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1867 · North of Vernon

Historic O'Keefe Ranch: The Ranch That's as Old as Canada

Presented by Tim Jones · Vernon History

Video presented by Tim's AI-generated presenter, in his own voice.

Picture it: June 1867. A herd of cattle, three tired cowboys, and the head of Okanagan Lake. The ranch they started is as old as Canada itself.

The cattle drives north

In 1858, gold was found in the Cariboo, and tens of thousands of miners came looking for it. Miners need to eat. So for about ten years, cowboys drove cattle north from the American border, right up through the Okanagan, to sell beef in the goldfields.

One of those drives was led by Cornelius O'Keefe, a young man from near Ottawa, with his partners Thomas Greenhow and Thomas Wood. In June 1867 they reached the head of Okanagan Lake, near Swan Lake. They liked what they saw. Each of them claimed 160 acres, and O'Keefe and Greenhow stayed.

Before the ranch

This land wasn't empty. It is the traditional territory of the syilx, the Okanagan people, and no treaty was ever signed. Settlers could claim land for as little as a dollar an acre. The ranch's own history tells us that O'Keefe and Greenhow both had syilx partners in those early years, women who likely helped bridge the two communities.

Building a cattle empire

O'Keefe kept buying land, much of it for as little as a dollar an acre. By 1900, the ranch covered about 12,000 acres, and it was one of the largest cattle operations in the region.

A little town on the ranch

It wasn't just a ranch; it was a little town. O'Keefe built a mill, a general store and a post office, where he was the postmaster. There was a blacksmith shop, a graveyard and a church, St. Ann's, finished in 1889. In the 1880s he moved his family out of their log cabin and into a grand new mansion. The ranch sat at the end of the wagon road into the Okanagan, and the stagecoach stopped there too.

A Vernon connection

In 1883, O'Keefe bought the land where locals held the first horse races in 1885. That became the Kin Race Track, and Vernon's new Active Living Centre sits on those old race lands today.

Later years

O'Keefe was a big personality. He married three times and had a large family, and his youngest child was born when he was 76. After 1907 he even built theatres in Vernon and Kamloops. That same year he sold much of his land, as the valley moved away from cattle and toward orchards. Cornelius O'Keefe died at the ranch in 1919. His wife Elizabeth, and later his youngest son Tierney, kept the original home site and its buildings in beautiful shape.

Open to everyone

In 1967, exactly one hundred years after Cornelius arrived, Tierney and his wife Betty opened the ranch to the public, and Premier W.A.C. Bennett came to open it. Ten years later, in 1977, the land and buildings were sold to the Devonian Foundation, which gave the site to the City of Vernon. Today it is run by a non-profit, the O'Keefe Ranch and Interior Heritage Society. It is about 12 kilometres north of downtown Vernon on Highway 97, and it is usually open from Mother's Day to Thanksgiving. Check the ranch's website for hours before you go.

The historical scenes on this page and in the video are artist's recreations, made to show what the place looked like. They are not archival photos.

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