Tête Jaune Cache () is an unincorporated rural area and the site of an important abandoned historic town in

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 ...

. Its population is approximately 500. It is located on 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 ...

in the

Robson Valley The Robson Valley is a geographic region of the Canadian province of British Columbia, comprising the section of the Rocky Mountain Trench that lies southeast of the city of Prince George following the Fraser River to the Yellowhead Pass. The nam ...

at the intersection of Yellowhead Highways 5 and 16. Tête Jaune Cache is located 18 km north of Valemount, B.C., 101 km west of

Jasper, Alberta Jasper is a specialized municipality and townsite in western Alberta within the Canadian Rockies. The townsite is in the Athabasca River valley and is the commercial centre of Jasper National Park. History Established in 1813, Jasper Hou ...

, 241 km east of Prince George, B.C., and 332 km north of Kamloops, B.C., by road.

History

Tête Jaune Cache was named after a

Métis The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States. They have a shared history and culture which derives ...

fur trader and trapper named

Pierre Bostonais Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

who guided for the

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 trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

in the 1800s. Bostonais was nicknamed

Tête Jaune Pierre Bostonais or Pierre Hastination (died 1828), better known as Tête Jaune, was an Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)- Métis trapper, fur trader, and explorer who worked for the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company during the 18th and 19th cent ...

by the French-speaking voyageurs because of his blonde hair. ( is French for "yellow head".) The Secwepemc had an established village of tents and

quiggly hole A quiggly hole, also known as a pit-house or simply as a quiggly or kekuli, is the remains of an earth lodge built by the First Nations people of the Interior of British Columbia and the Columbia Plateau in the United States The word ''quiggly ...

s on the banks of the Fraser in this area rich in salmon and wild berries when encountered by Bostonais, but the townsite land of Tête Jaune Cache was officially located in 1901 and Crown-granted (patented) in 1902. During the construction of the

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway running from Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, a Pacific coast port. East of Winnipeg the line continued as the National Tra ...

Tête Jaune Cache was a prosperous community and was the head of navigation for the

paddle steamers A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses were w ...

Foley, Welch and Stewart Foley, Welch and Stewart was an early 20th-century American-Canadian railroad contracting company. It was owned and operated by Patrick Welch and J.W. Stewart of Spokane, Washington and T. Foley of Saint Paul, Minnesota. The company was created ...

and the BC Express Company. The town was a booming collection of lumber shacks, tents, and log houses which brought thousands of pioneers, trappers, prospectors, foresters, and entrepreneurs to the

. Major industries in historic Tête Jaune were timber, railways, steamship trade, and mining, especially for the locally abundant

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

. Some of the largest and cleanest sheets of mica extracted in the era of its highest demand (for its usage in lanterns and stoves) came from this region, and the remains of one such mine are near the

Mica Mountain Mica Mountain is an peak in the Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park in Pima County, Arizona, about east of Tucson. It is the highest point of the park and the highest point in the Rincon Mountains. See also * List of mountain p ...

hiking trail. The pool halls, theatres, restaurants, jewellers, lady barbers, saloons, and trading posts are no more, with only a few stone chimneys remaining as evidence of this bustling town's existence, but the Valley Museum and Archives in McBride, as well as the Valemount Historical Society maintains an excellent collection of photographs from the heyday of this boom town, c. 1910-1918. Currently the area under the aegis of Tête Jaune Cache is home to Hauer Brothers' Sawmill, as well as a few small businesses specializing in custom timber milling, woodworking, guided

flyfishing Fly fishing is an angling method that uses a light-weight lure—called an artificial fly—to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. The light weight requires casting techniques significantly diffe ...

whitewater rafting Rafting and whitewater rafting are recreational outdoor activities which use an inflatable raft to navigate a river or other body of water. This is often done on whitewater or different degrees of rough water. Dealing with risk is often a ...

snowcat skiing A ski lift is a mechanism for transporting skiers up a hill. Ski lifts are typically a paid service at ski resorts. The first ski lift was built in 1908 by German Robert Winterhalder in Schollach/Eisenbach, Hochschwarzwald. Types * Aerial l ...

, and bed and breakfast accommodation. In August 1916, the Simpcw of Tête Jaune Cache were forcibly relocated out of the area to Chu Chua and other places. The people were made to travel the 300 kilometres by foot. In August 2016 events were held to mark the 100th anniversary of that event. The

Simpcw First Nation The Simpcw First Nation, formerly known as the North Thompson Indian Band, is a First Nations band government based in the Thompson Country of British Columbia, Canada. It is a member of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council. It is a First Nations gov ...

has applied to the government to have lands at Tête Jaune Cache formally recognized.

