Check Out the Best Area Attractions, Museums, and Historic Towns
Rattlesnake Canyon Amusement Park
250-495-3544 | Visit Website | Get Directions
Designed with your family in mind, Rattlesnake Canyon is a western mining town themed amusement park that offers quality entertainment at affordable prices. There is no admission fee to enter into the park and they are pet-friendly. You can purchase tickets individually for any of the attractions or purchase an All Day Pass. Open seasonally.
Rattlesnake Canyon is located in Osoyoos, B.C., a tourist destination known for it's long hot summers and safe sandy beaches on Canada's warmest lake.
Located at 5502 Main Street, a block away from Osoyoos Lake and many campsites and hotels, Rattlesnake Canyon has been entertaining thousands of locals and tourists since it opened in 1998.
Rattlesnake Canyon offers an 18 hole Mini Golf Course, a Go Kart track that is the best in the Okanagan that consists of 12 Single Karts and 6 Double Karts, an Ice Cream Parlour in an authentic Windmill that features 48 flavours of your favourite ice cream, an Arcade, Bumper Boats, a Tumble Whirl, Tornado, Bungee Tree, a 30 foot Rock Climbing Wall, Gift Store, Tattoo Parlour, a Helicopter Ride for the kiddies, an Aeroball Basketball Trampoline activity, Concession Stand, Gemstone Mining Station to pan for gemstones and fossils, coin operated kiddie rides and you can create your own custom designed t-shirt with our Spin Art T-Shirt machine.
Stonerose Fossil Museum
509-775-2295 | Visit Website | Get Directions
There is nothing like the thrill of discovery. Just like pages in a book, fossil impressions are embedded in 50 million years old layers of shale; when the rock splits and there is fossil inside, many squeal with delight at the discovery. That fossil has never seen the light of day and is certainly something that has not been seen before by human eyes. Finding a fossil takes a bit of patience, yet the odds of finding one are excellent.
Stonerose is the name of a fossil site, a place where impressions of plants, insects, and fish that lived millions of years ago can be found in shale. These fossils are the result of events that happened long before there were people to observe them. The organisms found at Stonerose lived nearly 50 million years ago, in a time known as the Eocene Epoch. At that time, the area now occupied by the City of Republic was part of an ancient lake. Over many years, layers of sediment built up on the lakebed. Much of this material was powdery ash from volcanic activity occurring in the area.
Molson Museum & Ghost Town
509-485-3292 | Visit Website | Get Directions
The Old Molson Ghost Town Museum is an outdoor collection of pioneer buildings and equipment. The best collections of nostalgia in the town of Molson, Washington. Located in the Beautiful Okanogan Highlands in North Central Washington State. This outdoor museum exhibit was established by Harry Sherling in 1960 in remembrance of the rich pioneering history of Old Molson. The museum is open Year Round during daylight hours.
The Molson Schoolhouse closed to students in 1969. It reopened as a museum in 1982. Many thanks to the countless hours of hard work by so many volunteers to gather exhibit items and sort them all out for display. The museum is a living exhibit that continues to have items added to it each year. Volunteers staff the museum 7 days a week, 10a – 5p, from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Many of them are lifelong residents of the area as well as past students and teachers. It is a real privilege to hear first hand accounts of Molson’s history.
Chesaw Historic Town
The area of Chesaw was heavily populated with Chinese miners by the time white miners came to the area. The owner of a store near the mining camps was run by a Chinese man known as, Chee Saw. Chee Saw, who arrived in the mid-1890s, married a Native American woman. He owned a small ranch near his store that miners frequented. His prices were fair and he was known as an honest man. Locals evolved the name of his store from "Chee Saw's" to "Chesaw," and eventually the name stuck and the town became known as Chesaw.
The town thrived during a brief gold rush from 1896 to 1900, and the town boasted several businesses, hotels, a bank, and a post office. A school was built in 1906, but was torn down during World War II. As gold became harder to find and not profitable, people began to move away, leaving the town to fall victim of abandonment. Today the General Store & Tavern provide a glimpse into the past. Chesaw hosts an annual rodeo on July 4th.