Building the Cariboo Wagon road from Clinton through to Soda Creek was a much easier proposition than the Fraser Canyon. The road largely followed the older pack trails already used to reach Quesnel Forks or the original Fur Brigade trail. All along existing routes ranches and road houses had already been built to serve the travelers on the road and produce meat and vegetables for the mining camps. If these earlier pioneers had chosen well and the new wagon road still passed their establishments then they had prosperity at least for a time. Often though, such was not the case and they faded into memory, only coming back into their own when ranching and farming became the mainstay of the economy. G.B. Wright was the contractor for the last section of road to Soda Creek (as he had been since Lillooet). As he neared that goal it was generally assumed that the road would go through the already active farms and community of Williams Lake. One story has it that G.B. Wright asked William Pinchbeck (the major landholder at Williams Lake) for a loan so he could pay his work crews. When Pinchbeck refused, so the story goes, G.B. Wright decided to bypass Williams Lake completely. However it happened, and whether the chosen route was a better haul for the heavy freight wagons, when the wagon road reached 150 Mile House instead of turning north west for Williams Lake it turned north east for Deep Creek and what became 158 Mile House. From that height the road then ran down to Soda Creek and the waiting paddlewheelers.
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All text and images © QSS Cottonwood Site Consortium unless otherwise noted. Thanks to the B.C. Archives for permission to show various images. 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. |
Thanks to the BC Encyclodpedia for permission to quote information on the roadhouse communities. |