The Bridge River is an approximately long river in southern British Columbia. It flows south-east from the

Coast Mountains The Coast Mountains (french: La chaîne Côtière) are a major mountain range in the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbia ...

. Until 1961, it was a major tributary of the

Fraser River The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annual d ...

, entering that stream about six miles upstream from the town of Lillooet; its flow, however, was near-completely diverted into

Seton Lake Seton Lake is a freshwater fjord draining east via the Seton River into the Fraser River at the town of Lillooet, about long, in area and lies at an elevation of . Its depth is . The lake is natural in origin but was raised slightly as part of ...

with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project, with the water now entering the Fraser just south of Lillooet as a result. The Bridge River hydroelectric complex, operated by BC Hydro, consists of three successive dams, providing water for four

hydro power plant Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

s with the total rated power of total 492 megawatts.

Name

Its name in the Lillooet language is Xwisten (pronounced Hwist'n), sometimes spelled Nxwisten or Nxo-isten). Dubbed ''Riviere du Font'' by Simon Fraser's exploring party in 1808, it was for a while known by the English version of that name, ''Fountain River'', and some old maps show it as Shaw's River, after the name of one of Fraser's men. The

Bridge River Ocean The Bridge River Ocean was an ancient ocean that existed between North America and the Insular Islands during the Mesozoic era. Similar to the earlier Slide Mountain Ocean, the Bridge River Ocean had a subduction zone on the ocean floor called the ...

, an ancient ocean, takes its name from the Bridge River.

Course

The Big Canyon

Upstream from Moha the now-dry riverbed runs through the immense gorge of the Bridge River Canyon, which lies immediately downstream from Terzaghi Dam, the principal dam of the Bridge River Power Project. Terzaghi Dam forms Carpenter Lake, the longest and largest of the power project's reservoirs at about 40 kilometres. Just upstream from Gold Bridge, which is at the upper end of Carpenter Lake, is Lajoie Dam, which forms Downton Lake. Its confluence with the Fraser occurs at a double gorge formed by the two rivers, which are forced through narrow banks at this point and so reminiscent of a fountain (in another version of the name, the surname of one of Fraser's men was supposedly ''du Font'', giving the location its name of the Lower Fountains (the Upper Fountains being another few miles upstream on the Fraser, today's community of Fountain The river came to be called the Bridge River due to the location of a bridge across the Fraser at this point, originally a pole-structure built by the native St'at'imc people but replaced at the time of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in 1858 by a white-run tollbridge.

Tributaries

Because of the diversion of the river to

by Terzaghi Dam and tunnels through Mission Mountain, which is in that area the south flank of the Bridge, what Bridge River water enters the Fraser now is largely the flow of one of the Bridge's tributaries, the

Yalakom River The Yalakom River is a tributary of the Bridge River, which is one of the principal tributaries of the Fraser River, entering it near the town of Lillooet, British Columbia. In frontier times it was also known as the North Fork of the Bridge Rive ...

. The Yalakom, whose name means 'the ewe of the

mountain sheep The argali (''Ovis ammon''), also known as the mountain sheep, is a wild sheep that roams the highlands of western East Asia, the Himalayas, Tibet, and the Altai Mountains. Description The name 'argali' is the Mongolian word for wild sheep. I ...

' in the

Chilcotin language ''Nenqayni Ch’ih'' (lit. "the Native way") (also Chilcotin, Tŝilhqotʹin, Tsilhqot’in, Tsilhqút’in) is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in British Columbia by the Tsilhqot’in people. The name ''Chilcotin'' is derived from the Chi ...

, was in old times known as the North Fork of the Bridge. The South Fork of the Bridge River is many miles upstream, at the community of Gold Bridge, and is today known as the Hurley River (originally Hamilton's River). Several other large feeder streams contribute to the diverted flow of the Bridge, including Gun Creek, Tyaughton Creek, Marshall Creek, and Cadwallader Creek; the last-named is a tributary of the Hurley, about 15 kilometres upstream from its confluence with the Bridge.

