137 Mile House

Michael McCarthy
Mike McCarthy was born in St John, New Brunswick, in 1849, and acquired the roadhouse and ranch in the 1880s in an exchange of land with John Wright after the death of David Pratt. At the ranch McCarthy and his wife Anna, who was a daughter of Henry and Antonette Felker, raised a family of nine children. The family's enjoyment of dancing and partying led to the building of a community hall in Lac la Hache, where McCarthy gained a reputation as the best square dance caller in the entire Cariboo. After the death of his wife in childbirth in 1893, McCarthy continued to run the roadhouse with the help of his daughters until 1904. Heading back east after the last of his children had moved off the ranch, McCarthy found not a single person he knew and promptly returned to the Cariboo, where he died in the winter of 1915. It is rumoured that McCarthy was buried standing up, because when the grave diggers were digging they came upon a boulder lying in the same direction they planned to dig the grave, and not wanting to have to dig another grave in the frozen ground in the extreme cold, they put the coffin in the hole they had already dug.