The story behind the Shuswap's familiar and historic Trickle Inn
A large, charming white house with green trim has been a familiar site for people travelling through the Shuswap for decades.
Perched on side of the Trans-Canada Highway in Tappen, the house was a family home for the Carlin family for several generations and in more recent years has served as an inn hosting travellers from around the world.
It's also the source of alleged paranormal activity.
Now used as a boarding house, the story of the old relic begins in 1904, when a man named James Carlin bought it for his family to move into. Part of the house had been built in 1896, but a two-storey section was added and the family moved in in 1908, according to the Okanagan Historical Society’s 86th report The Carlin House : A Gracious Old Home and Its Inhabitants by Estelle Noakes.
It was the first home in the area with indoor plumbing and gas lighting.
“Heating came from a wood stove in the centre of the house. Stovepipes went up to a drum with coils in it, that heated the upstairs rooms,” an excerpt read. “Carbide gas for the lighting came from an acetylene generator under the house and was piped to the mantles of the lamps which would be lit with a torch. When the generator broke down the family went without the gas lights until electricity came in 1949.”
The household, farm animals and gardens were supplied with running water coming from a gravity fed system from a spring behind the house.
The house is described as having a large kitchen with a skylight and two sinks for washing the cream separator. There were wooden sliding doors fitted on two walls of the living room to open up three rooms for entertaining and dancing.
The dining room is also described as large with a dining table running almost the length of it. There were four bedrooms upstairs and a huge bathroom with backstairs providing a fire escape.
Gingerbread trim and fancy decorative touches were added by the O’Reilly Brother’s Sash and Door Company but were later removed for easier painting. Oil was used to preserve wood in the house but it turned out to be fish oil that caused blistering on the pocket doors and stair railing. The railing was removed but the wooden doors were kept.
Shuswap resident Carol Oberholtzer bought the home from a contractor in 1993 who had painted it white and green, redid the floors and finished the third floor which had been an attic.
“When you come into the Carlin House there are big beautiful sliding doors for the main dining room off the vestibule,” she told iNFOnews.ca. “Bats used to live upstairs and apparently there was a lot of bat guano up there, but the contractor turned it into a beautiful room.”
Oberholtzer turned the old house into an inn called The Trickle Inn. She made the third floor into a suite for people celebrating special occasions like honeymoons, adding a door and veranda overlooking the backyard.
She made the large bathroom on the second floor into three bathrooms so guest bedrooms could have private bathrooms.
Oberholtzer opened the inn with a dining club inside of it in 1995. Roughly five years later, she had obtained her liquor license and met all regulations to open a 41-seat licensed restaurant.
“In order to have a restaurant I had to have three female washrooms and one male washroom, a septic field that would accommodate that, a pumping station and backup septic field,” she said.
The upgrades cost her $50,000. For Oberholtzer it was worth it. The venue brought in local diners and tourists, accommodated tourists from abroad and helped boost the local economy.
“I met people from all over the world,” she said. “That was the best part of all of it. After I had my liquor license people would drive out for an evening of drinks and appetizers. Then they’d sit and visit.”
At one point it its history, the house was in a dilapidated state where the paint was gone and it was a grey looking house. There were stories going around of it being haunted.
Oberholtzer claimed she often felt paranormal energy in the house, but she wasn’t afraid of it. Prior to selling the inn in 2007, numerous mediums had stopped by.
“I felt energy there and mediums and even ordinary people said they felt it as well,” she said. “The mediums said one of the entities there was a grandmother in the Carlin family. There were lots of comments about it across my 14 years there.”
Do you have photographs and memories of The Trickle Inn to share? Send them to news@infonews.ca.
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