Epoxy

Osoyoos Lake

South Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada

Also known as Lake Osoyoos, Oroville, South Okanagan

How high Osoyoos Lake sits is decided in Washington State, at a dam on the Okanogan River about three kilometres below the outlet.

The lake crosses the border, so it falls under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. The International Joint Commission sets the permitted levels, a board of six with three members from each country oversees them, and Washington's Department of Ecology owns the dam. The gates are worked by an irrigation district on contract.

The margins are narrow. Through a normal summer the lake is held inside a one foot range with a ceiling of 912 feet above sea level, measured on an American survey datum. In a drought year the range widens to two feet.

Zosel Dam began as a log pond, built in 1927 by a lumber company and replaced in 1987 with money from both the province and the state. The board still meets in public each autumn, alternating between Osoyoos and Oroville.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Maple
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: February 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Osoyoos Lake map by Keyway

How this one was made

Three colours on maple, which is about as much staining risk as we take on. Blue for the water, black for the type and the north arrow, and a red heart smaller than a fingernail that needs a dam of its own. Maple is the palest wood we work with, so the seal has to hold across everything before any of it goes down, and with a sixteenth to an eighth of engraving there is nothing to sand back if it does not. The shoreline is fine work the whole way down, and the river channels off both ends thin out to almost nothing.