Store Abandoned In 1963 Is Now An Astonishing Time Capsule

Since closing its doors back in 1963, the 153 Mile Store has remained untouched, its shelves stocked with a fascinating miscellany of outdated goods. But over the years, only intrepid visitors to remote western Canada have been able to glimpse these fascinating treasures. Now, thanks to one dedicated YouTuber, this blast from the past has been revealed in all its glory.

From the outside, the store on 153 Mile Ranch outside Williams Lake, B.C., certainly has an old-world feel. But the disused oil drums and dated advertising signs are just the beginning. Inside, every nook and cranny is stocked full of relics that would not look out of place in a museum.

Here, glass cabinets are piled high with documents and men’s shaving paraphernalia, while brand-new shoes and tins of tobacco are stacked neatly along the shelves. Elsewhere, kitchen equipment that was once cutting edge takes pride of place. But why exactly was all this merchandise abandoned? And what is the story behind the 153 Mile Store?

Well, it all began back in 1882 when Louis Crosina, a migrant from Italy, left his home in the Tyrol Mountains and set out for the New World. According to reports, his uncle had already settled in North America, seeking his fortune during the Gold Rush. And when he penned letters to his family, he signed his address as “British Colombia.”

Confused, Crosina booked passage to the country of Colombia, some 3,000 miles south of his uncle’s new abode. Realizing his mistake, he persuaded the captain to let him disembark in the Central American city of Colon, where he found work digging the Panama Canal. But he soon fell ill in the sweltering, tropical conditions and was sent north to California to convalesce.

Eventually, Crosina recovered and caught a boat to British Columbia, where he finally reunited with his uncle in the city of Yale. After a time, he headed north to the settlement of Lac la Hache, where he met and married a schoolteacher named Clara Noble. Together, they rented a ranch known as Mountain House along the Cariboo Wagon Road, a popular route through the interior of B.C.

After a few years at Mountain House, Crosina, now the head of a young family, decided to set up his own ranch. And in 1903, he claimed a 640-acre plot located further along the wagon road at 153 miles. There, he constructed a simple, two-story building and began hiring men to help him on the land.

Thanks to the ranch’s location adjacent to the road, it soon became something of a hub for wagons that were passing through en route to communities such as Likely and Horsefly. And before long, Crosina and his wife found themselves inundated with requests from travelers keen to spend the night.

Seeing an opportunity, Crosina constructed a large road house to accommodate these travelers. Moving his family into the ground floor of this new building, he converted the original dwelling into a store, supplying the passing wagons with essential goods. With a blacksmith shop and a barn soon added to the property, 153 Mile Ranch quickly became a popular stopping point.

In fact, the ranch proved so popular that the store soon outgrew its initial home inside the former dwelling. And in 1914, a new building was constructed in order to accommodate the growing business. It’s this structure that remains today, still standing after decades of service at the heart of the local community.

Years after the 153 Mile Store closed its doors for good, filmmaker Dustin Porter paid a visit, intent on uncovering its secrets. And in a 2021 video uploaded on his YouTube channel Destination Truth, he spoke to people who recalled the history of the ranch — including descendants of the Crosina family.

“That store served this area, it was the place you could get anything there,” local school principal Barry Sale explains in the video. “If you couldn’t get it they’d order it for you and it was well used by the people of 150 mile, which was the centre of commerce and governance for the whole area.”

The Crosina’s business, it seems, was more than just a store. Sale continues, “It was the place to go, place to gather, place to socialize, place to buy things… it was the place.” And even as the world began to change, the ranch remained a focal point for the local community.

As time passed, cars replaced wagons and the old road fell out of favor. But the Crosina family continued to operate their beloved store, with daughter Lily eventually taking over the business. And even though she sold the ranch to family friends Joe and Peggy Patenaude in 1958, she remained a fixture behind the counter for a number of years.

Sadly, Lily died of a heart attack in 1963, passing away in the very store where she had spent most of her life. Afterwards, the Patenaudes simply shut up shop for good, leaving everything in its place. And that’s how things have remained ever since: untouched since that tragic day.

“Basically the door was closed and locked and never opened for public sale again,” William Crosina, the grandson of the original owner, tells Destination Adventure. According to local history website Cariboo Gold Rush, the store remained in limbo until the 1970s, when Peggy began to sort through the treasures left behind.

Soon, it became clear to Peggy that the 153 Mile Store wasn’t just an abandoned collection of junk. Thanks to its time-warp atmosphere, it was a relic of great importance — and one that deserved to be preserved. And so, she began formulating a plan to reopen the shop as a private museum.

Ever since then, the store has been open to curious visitors keen to catch a glimpse into the past. Speaking of its appeal, Sale says, “When you walk in there it’s just a step back in time. It’s just like it was in the 1900s. Just unbelievable, the kinds of things that you can find there. The clutter, the old stoves, the old equipment. Everything is just the way it was in the early 1900s. It’s just a remarkable place.”

In fact, the 153 Mile Store is so full of treasures that even its current custodians, descendants of Joe and Peggy Patenaude, are still discovering new things. Speaking to Destination Adventure, owner Roger revealed: “Alison my wife finds stuff every time she’s in there. She finds stuff that we didn’t know existed.”

In a 2015 interview with CBC News, Roger shed some light on the dated nature of the artifacts preserved inside the building. He said, “The doors were closed and what current stuff was in the store was taken to Williams Lake… but anything that wasn’t current was left in the store, so that’s how it sits.”

