Behind the
100 Mile House Visitor Centre and beside the
100 Mile House Marsh, a protected waterfowl habitat developed by
Ducks Unlimited, is a small area housing five individual pieces of machinery once used in the labour intensive process of turning trees into lumber, the primary industry in the 100 Mile House region.
This is an example of a stationary steam engine, a power unit which would have been ubiquitous in a lumber milling area, driving both sawmills and lumber harvesting machinery. This particular unit is incomplete, missing valve timing gear, pulley/flywheel and steam connections. Producing about 25 horsepower, this was not a very large unit, as sawmill steam engines go, and would have required a boiler to provide the steam to power it.
No maker's marks or nameplates were found on the unit.