Quesnelle Forks
by Marie Elliot
Taken from B.C. Historical News. Vol.25 No.3

Some of what the Forks have been through
On the morning of October 12, 1880, Jennie Stephenson watched in horror as, one by one, fire consumed the buildings in Quesnel Forks. The little village escaped a major forest fire in 1869 with only the loss of the lockup, but this time it would not be so fortunate. Jennie's husband, Government Agent William Stephenson, was a veteran of the Barkerville Fire Brigade and knew the dangers in a frontier town. Before leaving on his tax collection rounds a few days earlier, he had made certain the water barrels on the roof of their home were full. But this precaution and the fact that they lived on the outskirts of the village, near the South Fork toll bridge, were small comfort. She was alone with two little boys and a teenage nursemaid, while the residents of Quesnel Forks- mostly Chinese miners- fought to save what little they could. Eventually, sparks ignited the shingles of her home, and the Chinese neighbour made liberal use of the stored water. When it was all over, only the Stephenson's residence, the rebuilt lockup, and the South Fork Bridge remained standing.

Most of the destroyed buildings dated to the earliest days of the Cariboo gold rush. In 1859, miners, tracing gold up the Quesnel River, stopped to work the gravel delta at the junction of the North and South Forks (now called the Cariboo and Quesnel Rivers). A number of entrepreneurs quickly applied for a toll bridge charter to connect the rapidly growing village with the trail to the Fraser River. Sam Alder and William Berry won out, and their bridge was in place by 1862, in time to serve the hordes of miners and the packtrains that came through that summer on their way to the gold fields.

Doubts from the very beginning
From the very beginning, government officials were dubious about the future of the village. In his report to Governor James Douglas in 1860, Gold Commissioner Philip Henry Nind thought the town should be moved. There should be a better location "...than a flat lying between two swift rivers which can only be approached by terrific hills, is many miles distant from pasture, and forces the trail to the mines, on which it is principally dependent, over a country where no money or labour can ever make even a moderately good road."

Col. Moody of the Royal Engineers refused to survey Quesnel Forks for a townsite, correctly predicting that the miners would eventually move on. The white miners did continue up the North Fork to Cariboo Lake, and from there followed Keithley Creek to the Snowshoe Plateau, then down the other side to Antler and Williams Creek. But in their wake, Chinese miners moved into Quesnel Forks, and this hard-working ethnic group were responsible for it's longevity.

Oliver Hare, the first resident Government Agent, and a bachelor, found Quesnel Forks very lonely in the late 1860's. and 1870's. He was often the only white man in the town and seemed completely unable to cooperate with the Chinese miners. Eventually, his health gave out and he died in Victoria in December 1876. Like his friend John Bowron, Gold Commissioner at Barkerville, William Stephenson was Canadian born and married when he took over Hare's vacant position in May 1877. Hare had described the Government Agent's residence, with adjoining lockup, as "the best premises in town", and possibly this was a consolation to Jennie Stephenson as she settled in to await her first child, Henry Allan, that August. Her second child, Gillespie Elliot, was less than a year old when Quesnel Forks went up in flames in the fall of 1880.

Facts from a Canadian census
If the 1881 Canada Census is correct, then the Keithly Creek/Quesnel Forks census area had the third largest concentration of Chinese residents, after Victoria and Nanaimo. Because Quesnel Forks was the supply centre for more than 250 Chinese miners and farmers, many of the cabins, stores, and warehouses were rebuilt after the fire. Two more fires in the 1880's did considerable damage to the commercial buildings but the residents persevered.

The peaceful routines in the little village were badly shaken up in the early 1890's, when corporate businessmen invested thousands of dollars in the placer mines, creating a hydraulic mining boom. Executives of the Canadian Pacific Railway hired John Hobson, a mining engineer from California, to supervise development of the Bullion Pit Mine. By 1900 this mine was described as one of the largest open pit mines in the Commonwealth. Despite miles of ditches and pipelines, and the damming of numerous lakes, there was never enough water to operate for more than several months. Nevertheless, the mine produced $350,000 in 1900, putting Quesnel Mining section ahead of Barkerville section in gold production.

The increase in population forced William Stephenson to rebuild the lockup, and to request an assistant constable to keep order while he was "on the road". The floating population enlarged even more when MLA Joesph Hunter, working as engineer for a London based syndicate, dammed the outlet of Quesnel Lake in 1896. Upwards of 200 men, working in shifts, managed to stop the flow water in December 1897, in order that the bed of the South Fork River could be mined.

Progress towards a better place
To support the renewed interest in hydraulic mining, the provincial government replaced the rough trail from Quesnel Forks to 150 Mile House with a wagon road, and rebuilt the South Fork bridge so it could carry heavier loads and teams of horses. Entrepreneurs moved into Quesnel Forks, building large hotels, securing liquor licences, taking keen interest in the progress of mining companies. Although the dam project proved a failure- the riverbed was mined for only one year - the mining at the Bullion Pit continued until June 1907 when it was shut down.

Quesnel Forks went into decline, reviving slightly in the 1930's with the reopening of the Bullion Pit mine. But it never matched the activity of the 1890's, and after World War II the village ceased to attract residents except for a few hardy miners. In 1948, the year of the great Fraser River floods, the South Fork bridge was washed out and never replaced. A road had been cut through Likely and Cedar Creek, using a bridge at the Quesnel dam site, in the 1930's. This also helped to put Quesnel Forks in a backwater.
In recent years, the Likely Cemetery Society has restored many of the graves in the historic cemetery. Here you will find markers for the pioneers who made Quesnel Forks a special community, including William Berry, the toll bridge owner, Willaim and Jennie Stephenson, and their son Gillepsie, and more than twenty Chinese men and women.

Looking back at what was
Wandering among the old cabins, or along the river bank near the toll bridge site, it is difficult to believe that in the twenty years the ghost town of Quesnel Forks will disappear forever. After more than one hundred years of fighting the elements, the fragile buildings cannot hold up much longer, according to heritage experts, and yet...one wishes Quesnel Forks could be frozen in time. For here, history is not served up on a silver (golden?) platter, fully interpreted. Instead, the setting is the merest suggestion - a line drawing that your imagination and senses fill in. Wondering how William and Jennie Stephenson or the Chinese residents coped with isolation, or the exciting events that occurred during their lifetimes, is a rewarding exercise, because your memories remain with long after you have left "the Forks".

Quesnel Forks is easily accessible, approximately sixty miles Northeast of 150 Mile House by paved road, and then ten miles by gravel road from Likey. A campsite is maintained by the Forest Service there, and you can spend as much time as you wish absorbing the sights and sounds of the Cariboo gold rush, limited only by the extent of your imagination.

For more about Quesnelle Forks, click here.