Pemberton Pass, , also formerly known as Mosquito Pass, is the lowest point on the divide between the

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 abou ...

and

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 ...

drainages, located at

Birken, British Columbia Birken is an unincorporated community on the north shore of Gates Lake in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. On Pemberton Portage Road, the locality is by road about north of Vancouver and northeast of Whistler. Nam ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, in the principal valley connecting and between Pemberton and

. The pass is a steep-sided but flat-bottomed valley (or "

thalweg In geography and fluvial geomorphology, a thalweg or talweg () is the line of lowest elevation within a valley or watercourse. Under international law, a thalweg is the middle of the primary navigable channel of a waterway that defines the bounda ...

") adjacent to Mount Birkenhead and forming a divide between Poole Creek, a tributary of the

Birkenhead River The Birkenhead River, formerly known as the Portage River, the Pole River and the Mosquito River, is a major tributary of the Lillooet River, which via Harrison Lake and the Harrison River is one of the major tributaries of the lower Fraser River. ...

, which joins the Lillooet at

Lillooet Lake Lillooet Lake is a lake in British Columbia, Canada about 25 km in length and about 33.5 square kilometres (22 mi²) in area. It is about 95 km downstream from the source of the Lillooet River, which resumes its course after leavi ...

, and the

Gates River The Gates River is a short river in the Lillooet Country of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Approximately 14.5 km in length, it flows generally northeast from the outlet of Birken Lake (aka Gates Lake or Summit Lake) to it ...

which flows northeast from

Gates Lake Gates Lake, also known as Birken Lake, Tenass Lake, Halfway Lake, and Summit Lake, is a small lake located at the summit of the Pemberton Portage area of the one-time Lakes Route through the Coast Mountains, located at the summit of a low pass co ...

(also known as Birken Lake), at the summit of the pass (also known historically as Summit Lake or Gates Lake), which flows to the Fraser via

Anderson Anderson or Andersson may refer to: Companies * Anderson (Carriage), a company that manufactured automobiles from 1907 to 1910 * Anderson Electric, an early 20th-century electric car * Anderson Greenwood, an industrial manufacturer * Anderson ...

and

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 ...

s and the

Seton River The Seton River is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The name is relatively new, and encompasses what had formerly been the Seton Portage River or Portage Creek (aka Portage River) and Seton Creek (whic ...

. This pass was historically important in the founding of British Columbia during the

Fraser River Gold Rush The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush) began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's c ...

when it was a key link in what was known as the Lakes Route or

Douglas Road The Douglas Road, a.k.a. the Lillooet Trail, Harrison Trail or Lakes Route, was a goldrush-era transportation route from the British Columbia Coast to the Interior (NB another route known as the Lillooet Trail was the Lillooet Cattle Trail, which ...

. In that context it was also known as the Pemberton Portage or Long Portage (

Seton Portage Seton Portage () is a community located on a narrow strip of land between Anderson Lake and Seton Lake in Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, British Columbia. The community is home to two Seton Lake First Nation communities at either end of t ...

, at the lower end of Anderson Lake, was the Short Portage). The wagon road constructed in those times continued in use locally despite the route's general abandonment and isolation after the building of the

Cariboo 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 fro ...

farther to the east via the

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 Ca ...

, and its road grade remains essentially the same today as the route of the unnumbered route from Mount Currie, on BC Highway 99 to D'Arcy/

Nequatque N'Quatqua, variously spelled Nequatque, N'quat'qua, is the proper historic name in the St'at'imcets language for the First Nations village of the Stl'atl'imx people of the community of D'Arcy, which is at the upper end of Anderson Lake about 35 ...

, at the head of Anderson Lake. Also using the valley is the route of the railway, originally constructed as the

Pacific Great Eastern BC Rail is a railway in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Chartered as a private company in 1912 as the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE), it was acquired by the provincial government in 1918. In 1972 it was renamed to the Britis ...

but today part of the

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN i ...

conglomerate.

References

*
''Canadian Mtn Encyclopedia'' entry "Pemberton Pass"
Lillooet Country Mountain passes of British Columbia Sea-to-Sky Corridor History of British Columbia Pacific Ranges Hudson's Bay Company trading posts {{cariboo-geo-stub