Some of Barkerville's most valuable artifacts and documents have been moved out of the historic townsite due to the Antler Creek wildfire which continues to rage on.

Stewart Cawood is the park's manager of public programming and media. He said the decision was made to move artifacts out of the park 16 hours before the evacuation alert.

"We saw the plume of smoke up over the mountain and we started taking preemptive action," Cawood said. He added they are currently being stored at the Cottonwood House historic site, 55 kilometres away from Barkerville.

"There's a painting that we have in our visitor centre that was done by one of the group of seven," Cawood said. "Billy Barker's pocket watch and certain other documents and diaries and original artifacts that would be a sad loss. Obviously we can't take out everything, Barkerville has 100,000 artifacts or more but definitely the most precious ones were removed."

Cawood thanked the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) for working extremely hard to control the Antler Creek fire and protect Barkerville, Wells and Bowron Lake Park.

Barkerville's buildings have been outfitted with sprinklers and were hosed down before the evacuation order went out at the historic townsite. Mayor Ed Coleman of Wells said when he was Barkerville's CEO $5 million was invested in fire protection at the townsite.

The Antler Creek fire was discovered on July 20, BCWS believes the cause of the fire was lightning. Wells, Barkerville and Bowron Lake have all been evacuated due to the fire. There are RCMP officers patrolling Wells while firefighters try to control and extinguish the blaze.