The Packing House Café in Spences Bridge
Coffee, Food and Small Town Hospitality in BC’s Interior
Often, the local café of a community of only a couple hundred people becomes a kind of central nervous system of socializing. Without a doubt, the Packing House in Spences plays that role. With welcoming hosts and staff, and seating for just under forty, the café is full of rural BC character. Its walls decorated with old historic memorabilia from the last 150 years or so.
The actual building is a heritage building and is known to be one of the first pre-fab structures that came over in the mid-1800s from England. The four foot wall and ceiling panels still have the original numbers marked on them that were used to help reconstruct the house once the parts arrived in BC.
Spences Bridge Heritage History
The Spences Bridge area was first inhabited by the First Nations people. It was not until the end of the 1858 that the Cariboo Gold Rush attracted thousands from around the world to the gold fields nearby and Spences was along the route. However, prior to the Cariboo Waggon Road being built, a gentleman named Mortimer Cook offered a wooden ferry service across the river and so the little village was named Cook’s Ferry in 1859.
Thomas Spence completed the first bridge across the Thompson River in 1864. The town then changed its name from Cook’s Ferry to Spences Bridge.
The Packing House was soon built in addition to other cabins to accommodate hopeful gold miners along their travels. It has been transformed several times to include town services such as the general store, post office, and packing house for apples.
These apples were the original award-winning Granny Smith apples that received international-acclaim in the 19th century. Widow Smith’s Grimes Golden apple gained popularity across North America and England. One of its most famous fans was King Edward VII who gave the apples excellent reviews at the London Horticultural Show.
The Packing House Today
The Packing House has operated since 2007 as a café, shop, and entertainment venue for many up-and-coming musicians of Western Canada. Hosted and owned by Steve and Paulet, it draws locals and visitors alike. The coffee is top-notch and restaurant meals affordable and cooked from scratch from some of the best local produce.
It turns out Steve and Paulet work doubly as hard during the summer, growing and picking from their farm in the Nicola Valley, selling produce on the side of the highway and using some for the café. A refreshing infusion of the 100-Mile Diet comes naturally at the Packing House since they are producing and supplying from their own farm. Seasonal menu items are continuously added throughout their growing season.
In the corner of the café is the stage where many have performed to sold-out shows. Proudly presented on the wall, a couple of wooden guitar-shaped forms used as autographed souvenirs. Doc and Big Dave McLean, Sean Ashby, Dustin Bentall, Kendel Carson, Tim Brecht, Saskia and Darrel Delaronde are only some of the first-class acts who have stopped by to entertain in the Packing House’s intimate coffee-house setting.
How to Get to the Packing House
The community of Spences Bridge is near the intersection of the Nicola Valley #8 and Trans Canada #1 Highway. From there head east over the Thompson River Bridge and signs will lead you to town on the right. The Packing House is kiddy corner to the pedestrian bridge, the originally Spences Bridge which goes over the Thompson River but is now closed to vehicle traffic.
The time it takes to travel from Vancouver is approximately 3 ½ hours and from Cache Creek is just over an hour.
The Packing House is a true rural experience worth stopping in for.
The Packing House in Spences Bridge
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