Ecology

Tête Jaune Cache is an ecologically rich forest habitat for trees including

Lodgepole pine ''Pinus contorta'', with the common names lodgepole pine and shore pine, and also known as twisted pine, and contorta pine, is a common tree in western North America. It is common near the ocean shore and in dry montane forests to the subalpine, ...

, Trembling Aspen,

Western red cedar ''Thuja plicata'' is an evergreen coniferous tree in the cypress family Cupressaceae, native to western North America. Its common name is western redcedar (western red cedar in the UK), and it is also called Pacific redcedar, giant arborvitae, w ...

Paper birch ''Betula papyrifera'' (paper birch, also known as (American) white birch and canoe birch) is a short-lived species of birch native to northern North America. Paper birch is named for the tree's thin white bark, which often peels in paper like ...

and

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Oregon pine, and Columbian pine. There are three va ...

; wildlife such as

Moose The moose (in North America) or elk (in Eurasia) (''Alces alces'') is a member of the New World deer subfamily and is the only species in the genus ''Alces''. It is the largest and heaviest extant species in the deer family. Most adult mal ...

Cougar The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large Felidae, cat native to the Americas. Its Species distribution, range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mamm ...

Wolverine The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for "gluttony, glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is ...

, Black bears,

Grizzly bears The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America. In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos horri ...

Lynx A lynx is a type of wild cat. Lynx may also refer to: Astronomy * Lynx (constellation) * Lynx (Chinese astronomy) * Lynx X-ray Observatory, a NASA-funded mission concept for a next-generation X-ray space observatory Places Canada * Lynx, Ontar ...

Beaver Beavers are large, semiaquatic rodents in the genus ''Castor'' native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. There are two extant species: the North American beaver (''Castor canadensis'') and the Eurasian beaver (''C. fiber''). Beavers ar ...

, and

Marten A marten is a weasel-like mammal in the genus ''Martes'' within the subfamily Guloninae, in the family Mustelidae. They have bushy tails and large paws with partially retractile claws. The fur varies from yellowish to dark brown, depending on t ...

. The shoals found where the

McLennan River The McLennan River is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Robson Valley region of British Columbia. The river was named after an engineer on one of the Canadian Pacific Railway surveys in the 1870s. Course The McLennan River originates in th ...

and Tête Creek join the Fraser River are some of the most important spawning grounds for

Chinook Salmon The Chinook salmon (''Oncorhynchus tshawytscha'') is the largest and most valuable species of Pacific salmon in North America, as well as the largest in the genus ''Oncorhynchus''. Its common name is derived from the Chinookan peoples. Other ve ...

at the end of their annual 1,200 km run from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. These creeks, as well as Kiwa Creek to the north, are fed directly by meltwater from the glaciers and icefields of the

Premier Range The Premier Range is a group of mountains within the Cariboo Mountains of east-central British Columbia, Canada. The range (also known as the Premier Group) is bounded by the Raush River and Kiwa Creek to the north, the North Thompson River on the ...

of the

Cariboo Mountains The Cariboo Mountains are the northernmost subrange of the Columbia Mountains, which run down into the Spokane area of the United States and include the Selkirks, Monashees and Purcells. The Cariboo Mountains are entirely within the province of ...

Transportation

Tête Jaune Cache lies at the junction between what was originally the

Canadian Northern Railway The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Mani ...

transcontinental main line between

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...

and

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

and the

Grand Trunk Pacific The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway running from Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, a Pacific coast port. East of Winnipeg the line continued as the National Tra ...

line to

Prince Rupert Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, (17 December 1619 (O.S.) / 27 December (N.S.) – 29 November 1682 (O.S.)) was an English army officer, admiral, scientist and colonial governor. He first came to prominence as a Royalist cavalr ...

. Today both lines are 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 ...

. Passenger service is provided by Via Rail's

Jasper – Prince Rupert train Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref> ...

, which calls at the nearby Harvey Station on the Prince Rupert line. The community is also passed but not served by Via's transcontinental ''

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

'' on the Vancouver line.

References

External links

* *
New Rivers of the North
' by

Hulbert Footner Hulbert Footner (April 2, 1879 – November 17, 1944) was a Canadian born American writer of primarily detective fiction. He also wrote some non-fiction. Early career He was born William Hulbert Footner in Hamilton, Ontario on April 2, 1879. Hi ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tete Jaune Cache Unincorporated settlements in British Columbia Robson Valley Populated places in the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George Populated places on the Fraser River