Description of Historic Place

The Caleb Pike Heritage Park is 3.16 acres of municipally-owned land located at 1589 Millstream Road in the District of Highlands, British Columbia. It contains two municipal lots. The northern lot is 1.8 acres and holds six buildings (two of which are original heritage structures), a heritage orchard, pathways, rock outcrops, memorial trees and rocks. The southern lot is 1.36 acres of second-growth Douglas-fir forest. The historic place includes the land, its improvements and vegetation.

Heritage Value

Caleb Pike Heritage Park is valued for its historical significance. The park was created in 1983 in response to the community's interest in conserving and managing - by volunteers of the Highland Heritage Park Society - the community's historic structures. On the site is one of the Highlands District's first homesteads (Caleb Pike House, built 1883) along with an accompanying outbuilding (Dairy) and heritage orchard. The park also contains the Gregory House (a replica of another historic home in the District), and the Old School House and Teacherage, which were reconstructed in the park after being moved from a site near the junction of Millstream Road and Millstream Lake Road. The orchard, with its heritage apple varieties, is an example of pioneer landscape modification from forest to homestead. The historic value of the site is linked to a number of educational initiatives including newspaper articles, chapters in a book on the history of the Highlands District, and informational outdoor signage.

The Caleb Pike Heritage Park is valued as a community meeting place. It honours the uniqueness of the Highlands District's social fabric, offering a cultural landscape to support social events such as the community fall fair and folk music coffee-houses. It also inspires interdependence as a venue for events such as farmers' markets and municipal Council meetings. It is also the location of memorial trees and rocks installed to celebrate community members.

The aesthetic beauty of Caleb Pike Heritage Park is valued by the community and beyond. The Park offers indoor venues in some of the District's most significant heritage structures, and the grounds have been developed to maximize the spatial and aesthetic relationship between all the park structures, offering a unique and highly appreciated outdoor venue. The site is used for weddings, for the creation of film footage, and for commercial photography. New buildings, such as the woodshed and washroom facility, were built to fit park aesthetics (e.g. use of lap-jointed squared logs with peeled log rafters and shake roofs) and all the buildings surround an orchard of heritage fruit trees. Paths built to facilitate wheelchair transportation between the buildings twist and meander through the meadow and around the rock outcrops.

Source: District of Highlands Municipal Office

Character-Defining Elements

Key character-defining elements of the Caleb Pike Heritage Park include:

- Buildings arranged on the perimeter of the open grassy space surrounding the orchard
- Original historic buildings
- Relocated community historic buildings
- Replicas of community heritage structures
- Historical artifacts and interpretive information
- Heritage orchard
- Memorial trees and a memorial rock
- Educational signage
- Safety features such as access pathways for people with disabilities
- Lighting arranged to compliment the aesthetic value of the park