Kamloops is a city in south central British Columbia, at the confluence of the two branches of the Thompson River and near Kamloops Lake. The surrounding region is more commonly referred to as the Thompson Country. "Kamloops" is the anglicised version of the Shuswap word "Tk'mlúps", which menas “meeting of the waters”. Shuswap is still spoken in the area by members of the Tk'emlúps Indian Band. Kamloops is situated in the Thompson Valley and the Montane Cordillera Ecozone. The central core of the city is located in the valley near the confluence of the north and south branches of the Thompson River. Suburbs stretch for more than a dozen kilometres along both north and south branches, as well as to the steep hillsides along the south portion of the city and lower northeast hill sides. Kamloops is home to many galleries, including the Kamloops Art Gallery, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, Western Canada Theatre, the British Columbia Wildlife Park, and the Kamloops Heritage Railway.

Kamloops and surrounding areas have been used for various Hollywood films such as The A Team, 2012, The Pledge, Shooter, Firewall, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and various others. The city's name has been given to a crater on the surface of Mars. Crater Kamloops was officially adopted by the International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (IAU/WGPSN) in 1991.

Accommodation in Kamloops’ university residences

TRU (Thompson Rivers University) serves a student body of 10,000, including a diverse international contingent, and opens its residenes to guests during the summer vacation periods. It should be understood that these residences are designed primarily for students and not children or adults expecting a high level of luxury. However, with this in mind, the halls do meet a level of comfort that we expect most visitors to be happy with, and we will welcome any feedback where this is not the case.

Getting to Kamloops

Kamloops is also a transportation hub for the region due to its connections to Highways 5 and 97C, the Trans-Canada and Yellowhead Highways. Kamloops North railway station is served three times per week (in each direction) by Via Rail's The Canadian. Kamloops is home to Kamloops Airport (Fulton Field), a small Regional airport currently being expanded. Airlines currently flying to Kamloops are Air Canada, WestJet and Central Mountain Air. Local bus service is provided by the Kamloops Transit System.

The Kamloops area was not exclusively inhabited by the Secwepemc (Shuswap) nation (part of the Interior Salish language group) prior to the arrival of European settlers. The Cree-Saulteaux band led by Chief Yawassannay had migrated to this region in the early 15th century. The Yawassanay band's Kamloops settlement was the largest of their three tribal areas. The first European explorers arrived in 1811, in the person of David Stuart, sent out from Fort Astoria, then still a Pacific Fur Company post. He spent a winter there with the Secwepemc people, with Alexander Ross establishing a post there in 1812, Fort Cumcloups.

In the same year, the rival North West Company established another post nearby, Fort Shuswap. The two operations were merged in 1813 when the North West Company officials in the region bought out the operations of the Pacific Fur Company. After the North West Company's forced merger with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, the post became known commonly as Thompson's River Post, or Fort Thompson, which over time became known as Fort Kamloops. Soon after the forts were founded, the main local village of the Secwepemc, then headed by a chief named Kwa'lila, was moved close to the trading post in order to control access to its trade, as well as for protection. With Kwalila's death, the local chieftaincy was passed to his nephew and foster-son Chief Nicola. Relations between him and the fur traders were often tense but in the end Nicola was recognised as a great help to the influx of whites during the gold rush, though admonishing those who had been in parties waging violence and looting on the Okanagan Trail, which led from American territory to the Fraser goldfields. Throughout, Kamloops was an important way-station on the route of the Hudson's Bay Brigade Trail, which originally connected Fort Astoria with Fort Alexandria and the other forts in New Caledonia to the north (today's Omineca Country, roughly), and which continued in heavy use through the onset of the Cariboo Gold Rush as the main route to the new goldfields around what was to become Barkerville.

The gold rush of the 1860s and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s brought further growth, resulting in the City of Kamloops being incorporated in 1893 with a population of only around 500. The logging industry of the 1970s brought many Indo-Canadians into the Kamloops area, mostly from the Punjab region of India.