BC Highway 26, which follows the route of the Cariboo Wagon Road, the original access to Barkerville, goes through it.

Before the construction of the Cariboo Wagon Road, people hauled their own supplies to Barkerville, either on their backs or in a pack train.

Cattle were driven north up the Okanagan valley via what is now Highway 97 into Canada to provide meat for the miners and residents of Barkerville.

[citation needed] Even though its population was transient and largely dependent on mining, Barkerville was becoming more of a real community.

It had several general stores and boarding houses, a drugstore that also sold newspapers and cigars, a barbershop that cut women's as well as men's hair, the "Wake-Up Jake Restaurant and Coffee Salon", a theatre (the Theatre Royal),[4] and a literary society (the Cariboo Literary Society).

People of Chinese descent were an important part of Barkerville life for almost a hundred years.

They established a number of businesses, including the Kwong Lee Company of Victoria.,[6] a general store that sold groceries, clothing, hardware, and mining tools.

Barkerville Provincial Park converted from Order In Canada to statute designation in 2000; the whole area consisted of roughly 55 hectares (140 acres).

[9][10] In 2008, Barkerville's Chee Kung Tong Building[11] was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

The two-storey board and batten structure was completed in 1877 and originally used by the Chee Kung Tong organization, a benevolent association for recent arrivals.

The 2022 Punjabi film, Chhalla Mud Ke Nahi Aaya, directed by Amrinder Gill, was also shot here.