The Cariboo Road (also called the Cariboo Wagon Road, the Great North Road or the Queen's Highway) was a

project A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...

initiated in 1860 by the Governor of the Colony of British Columbia, James Douglas. It involved a feat of engineering stretching from Fort Yale to Barkerville, B.C. through extremely hazardous canyon territory in the

Interior of British Columbia , settlement_type = Region of British Columbia , image_skyline = , nickname = "The Interior" , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivi ...

. Between the 1860s and the 1880s the Cariboo Road existed in three versions as a surveyed and constructed wagon-road route. The first

Cariboo Wagon Road The Cariboo Road (also called the Cariboo Wagon Road, the Great North Road or the Queen's Highway) was a project initiated in 1860 by the Governor of the Colony of British Columbia, James Douglas. It involved a feat of engineering stretching fr ...

surveyed in 1861 and built in 1862 followed the original

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trade, fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake b ...

's Harrison Trail (

Port Douglas Port Douglas is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Douglas, Queensland, Australia, approximately 60 km north of Cairns. In the , Port Douglas had a population of 3,504 people. The town's population can often double, however, with the i ...

) route from Lillooet to Clinton, 70 Mile House,

100 Mile House 100 Mile House is a district municipality located in the South Cariboo region of central British Columbia, Canada. History 100 Mile House was originally known as Bridge Creek House, named after the creek running through the area. Its origins ...

, Lac La Hache, 150 Mile House to the contract end around Soda Creek and Alexandria at the doorstep of the Cariboo Gold Fields. The second Cariboo Wagon Road (or Yale Cariboo Road) operated during the period of the fast stage-coaches and freight-wagon companies headquartered in

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

: 1865 to 1885. From the water landing at

, the road ran north via the spectacular

Fraser Canyon The Fraser Canyon is a major landform of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains en route from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley. Colloquially, the term "Fraser C ...

route over

Hell's Gate Hells Gate or Hell's Gate or Hell Gate may refer to: Places Africa * Hell's Gate National Park, Kenya Antarctica * Hells Gate Moraine, Victoria Land Asia * Nyalam Town, Tibet * A location in Nampong, Arunachal Pradesh, India * The Darvaza ga ...

and

Jackass Mountain Jackass Mountain is a mountain in the North Cascades of the Cascade Range The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern Cali ...

, connecting to the earlier Cariboo Road at Clinton. The third Cariboo Road was the revised route following the completion of the

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...

in 1885. The railway station at Ashcroft became the southern end of the wagon road. Much of the

wagon road was destroyed by the railway construction as well as by washouts and by the Great Flood of 1894 (interest in rebuilding this portion of the road would not occur until the construction plans for the Fraser Canyon Highway for automobiles in the 1920s). The road was a reaction to the high concentration of

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile m ...

in the

Cariboo The Cariboo is an intermontane region of British Columbia, Canada, centered on a plateau stretching from Fraser Canyon to the Cariboo Mountains. The name is a reference to the caribou that were once abundant in the region. The Cariboo was t ...

region and the dangerous "mule trail", which was a rough-hewn cliff-side trail - wide enough only for one mule - that ran along the approximate route of the Cariboo Road. In order to lower supply-costs to the settlers in the Cariboo region, Douglas ordered the construction of a more viable and safe form of transportation to the gold-mining settlements. The colonial government employed localsad seeking hundred of men to work on building the road from the British Colonist of 1862 http://ruralbc.blogspot.ca/2012/04/150-years-processing-of-tendering-to.html as well as a detachment of the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the '' Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is head ...

("sappers") who undertook amazing engineering feats, including the construction of toll bridges including the (original)

Alexandra Suspension Bridge Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park is a provincial park located in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia, Canada. It was established on March 26, 1984 to preserve a historically significant suspension bridge spanning the Fraser River. The extant ...

of 1863.

Building the road cost nearly one and a quarter million dollars, and left a standing debt of £112,780 after its completion, one of many infrastructure costs in servicing the

Gold Colony Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile meta ...

that forced its amalgamation first with Vancouver Island (1866), and then with Canada (1871 confederation). The Cariboo Road saw the transportation of over six and a half million dollars' worth of gold. Originally Douglas wanted to stretch the road across the continental divide into

Rupert's Land Rupert's Land (french: Terre de Rupert), or Prince Rupert's Land (french: Terre du Prince Rupert, link=no), was a territory in British North America which comprised the Hudson Bay drainage basin; this was further extended from Rupert's Land t ...

(modern day

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Terri ...

) but this plan was abandoned when Douglas retired in 1864.

The "Old" Cariboo Road

left, The Cariboo Road at Soda Creek. The style of truss-bridge shown is typical of Royal Engineer design. The name Cariboo Road or Cariboo Trail is also informally applied to a toll road built by contractor Gustavus Blin-Wright in 1861–1862 from Lillooet to Williams Lake, Van Winkle and on to Williams Creek (Richfield, Barkerville). This route was known also as the

Old Cariboo Road The Old Cariboo Road is a reference to the original wagon road to the Cariboo gold fields in what is now the Canadian province of British Columbia. It should not be confused with the Cariboo Road, which was built slightly later and used a differ ...

, when the Lakes Route from

Lillooet Lillooet () is a district municipality in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. The town is on the west shore of the Fraser River immediately north of the Seton River mouth. On BC Highway 99, the locality is by road abo ...

had not yet been superseded by the Fraser Canyon route of the Cariboo Wagon Road proper. The mile-house names (e.g.

), in the Cariboo are derived from measurements taken from the Mile '0' of this road, which is in the bend in the Main Street of Lillooet and commemorated there by a cairn erected in the 1958 Centennial Year. It was along this route that an attempt was made to use Bactrian camels purchased from the U.S. Camel Corps for freight (1862), and also a tractor-style Thomson Road Steamer known as a "road train", one of the earliest motorized vehicles. Most foot traffic from Lillooet to the Cariboo however, went by the " River Trail", far below the wagon road, which departed the Fraser Canyon at

Pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

for the steep climb over Pavilion Mountain to Clinton, where it merged with the newer Cariboo Road via Yale and Ashcroft (once the latter route was completed, that is). The River Trail continued along the Fraser Canyon as far as Big Bar and various routes spread towards Quesnel and Barkerville from there.

Television

The Cariboo Road was featured on the television historical series '' Gold Trails and Ghost Towns'', season 2, episode 4.

The "Old" Cariboo Road

Television

See also

References

Further reading