Due to the centrality of its location between the larger Thompson and Fraser watersheds, the Valley was a traditional First Nations meeting place.
[2] Ethnobiologist, Nancy Turner said of these meetings, "They met, at least in part, to take advantage of the great abundance of a number of different "root" vegetables and berries to be found there.
Also important was the cultural "glue" created at these gatherings, where women harvested plant foods, men hunted, and everyone traded and socialized".
Botanie Valley has a rich diversity of plant life owing in part to its location between the rainy Coastal Mountain Range and the dryer Interior Plateau.
In 1978, in an attempt to preserve this diversity, the Province of British Columbia created the Skwaha Lake Ecological Reserve.