Here in the Central Interior there aren’t as many ghost towns or old mining sites to explore as there are in the southern part of the province. My grandparents were fortunate enough to live in the Okanagan, between the old ghost town of Phoenix and an old gold mine, Camp McKinney.

However, opportunities still exist to discover old bottles and other collectibles in our region. For example, during a recent conversation with a neighbour, I discovered there was an old post office, two stores and an hotel not far from my home. They were built somewhere around 1919. And just behind my house, on a neighbouring property, is the site of the original school in Palling.

There are also old cabins which can be explored (with permission from the current owner of the property, of course) and sometimes old bottles and canning jars turn up at auctions or even yard sales.

In my small collection, I have bottles I’ve found while hiking, several from a box of junk bought at an auction and some that were abandoned in an old shed on my property. While out camping near Nadina Mountain, my companions and I stumbled across the remains of an old cabin. Most of the tin cans had rusted away but we discovered one bottle, nearly buried in the thick moss.

It was small and brown and would have been hard to identify except that the label had been painted on. It was an Orange Crush bottle circa 1948  (currently worth $6.99). One of my favourite finds was a bottle I found while beachcombing on Salt Spring Island. It’s similar in shape to today’s wine bottles but the glass is such a dark green-brown that it appears black. It was covered with barnacles and full of sand. Just recently I was able to identify it as a rum bottle. Had it been lost during prohibition?