The initial flood of miners into the Cariboo gold fields completely bypassed all of the lower mainland locations except for New Westminster (once the Royal Engineers laid it out), Ft. Langley and on Harrison lake, Port Douglas. The gold seekers, largely American, coming by steamship from California first docked at Ft. Victoria. They then either booked passage, bought a boat or built a boat to push up the Fraser River and into the Interior. The first trail building occurred between Harrison Lake and Anderson Lake placing gold seekers in Lillooet, well above the treacherous canyon. The initial road building in the lower mainland area was mainly intended to move farm produce to market in New Westminster. The Yale road up the Fraser Valley was built in pieces and only reached Hope by 1874 after the big rush in Barkerville was in decline. The Port Douglas - Port Pemberton - Lillooet route was initially selected because of the advantages of water transportation. Paddlewheelers operated on Harrison Lake, Anderson Lake and Seaton lake with rudimentary trails connecting each body of water. The packers, however, found it very expensive to constantly load and reload onto the steamers at each lake and the trail was very poor. The Royal Engineers sealed the fate of the trail when they decided that the wagon road should go up the Fraser Canyon. (Note on map use: many locations on the map are an active link to another page of information. When the cursor turns into a small hand you have an active link and clicking on the mouse will take you to that page.)
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All text and images © Quesnel & District
Museum and Archives unless otherwise noted. Thanks to the B.C. Archives
for permission to show various images. Thanks to the BC Encyclopedia
for permission to quote information on the roadhouse communities.
Thanks to the Living Landscapes Project, the Royal British Columbia
Museum, Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services for
their support of site development.
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