New owners giving new life to historic Hotel Yahk in the Kootenays
If you've travelled Highway 3 through the southeast corner of British Columbia you may be familiar with the Hotel Yahk.
With its wooden exterior and large signs advertising it as a “Saloon” and “Pub,” the two-storey hotel looks like it could be used as the set for a Western film. It’s become a familiar landmark at the junction of Highways 3 and 95, just north of the Kingsgate border crossing, between Creston and Cranbrook in the east Kootenay region.
A century ago, Yahk was a thriving lumber town on a CP rail line but now it’s a tiny community with around 100 residents.
The hotel has since fallen into disrepair and and passersby found themselves wondering how such a tiny town could have once supported a hotel.
In the early 1990s the business was no longer operating as a hotel but remained open as a saloon, according to a blog post by Vanishing B.C.
Fortunately some new owners started to give the historical building some TLC over the summer, as shown on a Facebook post by Lost Kootenays.
Recent photos by Terry Chow, a follower of the page, show the building coming back to life, with new lumber on the porch and scaffolding on the north side.
— This story was corrected at 10:54 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, as details about, and a photograph of, another historic hotel in Yahk were incorrectly included in the article.
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