Othello Tunnels

Othello Tunnels trail is a spectacular blend of dramatic natural geography and early 20th-century engineering.  The route follows a flat, decommissioned section of the historic Kettle Valley Railway. It guides you over elevated bridges and straight through a series of five massive tunnels blasted directly out of solid granite cliffs, hundreds of feet above the roaring, turquoise Coquihalla River.  

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Note the trail is open seasonally from May to October (closed in winter due to falling rock and ice hazards).​

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​Dogs on-leash are permitted on the trail, but please be responsible to ensure they are picked up after and do not wander off the trail to disturb wildlife or the surrounding habitat. 

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There is cell phone reception on this trail but it's always best to download any electronic maps you plan on using beforehand such as Gaia GPS or AllTrails. 

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The path is wide, covered in packed gravel, and very easy to navigate—making it popular for families, casual walkers, and on-leash dogs.  

 

As you leave the main parking lot, you quickly plunge into the canyon where the air turns cool and crisp. You will pass through the hand-carved, dark interiors of the "Othello Quintette" tunnels, interspersed with open-air trestle bridges. Standing on the bridges, you get a front-row view of the sheer vertical cliffs and the turbulent, churning water below.  ​​​​​

 

Quick Tips for Your Visit

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• Bring a light: A couple of the longer tunnels are pitch black in the middle, and the gravel floor can be uneven from overhead water drips. A headlamp, flashlight, or your smartphone light is essential to avoid tripping.

• Bikes welcome, with a catch: You can ride the trail, but BC Parks requires cyclists to dismount and walk their bikes while passing through the tunnels themselves.

• Arrive early: Because it is incredibly accessible and scenic, the free parking lot fills up quickly on sunny summer weekends. Weekday mornings or early evenings are the best times to beat the crowds.

 

 

History

 

The history of the Othello Tunnels is essentially a story of human stubbornness winning a fight against impossible geography. It is widely considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the early 20th century.

Here is how a treacherous canyon became a railway line.

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The Motivation: A Railway Rivalry

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In the late 1800s and early 1900s, rich deposits of silver, copper, and gold were discovered in the Kootenay region of southern British Columbia. The problem? There was no easy way to get those resources to the coast. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) had a monopoly on the northern route, but American rail companies began building lines northward across the border to scoop up the Canadian minerals.

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To protect Canadian economic interests and secure the border, the CPR commissioned a new, southern rail line: the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR).

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The Challenge: The Coquihalla Gorge

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The biggest obstacle on the entire route was the Coquihalla Gorge—a sheer, narrow, 300-meter-deep slot cut through solid granite by the roaring Coquihalla River. Most engineers looked at the canyon and declared it completely impossible to build a railway through it.

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Enter Andrew McCulloch, the brilliant chief engineer of the KVR. McCulloch took on the challenge in 1911.

Instead of trying to blast a wide ledge along the cliff face—which would have been wiped out by constant winter avalanches and rockfalls—McCulloch decided on a radical alternative: he would drill straight through the cliffs.

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The Engineering Feat: 1911–1916

Building the tunnels was an incredibly dangerous, grueling process that took over four years.

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• Suspended Blasting: Because the canyon walls were near-vertical, workers had to be lowered down the cliffs in wicker baskets suspended by ropes hundreds of feet above the raging river. Dangling in mid-air, they hand-drilled holes into the solid granite, packed them with dynamite, lit the fuses, and were frantically hauled back up before the blast.

• The "Quintette" Alignment: McCulloch designed a series of five tunnels that perfectly align in a straight line. If you stood at the right spot when they were operational, you could look straight through all five tunnels consecutively.

• The Cost: The project cost an astronomical $300,000 per mile in 1914 money—roughly five times the budget of a standard railway line at the time.

 

The Shakespeare Connection

Andrew McCulloch was a deeply cultured man with a passion for classic literature, particularly William Shakespeare. While spending years in the harsh wilderness managing rough rail crews, he passed the time reading.

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When it came time to name the stations, sidings, and landmarks along the Coquihalla subdivision, McCulloch ignored local geography and used Shakespearean characters. Thus, the tunnels became Othello, and nearby stops on the line were named Lear, Jessica, Portia, Iago, Romeo, and Juliet.

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Decommissioning and Legacy

The Kettle Valley Railway officially opened in 1916. However, nature never truly stopped fighting back. The Coquihalla route was plagued by washouts, heavy winter snowpacks, mudslides, and rockfalls that made maintenance a constant nightmare.

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On November 23, 1959, a massive washout destroyed a major section of the tracks just below the tunnels. The CPR decided that the line was simply too expensive and dangerous to keep repairing. The tracks through the Coquihalla Canyon were officially abandoned, and the rails were pulled up in 1961.

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In 1986, the provincial government recognized the historical and engineering significance of the site, transforming the abandoned rail bed into Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park so visitors could walk through McCulloch's tunnels on foot.