is romantically dark in the evenings with only a few strategically placed lamps to offer light so as to give the effect of the candles that were used at the time. To while away the evening hours, games are set out in the dining room such as checkers, cribbage and crokinole, a game developed in rural Canada in the 1860s.