Our Grasslands Communities

A condensed ftp site dedicated to grasslands in the Thompson-Nicola region "grasslands1" is provided for your convenience. The BC Film Commission digital library contains an abbreviated version of the Thompson-Nicola locations library for your perusal.

Douglas Lake Ranch
Kamloops
Merritt
Nicola (Historic)
Quilchena (Historic)

Douglas Lake Ranch

Douglas Lake Ranch (http://www.douglaslake.com) is Canada’s largest working ranch and is more than 500,000 (yes, more than ½ a million!) acres of rangeland. Douglas Lake Ranch is an excellent resource of filmmaking and commercial locations. Douglas Lake Ranch includes the Home Ranch beside Sanctuary Lake, which is the hub of business activity, with a general store, cook house, business offices, numerous small residences, a church and a school. On the Douglas Lake property, there are more than 40 lakes, several rivers and creeks, and Quilchena Falls.

Douglas Lake Ranch is home to Stony Lake Lodge, Salmon Lake Resort with 11 lakeside cottages, Twigg’s Place log house on Salmon Lake, Minnie Lake Ranch House, Jerry’s Cabin, and lakeside yurts. It has many ranches within its boundaries such as the Dry Farm Cow Camp, the Hatheume Cow Camp, Raspberry Cow Camp, Louis Corrals Cow Camp, the Chapperon Ranch and Norfolk Ranch. Douglas Lake Ranch is also home to more recent buildings such as the Big House (a stately log hunting lodge built in the 1960's). There are extensive corrals in the English Bridge feedlot area and the Island, and expansive fields for filming such as Morton Field.

Douglas Lake Ranch is situated about a 30-minute drive north from Merritt.

Douglas Lake Road is paved and extends between the Old Nicola Highway #5A at Nicola Lake to Douglas Lake and snakes through rolling grasslands and eventually ends in Westwold (or begins, depending how you look at it).
Stony Lake Road, mostly gravel, starts at the Old Nicola Highway #5A, is an estimated 25 km long, is winding and picturesque, and leads to Stony Lake Resort and lake.
Salmon Lake Road, which starts at the Kamloops-Vernon Highway #97C in the Westwold and turns into the Douglas Lake Roads and, and follows the Salmon River through forests, to the open areas surrounding Salmon Lake Resort.
Road access via the Kentucky-Allyene Provincial Park leads to the yurts on small lakes, and is closed to the public.

Climate

Semi-dry, little precipitation, and very hot in the summer with temperatures into the 30°s C (+90°F). With an average maximum summer temperature in excess of 26ºC, and an average minimum winter temperature of about -8ºC, the Thompson-Nicola Region tends to experience relatively mild winters (by Canadian standards). In wintertime, the landscape resembles the tundra of northern Canada with drifting snow.

Population

70 cowboys plus families; approximately 20,000 cows and 300 horses

Tourism

Douglas Lake Ranch (http://www.douglaslake.com) and Gold Country (http://www.exploregoldcountry.com)

Did You Know?

Douglas Lake Ranch owns and maintains a private paved airstrip which is 4,600 feet in length, providing for a mere 35 minute flight.
Douglas Lake Ranch has 5,700 acres of crop fields.

Projects

“Miss Texas” a German and Canadian miniseries; “The Snow Walker” starring Barry Pepper and directed by Charles Martin Smith; “Max” – Canadian feature film and numerous commercials (Toyota, Hummer, KIA).

Kamloops

The City of Kamloops (refer to “In the Desert” Communities for a more extensive description and statistics).

Kamloops is situated by grasslands and is home to the Lac Du Bois grasslands, Lac Du Bois Provincial Park, and the Knutsford grasslands of rolling grasslands, hobby farms and ranches. The Frolek Ranch, between Kamloops and Stump Lake (1/2 way between Kamloops and Merritt) includes thousands of expansive acres of grasslands for grazing, which are peppered with small ponds and forest groves.

Kamloops grasslands are an ecosystem rich in unique flora and fauna such as wheat bunchgrass, prickly pear cactus, sagebrush, yellow-bellied marmots, coyotes, California bighorn sheep, osprey, bald eagles and other fascinating creatures as well as coniferous forests of Ponderosa Pines and Trembling Aspen stands.

Some grassland areas are protected while others are available for filming with some restrictions: some areas allow filming if vehicles stay on roads and some areas are open to dirt biking, 4x4s and public use such as the area just outside Lac Du Bois Provincial Park.

Projects

“2012” with John Cusack; Ford 150 commercial; Ford Baja racing commercial; TV series “Battlestar Galactica” – the finale episodes.

Merritt

The City of Merritt (http://www.merritt.ca), the “Country Music Capital of Canada”, is the hub of the Nicola Valley (http://www.britishcolumbia.com/regions/towns/?townID=4057), and only a 3-hour drive northeast from Vancouver and a 50-minute drive from Kamloops. Merritt is where the Coquihalla Highway #5, Coquihalla Connector Highway #97C, Old Nicola Highway #5A and Spences Bridge-Merritt Nicola Highway #8 meet.

The City of Merritt is western-like and the walls of many buildings throughout this small town depict murals of country music stars, young and old. For filmmaking and commercials, Merritt is a small town with old-time architecture, with an unhurried downtown marked by the iconic Coldwater Hotel. To the south of Merritt there are mountains of pine trees, ranches and parks, and to Merritt’s north, there are expansive rolling hills of grasslands along Nicola Lake - 10 kms of clean blue water. If you’re producing a reality show, there are “101 things to do” in the immediate area.