“There’s foot warmers for the stage coach, there’s everything you can think of: old clothes, shoes… about three sets of porcelain in the store, so it’s a time capsule of artifacts right from 1900 up to 1963 when it closed,” Roger continued. And thanks to its unique historic appeal, the building has become a magnet for adventurers keen to connect with the past.

Take, for example, Dustin Porter, the man behind Destination Adventure. According to his video introduction, he wanted to be an explorer since childhood — but soon realized that most of the world had already been discovered. Instead, he decided to become an adventurer, purchasing a motorhome and, in his own words, “hitting the open road.”

Since starting his YouTube channel in 2014, Porter has traveled the length and breadth of Canada, uploading more than 150 videos of various abandoned and remote locations. But in one clip, added to the video-sharing site in May 2021, he paid a visit to an attraction a little closer to home: the 153 Mile Store.

Located just outside Porter’s hometown of Williams Lake, the 153 Mile Store was an obvious choice for the adventurer. After all, Sale used to be his school principal, and he grew up hearing stories about the historic business. And so, he made his way out to the old wagon road with his camera in hand.

In the video, Porter interviews some of the people connected to the store and captures stunning footage of its interior, untouched for almost 60 years. Entering through an ancient-looking wooden door — complete with vintage Coca-Cola sign — Porter soon finds himself surrounded by artifacts from another era. He says, “Just look how full this place is. Unbelievable.”

Just inside the door, Porter focuses in on a glass cabinet piled high with letters and documents dating back to the time when the store was open. On top are scattered books and catalogues, including one advertising “Super clothing for western Canadians,” printed in the Fall of 1939. On the front cover, the name “Crosina” suggests that it was specially printed for the store.

Next to the clothing booklet, Porter spots a second catalogue, this time filled with larger merchandise such as furniture. Due to the size of these items, it would not have been practical for the owners to keep them in stock, so customers were invited to order them in instead. But that didn’t mean the store was lacking in goods, as Porter’s video clearly shows.

On the contrary, the 153 Mile Store is stacked high with all manner of items, from manicure kits and telephones to belt buckles and sewing machines. In one corner, Porter discovers a wire rack stocked with old newspapers and magazines, including a copy of LIFE dated November 1949. On the cover, a now-forgotten movie star is touted as the next big thing.

Some items, the video reveals, were aimed squarely at Williams Lake’s female population, as evidenced by cabinets crammed full of hairbrushes, jewelry, corsets, and more. Sliding back the glass door of one display case, Porter finds a collection of beauty products that smell as sweet today as they did back when the store was open.

In other places, the space is dominated by traditionally male items, such as shaving kits and smoking paraphernalia. Approaching a shelf, Porter says, “These tins are still full of tobacco. These boxes full of cigars. Quite the collection.” Interestingly, there are even containers of chewing tobacco, a product which has fallen out of favor in recent years.

Amazingly, some of the items in the store, such as a high-end cream separator and a KitchenAid mixer, still have the original manuals to accompany them. Others, it seems, are fairly self-explanatory, such as an old telegraph for tapping out Morse code and a rather ingenious scale for weighing eggs.

Throughout the video, Porter focuses in on calendars bearing different dates — including one behind the counter stuck forever on August 1963, the month that Lily passed away. In some places, the artifacts he stumbles upon are practical in nature, such as horse tack, gas-powered irons, and reading glasses. In others, they are random and whimsical, with a fur coat, a violin, and a bird cage all vying for space within the cluttered interior.

At one point, Porter enters what would once have served as an office space, strewn with paperwork dating from the 1940s and 1950s. Incongruously, a mannequin clad in a pink gown stands alongside vintage typewriters, lighters, and safes. In the video, he says, “This is probably my favorite section of the store.”

As Porter continues to explore, more and more relics reveal themselves: board games and toys; an extensive pharmacy section; and a cabinet stuffed with Halloween masks. In some places, there are traces of the ranch’s former incarnations, with items left behind from its blacksmithing and gas station days.

At one point, Porter passes a cabinet of cameras and explains that a stash of old negatives was recently recovered from the store. In the early part of the video, some of these photographs can be seen, showing the Crosina family in its early days. But this is far from the only find that calls to mind the people who once lived, worked, and shopped here.

Opening a wooden cabinet, Porter discovers a collection of ledgers crammed inside the small space. He says, “This is all the store books. From the day it opened. Everything bought, everything sold.” And although he decides against opening the fragile pages, he admits that one of the owners has already given him a sneak peak.

“I’m not going to open those because they’re so old and fragile, obviously very irreplaceable, but my first visit here Alison was nice enough to show me through some of these books and it’s amazing,” Porter explains. “In elementary school we’re taught about the people that started and built the city of Williams Lake, and you can see their names in that book, signed off what they bought, what they ordered. Just crazy to see that.”

To many, then, the 153 Mile Store is intrinsically linked with the history of Williams Lake. So much so, in fact, that in 2015 Roger Patenaude attempted to donate the building to the city’s Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin. Apparently, before his mother Peggy passed away, she had expressed a desire to see the structure preserved in honor of both families.

Moving the store, though, will likely prove a mammoth task. And by July 2018, officials still hadn’t finalized plans to relocate the building to its new home. Speaking to The Williams Lake Tribune, Roger said, “We hope it is preserved for life. There’s huge history here and I think once the people… realize what they really have it will just grow, it will become something to be really proud of in the city…”