Today, it seems to be a focus of local conversation – the planned highway changes around Idlemore Road and Saseenos School, which appear to be having a significant impact on local traffic.
Not for the first time.
Back when there was but a horseback trail between the fledgling community of Sooke and the City of Victoria, back in 1864, this area was significantly highlighted as well. When gold was discovered at the confluence of the Sooke and Leech rivers, that’s what set it off.
While most of us know about the Gold Rush Trail that brought gold-seekers by vessel to Sooke Harbour, where a trail brought them to cross the river and proceed up the east side to reach the frenzy of activity at the Leech diggings, it is not so well known that a Government Oxen Trail was commissioned from the inner basin as well.
The Government Oxen Trail was to start just east of Lannan Creek and proceed behind what is now Saseenos School site, heading to join the westward route alongside Sooke River. Captain Daniel Pender’s 1864 Marine Survey places Ash’s Landing at the eastern bank of Lannan Creek. It is not known whether the location of the wharf was determined due to the property ownership by a member of the B.C. Legislative Assembly, Dr. Ash, who was one of many folks speculating in land development at the time.
Much later, for me, walking to Sooke School from Saseenos in the late 1930s, I would notice a cabin among the trees on what is now the playground of Saseenos School; I understood the cabin to be home to a member of the Lazzar family.
It was 1939, of course, when the Second World War was declared, and the gravel road through Sooke and Saseenos was tarred, to handle the enormous increase in traffic which occurred because of the war. In 1943, Milne’s Landing Army Camp was established on part of the Milne farm – an area which was to become Milne’s Landing High School after the war.
When School District 62 built Saseenos School in 1959, I can’t imagine they could foresee the volume of traffic that would dictate the need for the highway plans of today.
Elida Peers is the historian at Sooke Region Museum.
