Lord and Lady Aberdeen

Lord Aberdeen started some of the earliest commercial orchards in the Valley. Lord and Lady Aberdeen, who had come to British Columbia from Great Britain, were convinced that apples could be grown in the Okanagan Valley. In the early 1890s, Lord Aberdeen bought the 13,000- acre (5,261 hectare) Coldstream Ranch near Vernon and the 480-acre (194 hectare) McDougall Ranch in Kelowna. The McDougall Ranch was renamed Guisachan (pronounced GOOSH-a-gun) after Lady Aberdeen’s home in Scotland. Lord Aberdeen started by planting 100 acres (40.5 hectares) of apple trees at each location. He then sold the fruit to other settlers in the area. The Aberdeens spent a considerable amount of money and time encouraging others to start fruit farming in the Okanagan Valley. Lord Aberdeen was so convinced of the profitability of apple growing that he later subdivided some of his Coldstream Ranch into 10 to 40 acre (4-16 hectare) parcels to be sold for commercial orchards. By 1893, he had sold 900 acres (364 hectares). Lord Aberdeen was successful in encouraging middle and upper-class English people to immigrate to British Columbia. In fact, the Coldstream Ranch acquired a British atmosphere because of the many British people who settled there.