Sooke Region Museum and Visitor Information Centre

• Author: WantsToTravelMore
• Accommodation: Victoria

Located off of Highway 14 (Sooke Rd.) on Phillips Rd, this is one of the more interesting Visitor Centres to visit. A lot of times when you go to a visitor centre, it’s a dull looking facility with racks of brochures and booklets. This is not the case with Sooke‘s visitor centre. This place has the top of a lighthouse on it! The Triangle Island Lighthouse was moved from its original location to the Sooke Visitor Centre and Museum.

Once inside the staff running the centre are very knowledgeable and within a few minutes we had set our priorities of what we wanted to see in the area.

There’s a good gift shop that goes beyond the generic postcards and souvenirs. A lot of local artists, including First Nations artwork, is represented in their shop.

The museum itself is small but incredibly densely packed set of local area artifacts. These include early pioneer tools, native baskets and art, a small sample of taxidermy wildlife, dioramas, videos of traditional logging activities and much more.

Outside the museum you will find the aptly named Moss Cottage, old farming and logging equipment and a slice of a tree that started life in 1501.

When arriving in Sooke, make sure to plan more than a usual amount of time for this Visitor Centre.