Seton Portage Historic Provincial Park is a historic provincial park located in the

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...

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 ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

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 ...

. It was established on March 29, 1972 to commemorate the location of the first railway in the province of British Columbia.

Geography

The park is located at the western end of

between Seton Portage Road to the southeast, and a pair of railway tracks owned by

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

to the northwest. 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 ...

lies just beyond the railway tracks, which flows northwest from Anderson Lake 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 ...

. The park is forested with pine and the light underbrush typical of the area's climate. Covering only , Seton Portage is the smallest provincial park in British Columbia. It is also the third smallest protected area managed by

BC Parks BC Parks is an agency of the British Columbia Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy that manages all of the, as of 2020, 1,035 provincial parks and other conservation and historical properties of various title designations within t ...

after Canoe Islets Ecological Reserve and Ballingall Islets Ecological Reserve.

History

The long railway was built in 1861 for transport of miners' goods on the route to the Fraser goldfields in which the Portage was an important link (then known as Short Portage). The railway was horse-drawn in the uphill direction - a difference of only 15m between the two lakes, and used gravity for its descent. Known as Dozier's Way after its proprietor, Carl Dozier, the roadbed of the route remains today as the route of most of Portage Road from Nkiat to the "downtown" of Seton Portage to

Slosh In fluid dynamics, slosh refers to the movement of liquid inside another object (which is, typically, also undergoing motion). Strictly speaking, the liquid must have a free surface to constitute a slosh dynamics problem, where the dynamics of t ...

, though part of its route is preserved by the historic park(Nkiat and

are two First Nations villages which are where the one-time gold rush ports of Wapping and Flushing were located). Though the route was used for heavy transit again, the early railway operated only a few years, though some transport and passenger traveled through the route, despite its becoming a backwater relative to other areas of the province and the Douglas Road became forgotten. Seton Portage received its current name in 1858, the centennial of the gold rush and the

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

's creation, until which time it was known as the Short Portage - but also, with Shalalth, as "Seton". The

Lillooet Cattle Trail The Lillooet Cattle Trail, also known as the Lillooet-Burrard Cattle Trail and also as the Lillooet Trail, was an unusual and daring public works undertaking by the Province of British Columbia in the 1877, and was the largest 19th century public ...

was built through the same route as the

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 ...

but, despite an ingenious and fragile catwalk along the cliffs of eastern Seton Lake, was not usable in the long run and was abandoned and derelict by the time 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 ...

connected the Seton communities to Lillooet in 1915. In 1972,

British Columbia Railway 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 British ...

donated the land to

with which they created Seton Portage Historic Provincial Park. An old

caboose A caboose is a crewed North American railroad car coupled at the end of a freight train. Cabooses provide shelter for crew at the end of a train, who were formerly required in switching and shunting, keeping a lookout for load shifting, damag ...

was later parked beside the park and hosted a tourist

information centre A visitor center or centre (see American and British English spelling differences), visitor information center, tourist information center, is a physical location that provides tourist information to visitors. Types of visitor center A visit ...

for the community under a park use permit. As of November 2012, the information centre was not in use.

Facilities

The park features no camping or day-use facilities. Passenger service to this location is no longer available, other than a local run from Lillooet, on 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 ...

line. Access is otherwise via the arduous

Mission Mountain Road Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity *Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

or the even more difficult

Anderson Lake Highline Road 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 R ...

, which are Seton Portage's and Shalalth's only road access to the outside world.

References

* {{British Columbia parks Provincial parks of British Columbia Lillooet Country Heritage sites in British Columbia Protected areas established in 1972 1972 establishments in British Columbia

Geography

History

Facilities

See also

References