Economy

Hydroelectricity

Bridge River Power Project harnesses the power of the Bridge River, by diverting it through a mountainside to the separate drainage basin of

, utilizing a system of three dams, four powerhouses and a canal. The powerhouses have a maximum generating capacity of 480 MW and an average annual production of 2670 GWh. Development of the system began in 1927 and was completed in 1960. The waters initially pass through the Lajoie Dam and powerhouse and are then diverted through tunnels and penstocks from Carpenter Reservoir to the two powerhouses on Seton Lake Reservoir.

Fishery

Due to the force of the rivers at the Bridge's original confluence into the Fraser, the area has been for millennia the most important inland salmon-fishing site on the Fraser. The flow of the Bridge River, however, was near-completely diverted into

with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project in 1961, with the water now entering the Fraser River just south of Lillooet as a result. The salmon fishery of the Bridge River was near-entirely destroyed by this diversion.

Gold mining

It is along

Cadwallader Creek Cadwallader Creek is an important tributary of the Hurley River in the Bridge River Country of the British Columbia Interior, Canada, most notable for its role as the home of the Bralorne and Pioneer Mines and associated gold claims and workings. ...

that the major mines of the

Bridge River goldfields A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

are located at Bralorne and

Pioneer Mine The Pioneer Mine was an underground iron mine in Ely, Minnesota, United States, in operation from 1889 to 1967. It is one of only two such mines on the Vermilion Range whose above-ground structures are still standing, the other being the Soudan ...

. Other mining towns and camps built around mines in the Bridge River goldfields were Minto City, Wayside, Congress, Lajoie, Haylmore and

Brexton Brexton, formerly known as Fish Lake, is a ghost town located in the Bridge River Country region of British Columbia. Although the provincial ''Gazetteer'' still lists the "settlement" of Brexton, which was situated between the southeast end of Gu ...

(aka Fish Lake). Around Bralorne other localities such as Ogden grew up along road right-of-ways and slips of land between the mineral claims which dominate the northwestern flank of the Bendor Range in this area, providing services not approved of by company towns, including "sporting houses", some of which were also in Gold Bridge until forced to move to Minto as Gold Bridge became larger. Other gold-mining activity is found throughout the river's basin. During the 19th Century, large

hydraulic mining Hydraulic mining is a form of mining that uses high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material or move sediment.Paul W. Thrush, ''A Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms'', US Bureau of Mines, 1968, p.560. In the placer mining of ...

operations lined the banks of the river for the thirty kilometres between the community of Moha, at the confluence of the Yalakom and the Bridge.

Environment

Spruce Lake Protected Area

Gun Creek and Tyaughton Creek jointly drain the south flank of the protected wilderness area known as the

Spruce Lake Protected Area The Spruce Lake Protected Area, formerly known variously as the Southern Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park, Southern Chilcotins, and also as South Chilcotin Provincial Park, is a 71,347-hectare Protected Area in the British Columbia provincial ...

, popularly known as the South Chilcotin although the area is not actually in the Chilcotin, which lies north of it, but in the Chilcotin Ranges. The official designation for the area has changed since it was first proposed for a park in the 1930s, due to the efforts of the prospecting and mining community in the goldfield towns. The protectionist vs. resource extraction battle over that area has raged since that time, and names used in debates for the area have included the Charlie Cunningham Wilderness, the Spruce Lake-Eldorado Study Area , the Spruce Lake-Eldorado Management Planning Unit (SLRMP), Southern Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park, and South Chilcotin Provincial Park. In 2007 the name was changed again to the Spruce Lake Protected Area, reflective of the government's downgrading of the area from park to mixed-use in certain areas.

References

External links

Bridge River-Lillooet Country ArchiveCanadian Mountain Encyclopedia
{{Authority control History of British Columbia Tributaries of the Fraser River Canyons and gorges of British Columbia Bridge River Country Lillooet Country Rivers of the Pacific Ranges