The History of SE Kelowna

SE Kelowna, Kelowna

South East Kelowna is among the oldest continuously farmed land in the entire Okanagan Valley. It was here, on the benchlands above the lake, that Father Charles Pandosy — a French Oblate missionary — established the Mission of the Immaculate Conception in 1859 and 1860, creating the first permanent non-Indigenous settlement in the Interior of BC. Pandosy's mission was the site of an extraordinary run of firsts: the first church built in the Interior, the first school in the Okanagan, and the first planting of apple trees and grapevines in the region — laying the agricultural foundation that would define the valley for the next 150 years. The orchard culture that followed spread across the SE Kelowna benchlands through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with irrigation works transforming dry grazing land into some of the most productive fruit country in Canada. Unlike most of Kelowna, SE Kelowna has never fully transitioned from agriculture to suburb — the area remains a patchwork of estates, working orchards, hobby farms, and horse properties threaded through by quiet country roads. Wineries have largely replaced the packinghouses of an earlier era, but the fundamental character of the land — elevated, rural, with long views across the lake — has changed remarkably little since the first settlers arrived. The wine routes that draw visitors through SE Kelowna today follow roughly the same benchland roads that orchard workers used 100 years ago; it is the only part of the city where the agricultural history that made Kelowna what it is can still be genuinely felt.