Our Guiding Philosophy
“Sharing Echo Lake Resort’s unique natural location with families and vacationers by providing a quality, inclusive camping experience. As custodians of the land & lake, we support all people to become caretakers of this special resource so future generations can return and enjoy this pristine environment.”
We’ve met many amazing families with stories of how they’ve been coming for many decades, what the resort used to look like and their best memories of Echo Lake. John and Sara both come from pioneering families and delight in learning about the history of the area and the Resort.
We invite you to share your memories and help us to honor Echo Lake Resort’s history! Email us your stories and pictures, we’ll feature them in our growing gallery.
Before Echo Lake had European settlers, the Secwepemc and Nsyilxcen peoples, amongst others, called this area home. We acknowledge their unceded territory and are grateful to work on this land.
Over 160 years ago, the discovery of gold in Cherry Creek in 1862 brought miners and fortune seekers to the North Okanagan Shuswap area. An early prospector, David McIntyre, renamed the mountains east of Echo Lake ‘Monashee’, which is Gaelic for “mountain of peace”. Expansion and settlement continued through the turn of the century with the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1892.
In 1908, Norman & Ethel Denison and family settled in the Creighton Valley area to farm and later established Echo Lake Fishing Lodge in 1943 which they operated until 1960. On April 27, 1956, the 154-hectare Echo Lake Provincial Park was established by BC Parks. Since 1956, Echo Lake Resort has been privately operated on a BC Parks issued Park Use Permit- as a ‘resort within a park’.
In 2008, the mountain opposite the Resort across Echo Lake was renamed Denison Mountain as part of the larger 376-hectare Denison Bonneau Provincial Park which honors two pioneer families and is located in areas of the Splatsin, Lower Similkameen Indian Band, Penticton Indian Band, Okanagan Indian Band and the Okanagan Nation Alliance Peoples.
In 2021, BC Parks expanded Echo Lake Provincial Park to 219 hectares to include more lake foreshore, protecting the riparian areas critical to fish habitat.
Echo Lake Resort has had 11 owners since the Denison family, of which many descendants still live in the Okanagan, but the core philosophy of providing a fishing and recreational retreat within this protected space remains the same.