History and interesting facts: Okanagan Landing and Silverton

Before the railway

Okanagan Landing is in the traditional territory of the Syilx people of the Okanagan Nation, as the local community association acknowledges. The lake sustained Syilx communities long before the arrival of settlers, the railway or the paddlewheelers. In September 2026 the Okanagan Indian Band and Westbank First Nation began a three-year survey of the lake's entire 290 km shoreline with Living Lakes Canada, a reminder that stewardship of this water continues today.

Timeline

1. 1892The Shuswap & Okanagan Railway from Sicamous reaches the lake. Okanagan Landing becomes its southern terminus, the point where passengers and freight switched from train to boat for the trip down the lake.
2. 22 May 1893The CPR launches the sternwheeler SS Aberdeen. A shipyard is built at the Landing to construct and maintain her. She runs between Okanagan Landing and Penticton three round trips a week until 1919.
3. 1 October 1898Okanagan Landing gets its own post office.
4. 1907SS Okanagan joins the fleet. Over the years the shipyard also builds or services the Penticton, Kaleden, Naramata and Sicamous.
5. 19 May 1914SS Sicamous is launched at the Okanagan Landing shipyard. Her hull and machinery were prefabricated and shipped in by rail; her interiors were finished in Australian mahogany and Burmese teak. Maiden voyage: 12 June 1914.
6. 1936The last steamship service ends when the Sicamous is retired. Ship repair work at the Landing continues until the 1960s.
7. 1953–1959The Vernon Yacht Club is chartered (23 June 1953), buys its property (1955), builds a launch ramp (1956), a clubhouse (1957) and a breakwater and docks (1959).
8. 1971The Okanagan Landing & District Community Association buys the decommissioned railway and shipyard land. It becomes Paddlewheel Park.
9. 1982The heritage station building is donated and becomes the Okanagan Landing Stationhouse Museum.
10. 1993Okanagan Landing is annexed into the City of Vernon.
11. 1995–96Silverton on the Lake is built at 7701 Okanagan Landing Road, a few hundred metres from today's Paddlewheel Park.
12. 1999–2000Shipwrights Hall in Paddlewheel Park burns in 1999 and is rebuilt by April 2000. Today it is Paddlewheel Hall, a community rental venue.

The Sicamous connection

The most famous boat built at the Landing is still afloat, or at least still in one piece. SS Sicamous was designed by Captain James Troup and put together by master builder Thomas J. Bulger in 1914. She was the grandest of the Okanagan sternwheelers, with a dining saloon and staterooms finished in imported hardwoods. After retirement she was moved to Penticton, where she is preserved today at the SS Sicamous Marine Heritage Park.

If you own at Silverton, that means the boat that defined Okanagan Lake travel for two decades was launched within walking distance of your dock. The Stationhouse Museum in Paddlewheel Park has a scale model of the Landing as it looked in 1914, and is open year-round by appointment.

The yacht club's odd records

The Vernon Yacht Club, a short walk from Silverton, has had an eventful history for a small-town club. Its first clubhouse burned on 14 February 1967; members had a new one up by 22 October the same year. A major marina expansion followed in May 1988, and in 1989 the club hosted what it describes as BC's largest on-water boat show. The best trivia: a world-record 9 lb 6 oz kokanee was caught in the club's 1988 fishing derby.

Where Silverton fits

Silverton was built in the mid-1990s, in the first few years after the Landing joined Vernon. It is one of several strata communities along this stretch of Okanagan Landing Road, alongside Lakeside Residences at 7769 and The Strand at 7343. Who developed it, and how it got its name, is not in any public source we could find. If you know, Sean would like to hear from you. To be confirmed

The Landing since annexation

Joining Vernon in 1993 brought city services and planning to what had been a semi-rural lakeside community, and the pace of change has picked up since. The City has been extending sanitary sewer through older parts of Okanagan Landing; in 2026 new mains were completed on Dunsmuir, Weeks and Bosc roads, with road restoration continuing into the fall. Council has also approved or advanced several larger projects: a 4.5-hectare rezoning in the 8700 block of Okanagan Landing Road (October 2025, over residents' objections), about 128 lots on the Hesperia lands above Longacre Drive (February 2026), and 72 townhomes and duplexes proposed near Tronson Road (May 2026).

For Silverton owners, that history cuts both ways. New housing brings more neighbours and more traffic on the one road in and out. It also confirms what the railway builders saw in 1892: this is one of the most useful pieces of shoreline on the north end of the lake. Details on each project are on the market and news page.

See the history for yourself

• Okanagan Landing Stationhouse Museum, in Paddlewheel Park: the heritage station building, with a scale model of the Landing in 1914. Open year-round by appointment.
• Paddlewheel Park: the former railway and shipyard land, bought by the community association in 1971. The beach you swim at was once the working waterfront.
• Paddlewheel Hall: the rebuilt Shipwrights Hall, now a community rental venue.
• SS Sicamous Marine Heritage Park in Penticton: the sternwheeler launched at the Landing in 1914, preserved and open to visitors. A good day trip down the lake.
• Vernon Yacht Club: the club's own history page tells the story of its 1967 fire and rebuild.

Quick facts to drop at a dock party

• The Landing was a railway town before it was a beach town: trains arrived in 1892, and the post office followed in 1898.
• SS Aberdeen, launched here in 1893, made three round trips a week to Penticton for 26 years.
• Paddlewheel Park is owned by the community association but maintained by the City of Vernon.
• Vernon averages about 2,027 hours of sunshine a year and 93 cm of snow, based on 1981–2010 climate normals.
• The record high in Vernon is 44.2 °C, set in June; the record low is −31.0 °C, in December.

Sources: Okanagan Landing (Wikipedia); SS Aberdeen (Wikipedia); SS Sicamous Marine Heritage Society; Vernon Yacht Club history; Okanagan Landing & District Community Association; Tourism Vernon, Stationhouse Museum; Vernon climate normals (Wikipedia, ECCC data); Vernon Morning Star, 23 Sep 2026.