Kamloops, city in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada, at the junction of the North Thompson and South Thompson rivers. Kamloops is a transportation and commercial hub that has a mixed and expanding economy. Forestry, mining, ranching, and crop farming are the principal industries, and ginseng is becoming an increasingly valuable crop. Manufactures include cement, wood products, pressed metal, food, and electrical equipment. The city is served by Kamloops Airport and is home to the University College of the Cariboo. The Kamloops Blazers, of the Western Hockey League, play in the Riverside Coliseum. The city is a growing tourist destination; of interest to visitors are the Kamloops Museum and Archives, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, the Secwepemc Museum and Native Heritage Park, and the Kamloops Wildlife Park. The Sun Peaks Resort ski area is at nearby Tod Mountain. Annual events include the Kamloops Cowboy Festival in early spring, the Kamloops Folkfest in July, and the Kamloopa Powwow in August.
The Shuswap (part of the interior Salish) were the first people to live in what is now Kamloops, and the city's name is derived from a Shuswap term for “meeting of the waters.” Europeans established a trading post at the site in 1812. The site grew due to the gold rush of the mid-1860s and the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. Kamloops incorporated as a city in 1893. It merged with North Kamloops in 1967 and with the outlying areas in 1973. In the mid-1980s highway construction around Kamloops greatly improved access to the city, and the city began to grow. In 1997 Kamloops inaugurated KAMPLAN 1997, a strategy for managing its growth.
