Merritt, British Columbia: The Nicola Valley's Ranching Town

Where is Merritt and what is the Nicola Valley?

Merritt sits in south-central British Columbia where the Coldwater and Nicola rivers join, about 88 kilometres south of Kamloops. It is the commercial centre of the Nicola Valley, a valley in the BC interior that was cattle country long before the town was a town. The valley lies on the traditional territory of the Nlaka'pamux and Syilx peoples, who lived there well before fur traders and ranchers arrived.

The Canadian Encyclopedia reports that fur brigades used valley routes from 1848 to 1860 and that settlement began in the 1860s. Cattle ranches were established in that same decade, which makes the Nicola among the earliest ranching districts in British Columbia.

From Voght to Forksdale to Merritt

The town's own beginnings are tied to William Henry Voght, called the Father of Merritt by the municipality. He entered the Nicola Valley in 1865 and came back in 1872 to take up land at the forks where the two rivers meet. That forks site gave the settlement its first name, Forksdale.

In 1906 the community was renamed Merritt in honour of William Hamilton Merritt, a mining engineer and railway promoter. His proposed Nicola, Kamloops and Similkameen Railway ultimately failed, so the name outlived the project it advertised.

Douglas Lake Ranch and the big outfits

The ranch most people associate with Merritt is Douglas Lake, which the town's history page says was established in 1886 and describes as Canada's largest working cattle ranch. It covers about 515,000 acres, runs roughly 18,000 head of cattle and employs about 60 people. Another source, The Canadian Encyclopedia, gives the ranch as over 200,000 hectares with around 20,000 cattle, so the figures differ depending on who is counting and when.

The ranch's own pages carry founding dates from 1882 to 1884, so even the start year varies by source, and the figures cited here should be read as reported numbers rather than a fixed total. What is not in dispute is the scale: it remains a working ranch that dwarfs most farms in the province.

Coal, receivership and recovery

Coal was discovered in the valley in the 1860s and mined by the early 1900s. By the time Merritt was first incorporated as a city in 1911, the economy had diversified beyond cattle, and coal stayed a major industry until the 1930s. The Great Depression hit hard: a local mill failed, the town went into receivership and the province ran community operations until 1952.

Merritt was reincorporated as a village in 1958, became a town in 1965, and regained city status in 1981. Lumber growth in the 1950s and 1960s made it the commercial hub of the valley, and forestry is still described as a principal industry.

Costs and limits on the range

The ranching story in the Nicola Valley sits on land that was already home to the Nlaka'pamux and Syilx peoples. The sources used here do not detail how land was acquired from them, so this profile does not make claims about that process, but it is part of the history that readers should look into further.

The town also shows the limits of a single-industry economy. When cattle and coal could not carry it through the 1930s, Merritt lost its municipal status for years.

Visit and learn more

Merritt is reached by the Coquihalla Highway. The Quilchena Hotel, established in 1908 and overlooking Nicola Lake, is one of the valley's best-known historic buildings and now operates as a resort. For the town's own account, read the City of Merritt's history of the Nicola Valley the Canadian Encyclopedia entry on Merritt and the ranch's own Douglas Lake Ranch history page. For more on beef country across Canada, browse ranching stories on farm.FM, including a farm.FM story on British Columbia ranching.