Within a few city blocks, the Revelstoke Railway Museum, the Revelstoke Nickelodeon Museum and the Revelstoke Museum and Archives offer three fascinating and diverse historical perspectives.
Alongside the Canadian Pacific tracks, the Revelstoke Railway Museum portrays the history of railroading through the Rockies. A very large steam locomotive and a passenger rail car occupy the main floor of the building. Adjacent galleries display pictures and artifacts that illustrate the building of the CPR and the generations of steam and diesel trains that have passed through these mountains and valleys. The museum is a must-see for families and anyone that has ever been moved by the sound of a train whistle.
In the former Post Office on 1st Street West, the Revelstoke Museum houses a collection of historical artifacts that recall the early days of both the community and the surrounding area.
The museum is organized into themes ranging from mining and industrial exhibits to sports and cultural displays. Check out the buffalo fur coat designed to keep a National Park warden warm in a Kootenay Rockies winter in the 1920s – it weighs in at 14kg/30lb.
Adjacent to the museum is a heritage garden, featuring beds of native plants and Chinese medicinal herbs. Many Chinese people came to Canada to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and, when the railroad was completed in 1885, a significant number chose to settle in Revelstoke. Their history is also represented in a display inside the museum.
Revelstoke Nickelodeon Museum
Just two blocks away, another heritage building houses the Revelstoke Nickelodeon Museum. Here, find an extraordinary collection of mechanical musical instruments, including 18th-century barrel organs, Victorian music boxes, player pianos, phonographs and 20th-century jukeboxes. The entire collection was imported from England by David and Lesley Evans, a delightful couple who spent two years renovating the building and installing the exhibits before opening the museum in 2006. Take the guided tour – the Evans' are a mine of information and really bring the instruments to life, figuratively and literally.
BC Interior Forest Museum
A few minutes north of town on Highway 23, near the entrance to B.C. Hydro's Revelstoke Dam, the Forest Museum houses a collection that tells the story of the logging industry. Exhibits range from a left-handed chainsaw to a 1956 Hayes logging truck, along with the reconstruction of a 1921 fire lookout building.
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