Residents of Fairview gathered for a day of racing when the town was in full swing.

Image Credit: Oliver Heritage Society

Historians are working to turn a ghost town into a tourist attraction in order to preserve remnants of days gone by.

The Oliver Heritage Society has taken on the challenge of preserving the ghost town of Fairview, including an idea for a virtual reality tour that would show people what the town looked like at its peak. 

The society’s plan for the site is still in its infancy but historians want to make the site more attractive for visitors and inform the public about the town’s history.

Improved walking paths, signage, and seating are definitely in the ghost town’s future, but the heritage society wants to go a step further and gather funding for a virtual reality tour.

“We might try to introduce some sort of visually augmented virtual reality using the photographs and the information we have in our archives. People would be able to have something on their phones so they could look around and see what it was like using a QR code directing them to the website,” Darren Halsted executive director for the Oliver Heritage Society, said.

The augmented reality tour could be the first of its kind if the society can get the funds for it.

Fairview was a gold mining town established in 1887. The town grew steadily until the 1930s, but when the gold mines started drying up, the town quickly faded away.

A hilltop view of what Fairview looked like when it was a bustling mining town in the early 1900s.

Image Credit: Oliver Heritage Society

Today there are bits and pieces of Fairview scattered around, the jail was moved to the Oliver museum, one of the churches is operational in Okanagan Falls, and there is a judge’s house still being lived in.

As far as the townsite itself, it has been overgrown with invasive plants so it’s difficult and somewhat dangerous to traverse. There are some remains of old streets, the pits which used to be mines, and the foundation of the Fairview Hotel which burned down, killing three people in 1902.

“We know that people sadly were killed when the Fairview Hotel burned down, so it’s anybody’s guess if there is a haunting going on up there. One can imagine the circumstances where there could be,” Halsted said.

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The regional district asked the heritage society to take over management of the Fairview townsite in the spring. The non-profit society has a five-year agreement to manage the ghost town. The idea is to prevent the site from being completely overgrown by invasive plants, and prevent it from becoming a winery or housing development in the future.

There is not much of the town left, but Halsted says there is enough for people to be immersed in the region’s history.

“When you walk around you can see lilac bushes, those bushes were planted by the richer people who used to live there. It was a show of wealth. Those bushes are still there, the heritage is there. We can still see where people lived up there,” Halsted said.

Find out more about Fairview and the Oliver Heritage Society here.

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