1993: The road called "The 5 Mile" follows the old Kettle Valley Railway line east, more or less along the line of Hayes Creek (5 Mile Creek) from Princeton toward Chain Lake and Osprey; the road eventually follows Trout Creek as it descends through sagebrush and Ponderosa pine toward Summerland. We had a cabin near the confluence of Hayes Creek and Siwash Creek (one of the great gold-bearing creeks in the area), about 10 miles east of this place.

The ranchhouse on Baker Hill Road is a very square, blocky building built of logs, almost like a roadhouse on the Cariboo Trail. The KVR didn't go through until 1915, but this building looks older . . . . I went by again in September, 2001, and found that the house had been restored. Sandra Dixon, who now owns the ranch with her husband Brian, gave me the following information:

"I believe it was either 1906 or 1908 that Fred Baker first homesteaded this valley, and . . . we think the log house was built around 1918 from the newspapers we found in the wall. They dated from 1914-1918. I salvaged all the newspapers and hope to steam and flatten them as a winter project and start putting together a scrap book on the house. There was some talk from the locals that the original log house burnt down and then was rebuilt shortly thereafter in the 20's, but we don't think this is true, because of the dates of the newspapers. There is also some talk that the famous train-robber bandit, Billy Miner, helped put the shakes on the original roof (which subsequent layers of wood shakes had been layered over top). But again, we don't believe this tale to be true as Billy Miner died in about 1913-1914 according to our research. But it is true that he had a hideout cabin in hills just down the valley from us - perhaps a km or 2 away. [The Kentucky-born Billy Miner's career as a train robber in Canada began at Silverdale in the Fraser Valley on September 10, 1904; his second robbery, at Ducks near Kamloops on May 8, 1906, led to his capture and a life sentence to be served at the BC Penitentiary in New Westminster. However, he escaped on August 9, 1907 and was at large until his capture in Georgia following another robbery in 1911. He died in Georgia State Penitentiary in 1913, aged somewhere in his 60s or early 70s. So it is possible that Miner was in the area during the time of the construction of an original homestead cabin.]

"There were a few different owners which I have some knowledge of until about the early 1950's when the Pelly family bought this place. They kept it until the early 1980's - then Eggertson's (Nico Wynde Ranch) purchased it and sold to us in 1999. *We had an older woman stop in last year that my husband spoke with whose father lived here in the 40's - she wrote us a letter and sent us a picture of the house then - which had a veranda built out the front of the house. [the verandah appears on my watercolour from 1993, and has since been removed]

"One interesting point is that the the main highway used to run along Baker Hill Road up until about 20 years ago when it was closed off and the new highway is now up on the hillside close to the Kettle Valley Railway. The main road interestingly also has several names - Highway #40, Princeton-Summerland Road, Osprey Lake Road or "The Five Mile" - as the locals call it."