A long-time tourism project has at long last come to fruition.
Tourism Harrison River Valley announced an upcoming open house for the new Harrison Visitor Information Center and Sasquatch Museum, rebuilt and expanded at 499 Hot Springs Road. The open house runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Tuesday, April 30 to Saturday, May 4.
“The Sasquatch Museum promises an immersive journey through the realms of both fact and folklore of the legendary Sasquatch,” read a statement from the tourism authority. New exhibits will include carvings, interactive displays and the history that surrounds the sasquatch and the place it calls home.
Prominent sasquatch researcher and author Thomas Steenburg will be at the museum on Saturday, May 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
While the parking lot is not complete yet, there will be parking available on Hot Springs Road and the reserve parking lot on Miami River Drive.
Former Tourism Harrison director Robert Reyerse helped establish the Sasquatch Museum in the visitor centre back in 2017. In 2021, the Harrison Tourism Society secured funding from the province to build a new, accessible information centre and Sasquatch Museum.
The funding came as part of a multi-million-dollar investment from the province, in which $21.3 million was earmarked for shovel-ready tourism projects across B.C. The Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport called Harrison’s Visitor Centre and Sasquatch Museum “A key attraction that celebrates Harrison’s long history with the Sasquatch and the Sts’ailes people.” There were 55 projects across the province that received funding.
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The ground-breaking ceremony took place in November 2022.
The new space allows for expanded exhibits, increasing the space of the old building by 11-fold – from 120 square feet to 1,300 square feet.
The former Visitor Centre and Sasquatch Museum used to be a logging bunkhouse built in the 1930s before it was donated to the village in the 1950s. It served as the village office until the 1980s, when the village office moved to its current location at 495 Hot Springs Road. Early in 2022, officials deemed the Visitor Centre and Sasquatch Museum to be no longer suitable for municipal use.