The Fraser River with its ample supply of salmon, and the presence of many species of wild game, had been the habitation of tribes of Carrier Indians for thousands of years. When the white fur traders established their forts along the river in the early 1800s, the Indians worked, trapped, and bartered their furs with the white traders. In 1808, when fur trader Simon Fraser of the Northwest Co. traveled south from Fort George, he sent his Lieutenant, Jules Maurice Quesnel, on a reconnaissance trip upstream of the clear green stream flowing into the Fraser, and named the river after him. Hundreds of European prospectors and miners travelled up the Fraser from Lillooet in the spring of 1859, to the mouth of the Quesnel River and 60 miles upstream, finding quantities of gold along the way. By the spring of 1861 there were several buildings on the flat at the confluence of the Quesnel River and the Fraser, where the government had placed a land reserve. In 1863 Sgnt.William McColl of the Royal Engineers surveyed a townsite. One of the first to purchase land was the road contractor and sternwheeler builder, Gustavus Blin Wright. Quesnel, the Gateway to Gold, became the supply point for the goldfields of Barkerville and area. Quesnel is the only gold rush community to survive the gold rush and become a City.
Quesnel 1865 looking down Front Street (credit: BC Archives #HP79706)
Sternwheelers around 1914 (credit: BC Archives #HP27222)
Looking at Quesnel from Red Bluff with Fernbrook Farm in the foreground around 1912 (credit: BC Archives #A-04031)
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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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