The City of Armstrong is located in the North Okanagan of the Canadian province of British Columbia, between Vernon and Enderby. It overlooks the Spallumcheen Valley, which forms a broad pass between the Okanagan Valley to the south and the Shuswap Country to the north, and is about 480 km (300 mi) from each of Vancouver, B.C. and Spokane, Washington. The town of Armstrong celebrated its centennial in 2013.[2]
Armstrong is a rural community and commercial center in the North Okanagan, with agriculture, grain farming of alfalfa and corn,[1] logging, and ranching being traditional economic activities.[2] It is located amidst the dairy and farmlands of the Spallumcheen Valley (a name derived from a Shuswap language word with multiple meanings: “beautiful valley”,”flat meadow,””meeting of the waters” and “prairie-banked river”).[3]
Armstrong was named after William Heaton Armstrong, a London banker who helped finance the Shuswap and Okanagan Railway in 1892 and local development at the turn of the century,[4] relocating the townsite originally at Landsdowne to the confluence of the Valley’s rail lines, and the City’s current site.
The influence of Dutch immigrants settling in the valley after the Second World War is represented by their cheese-making knowledge, allowing Armstrong to become well known for the cheese it produced.[5]
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