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

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 Lillooet. The pass is a steep-sided but flat-bottomed valley (or " thalweg") adjacent to

Mount Birkenhead Birkenhead Peak, commonly known as Mount Birkenhead and sometimes Birkenhead Mountain or Mount Birken (2506 m (8222 ft) prominence: 1781 m) is a mountain in the Gates Valley region of the Lillooet Country of the South-Central Interior o ...

and forming a divide between Poole Creek, a tributary of the Birkenhead River, which joins the Lillooet at Lillooet Lake, and the Gates River 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 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. 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, 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, 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, British Columbia, D'Arcy, which is at the upper end of ...

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