Green Lake

A Hollywood cowboy paid to turn a Cariboo cattle ranch into a holiday, and it worked.

The Flying U sits on the north shore of this lake, on a Crown grant made in 1849. It began as a stopping place for trappers and fur traders working the route north, later a working cattle outfit, with a Hudson's Bay post standing where the lodge is now. In the early 1920s Jack Boyd, a rodeo rider from the founding family, took it over. His friend Tom Mix, then one of the biggest names in western pictures, put money behind the idea of paying guests. The ranch stopped running cattle and started running holidays.

It is generally called Canada's oldest guest ranch and has operated continuously since the grant. Sources differ on the year the guest business started, with 1922 and 1923 both given, and the acreage is quoted anywhere from 24,000 hectares to 60,000 acres depending on who is counting.

The wagon road never came here. The riding trails out of the corral are the old brigade route.