Where Sumas Lake Went: Abbotsford's Lost Lake

What the lake was

Sumas Lake covered about 10,000 acres. Every spring, in the freshet from May to July, it often grew to three times that size. Farming around it could only happen after the freshet, and when the area flooded, cattle had to be moved to higher ground.

Who relied on it

The lake was very important to the Stó:lō peoples, especially the Semá:th. For them it was a source of food, a place to live, a watery highway, and a place that appears in oral histories. Fish and waterfowl were plentiful. The Stó:lō have been in the Fraser Valley since time immemorial.

How it was drained

Settlers had pushed for a fix since a bad flood in 1876. Laws followed in 1878, 1892 and 1893, but the water was not fully controlled until the Sinclair Plan, designed by Frederick Sinclair. It had four parts:

• Change the path of the Vedder River so it no longer emptied into the lake
• Build dykes in case the river overflowed
• Build a dam
• Build two pump stations to pump the lake out

The plan was accepted in March 1920 and the first digging began that August. The first pump started in July 1923, and by the summer of 1924 the land was ready for farming. The Barrowtown Pump Station was then the largest of its kind in Canada. Its pumps could empty an Olympic-sized pool in 20 seconds.

What grew on the lake bed

In 1926 the Canadian Hop Growers Association bought 600 acres of the old lake bottom and planted the largest hop yards in the Commonwealth. Tobacco was popular too. Two tobacco kilns still stand on Sumas Prairie today. The lake the Stó:lō relied on was gone.

Still a floodplain

A new pumphouse was built between 1980 and 1983, and the Sumas and Vedder dykes were strengthened. Heritage Abbotsford says the Nooksack and Chilliwack rivers still make washouts a constant threat.

Learn more

Heritage Abbotsford Society runs outreach, education and tours, and published the history this guide draws on.