Stave Falls and the Lakes: Mission's Hydro Country

Every town in the Fraser Valley has a road that leaves it and becomes something else. Ours is Dewdney Trunk Road, one of the valley's oldest routes. North of the Lougheed it starts to climb along the Stave River, and within a few minutes the subdivisions give way to second growth and rock, and Mission's hydro country opens up: Stave Falls, Hayward Lake, and the long blue arm of Stave Lake.

The story of this valley is electricity. Construction began on the first powerhouse at Stave Falls in 1909, the first generator came online in December 1911, and the station kept growing as the province did, adding units through the twenties. The original plant kept producing until the mid-nineties, when it was retired in favour of the new station, and in 2003 the whole site was named a national historic site. That is a remarkable amount of history for a river most visitors have never heard of.

The front door is the Powerhouse at Stave Falls Visitor Centre, which BC Hydro runs inside the old powerhouse on Dewdney Trunk Road. The building is as much the exhibit as anything inside it: the generators, the switchgear, the photographs of the crews who built the dam. Check the current hours before you make the drive, because the centre keeps its own schedule, and the drive deserves to end at an open door.

Just below the falls, the Stave broadens into Hayward Lake, the reservoir formed downstream by the Ruskin Dam, which was completed in 1930. The Hayward Lake Recreation Site sits at the head of the lake on the grounds of former worker housing, with a lakeside trail and a bandstand that locals will tell you came from a film set. On a warm evening this is one of the nicest places in the District to stand around and do nothing in particular.

Behind the dam the real lake begins. Stave Lake runs about twenty kilometres north to south and covers roughly fifty-five square kilometres, which makes it big by valley standards. Before the dam was built between 1920 and 1922, the lake was a third of its current size, so the reservoir you see today is the river remembered at full stretch. The south arm belongs to boats and paddles, and the mud flats at the lower end attract their own enthusiasts with vehicles built for exactly that much mud.

The access points are the thing to learn. On the east side of the lake, the recreation sites do the heavy lifting: Rock Creek Recreation Site and Sayres Lake Recreation Site give you water and camps without needing a boat, and Boulder Bay Site near the north end is the destination for anyone who wants the lake at its quietest. These are the names that live in the directory's things to do pages, because they are where the valley hands itself over to visitors, one gravel pullout at a time. On the land side, the Stave West Forest and Recreation Area spreads through the municipal forest, which is the working woodland that covers a large share of the District's north and supplies the town with trails as readily as timber.

West of the falls, the quieter cousin waits. Rolley Lake Campground, the provincial park site a short side trip off the trunk road, has the still water and the forest hush that make people lower their voices without being asked. If Stave Lake is the excursion, Rolley is the exhale, and the two together make a full day without touching a highway.

A practical note before you go. Past the falls the services thin out, so treat the Iron Mountain Store on the trunk road as the last honest chance for a forgotten supply, and fill the tank before you leave town. The valley rewards preparation the way all far places do: water in summer, a warm layer in the shoulder seasons, and a plan for getting home before the light does. If the plan includes swimming, pack as though the day will run long, because it will.

Mission spends a lot of its identity on the old town, and rightly. But the lakes are the town's backyard, and every family here has a version of the same story: a first swim off a gravel beach, a canoe that leaked, a sunset that made the drive home quiet. If you have not been up the valley in a while, that is a problem with a simple fix. Go.