Salmon Arm, BC, City, pop 16 012 (2006c), 15 210 (2001c), inc 2005. Salmon Arm is located at the head of the southwestern arm of Shuswap Lake, also called Salmon Arm, 110 km east of KAMLOOPS.

Salmon Arm was originally the home of Secwepemc , who fished along its shores. The Big Bend Gold Rush (along the COLUMBIA RIVER) of the mid-1860s brought prospectors into the region briefly, but exploration did not begin until 1871 when a route was surveyed for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Settlement came in the late 1880s with the railway, mixed and fruit farming and logging and lumbering. In 1905 the District Municipality of Salmon Arm was incorporated. Settlement boomed so that in 1912 the city of Salmon Arm separated from the district municipality. The city later downgraded to a village (1958) and in 1970 reunited with the district municipality. To commemorate its centennial Salmon Arm changed its status to a city in 2005.

The business centre for the Shuswap, today manufacturing, lumber, tourism, dairy farming and provincial government agencies are Salmon Arm's major employers. A satellite campus of Okanagan University College is located here, and Salmon Arm has a museum, art gallery and active theatre group.