So many precious heritage buildings in the South Cariboo, from rambling homes to trappers' cabins, have vanished from the landscape due to fire.
Every year we seem to lose one or two more, and it's always sad to lose one more familiar old landmark.
Each rustic pioneer home, so often built with hand hewn spruce or pine logs, has its story and such was the case with the old house at Eastwood Lake Ranch that burned in a fire on March 26, 2010.
Lovingly restored by Swiss immigrants, Arnold and Patricia Vincenz, the circa 1903 home was made of logs, hand hewn on two sides and meticulously dovetail notched on the corners.
Arnold says the fire was caused by faulty wiring behind a beautiful cedar plank wall. It was the only portion of wiring in the house that he had not updated because he wanted to preserve the feature wall.
The home could be seen from Highway 24, on the right-hand side of the road, approximately 45 km from 100 Mile House.
Although the exact age is not known, Patricia says she believes it was one of the oldest buildings in the Interlakes area.
During the restoration, they discovered that spaces between the logs were chinked with all kinds of random materials, including moss, strips of rug and even underwear. "Whatever they had, they stuffed in there," says Arnold.
Upstairs behind some wall panels, they had found old newspapers dated 1919 that were nailed to the wall as extra insulation.
After 100 years, the logs were still sound and dried so hard that cutting through half a dozen rounds with a chainsaw to enlarge a window opening dulled the chain so much it had to be sharpened.
None of the old-timers in the area seem to know who built the home, as it would have been before their day, but the Renshaw family, who are believed to have been the second owners, rings a bell with many.
Russell Ross, 80, of Bridge Lake recalls that in the mid-1930s, his Aunt Gladys Shertenlib visited Mrs. Renshaw frequently at that time because she was sick.
"Mrs. Renshaw, she was a rough old gal from the southern states. You couldn't blame her. Life was tough in those days," recalls Ross.
Gladys Shertenlib was an early pioneer who pre-empted land at the location where the bridge crosses Shertenlib Road. She passed away in 1959. Walter Levick, born in 1939, grew up at Sheridan Lake, and according to what he's been told, the Renshaws came to the Cariboo in about 1915 and took up residence in the house at that time.
Walter's recollections of the Renshaw place are from around 1945 when Lee Roberts and his much younger wife lived in the house with their son, Don.
Walter would go over there to play occasionally and he remembers it vaguely.
"It was the same as all of the other log shacks in the country with burlap sacks for doors inside. The family was like everyone else. They starved. Ranching has never been that great."
He says this is all he knows because there was never much going on in the direction of Eastwood Lake and he didn't go that way too often.
"There were no cars, so when you got on your saddle horse to go someplace, you went to Lone Butte. That's where there was something going on."
As a child, Walter says he travelled to Lone Butte twice a year. Once for the Farmers' Institute summer picnic and another time for the Lone Butte School Christmas concert. Charlie Faessler, 86, came to the Bridge Lake area in 1926, when he was two years old. He recalls that at one time, the Renshaws operated the localpost office from their home.
"People would take their cream there and the mail carrier would take it to Lone Butte to be shipped out on the train."
Ranchers got a good price for their cream and the extra money was a welcome addition to their meager income. Charlie says the stock market crash of 1929 brought the price down and discouraged people from sending their cream away to market.
"After paying shipping costs, there were only a few cents left."
The Renshaws was the second location of the Roe Lake area post office, with the first one opening in 1915 at the home of Edward Higgins. In 1910, he was among the first people to come seeking homestead land in that area, and in 1914, he brought his family to live on a piece of land that he had "staked."
According to Charlie, Higgins was the first post master and part of his job was to regularly make a 28-mile round trip to pick up the mail at the Whitely ranch at 70 Mile House. He did this for $3 a trip, which he mainly did on foot.
"Ed Higgins rarely rode a horse. I don't know why he didn't care for them, but any time I saw him with a horse, he was leading it most of the way. In the winter, he would have walked to 70 Mile on snowshoes with 100 pounds of mail on his back and 100 pounds on a sled. He wouldn't get back until eight or nine at night."
Charlie says he doesn't know the exact years when the post office was at Eastwood Lake, but it later moved to Judson Road where it was run out of the Wheeler family home.
The Eastwood Lake Ranch changed hands several times through the years. One owner was a potter and another built a restaurant on the property. The house was also moved a couple of hundred yards away from its original location alongside a portion of the original Highway 24 which snakes through the property.
Arnold and Patricia say they miss the comfortable and homey atmosphere that filled the old house, but are also very thankful they escaped safely when it burned.
Arnold counts himself and his family lucky because they were all asleep when the fire broke out.
It was March 26, 2010, and Patricia and their five-year-old son, Ryan, were upstairs in bed and Arnold had fallen asleep downstairs on the couch.
Arnold woke up to a crackling sound and he found the house filled with smoke.
"I couldn't see, but I woke up everybody upstairs. My eyes were burning and it was kind of a blind mission, like a bad dream," he said, of his scramble up the stairs to wake up his family.
Volunteer firefighters responded to the blaze, but it was impossible to save the house. It burned with such a fury that all that was left were chunks of charred wood, crumbled glass and the chimney.
Years ago, Arnold found a small bullet lodged in the log wall and had placed it on the fireplace mantle. He miraculously found the bullet in the ash along with a handful of photographs of the house that somehow survived the fire.
Sadly, their dog perished in the blaze and its outline could be seen on the floor where it had hidden under the kitchen table.
The loss of their home created a sad situation, but it was made better by the support of many friends and neighbours who packed the Roe Lake Hall shortly afterwards for a benefit dance. It raised $12,000 which helped to get the family back on their feet.
The head count was higher than anything the hall had ever seen and included all ages, even old-timers who rarely came out any more for community dances.
For them, it wasn't about choice. It was about duty, as most of those old-timers knew firsthand the sorrow of losing their home to a fire.
