Yale is an unincorporated town in the
Canadian province
Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three pr ...
of
British Columbia, which grew in importance during the gold rush era.
Located on the
Fraser River, it is generally considered to be on the dividing line between the
Coast
The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in ...
and the
Interior regions of the British Columbia Mainland. Immediately north of the town, the
Fraser Canyon begins and the river is generally considered unnavigable past this point. Rough water is common on the Fraser anywhere upstream from
Chilliwack
Chilliwack ( )( hur, Ts'elxwéyeqw) is a city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Chilliwack is surrounded by mountains and home to recreational areas such as Cultus Lake, British Columbia, Cultus Lake and Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park ...
and even more so above
Hope
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.
As a verb, its definitions include: "expect with confidence" and "to cherish ...
, about south of Yale. However, steamers could make it to Yale, good pilots and water conditions permitting, and the town had a busy dockside life as well as a variety of bars, restaurants, hotels, saloons and various services. Its maximum population during the gold rush era was in the 15,000 range. More generally, it housed 5,000-8,000. The higher figure was counted at the time of evacuation of the Canyon during the
Fraser Canyon War
The Fraser Canyon War, also known as the Canyon War or the Fraser River War, was an incident between the Nlaka'pamux people and white miners in the newly declared Colony of British Columbia, which later became part of Canada, in 1858. It occurre ...
of 1858.
Most of today's population are members of the self-governing
Yale First Nation Yale First Nation ( hur, X̲wóx̲welá:lhp) is a First Nations government located at Yale, British Columbia. Yale has 16 distinct reserves stretching from near Sawmill Creek to American Creek, with the most southern reserve situated at Ruby Creek ...
. Non-native businesses include a couple of stores, restaurants and a few motels and other services, as well as a gas station, and automotive repair and rescue outfits. The Yale area is the lowest main destination for the Fraser River rafting expedition companies; several have waterfront campgrounds and facilities near town. All Hallows is now a campground and hostel. Not much of gold rush-era Yale survives, as the docks vanished long ago. The railway was built in the 1880s down the main street of what had been the waterfront town. The Yale Museum is located on old Front Street, adjacent to the tracks. Next to it is the
Anglican Church of St. John the Divine, among the oldest in British Columbia.
The town has its own natural landscape. Every summer, a historical
re-enactment group visits Yale to celebrate 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 ...
, who had served under
Richard Clement Moody
Richard Clement Moody Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Military Merit of France (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British governor, engineer, architect and soldier. He is best known for being the founder and the first Lieutenant ...
during
McGowan's War
McGowan's War was a bloodless war that took place in Yale, British Columbia in the fall of 1858. The conflict posed a threat to the newly established British authority on the British Columbia mainland (which had only just been declared a colony th ...
. They also worked on the
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 ...
(later improved as the Trans-Canada Highway) and the Douglas-Lillooet Trail. The men were an integral part of Yale's life from the gold rush to the end of the 1870s.
History
The town was founded in 1848 by 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 trade, fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake b ...
as Fort Yale by
Ovid Allard
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
, the appointed manager of the new post, who named it after his superior,
James Murray Yale
James Murray Yale ( – 7 May 1871) was a clerk, and later, a Chief trader for the Hudson's Bay Company, during the late North American fur trade, as they were competing with the Montreal based Northwest Company and the American Fur Company o ...
, then
Chief Factor
A factor is a type of trader who receives and sells goods on commission, called factorage. A factor is a mercantile fiduciary transacting business in his own name and not disclosing his principal. A factor differs from a commission merchant in ...
of the
Columbia District
The Columbia District was a fur trading district in the Pacific Northwest region of British North America in the 19th century. Much of its territory overlapped with the disputed Oregon Country. It was explored by the North West Company bet ...
. In its heyday at the peak of the
gold rush, it was reputed to be the largest city west of
Chicago and north of
San Francisco. It also earned epithets such as "the wickedest little settlement in British Columbia" and "a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah" of vice, violence and lawlessness.
Yale played an important role in certain events of the gold rush period which threatened British control in the region with annexation by the United States: the
Fraser Canyon War
The Fraser Canyon War, also known as the Canyon War or the Fraser River War, was an incident between the Nlaka'pamux people and white miners in the newly declared Colony of British Columbia, which later became part of Canada, in 1858. It occurre ...
and
McGowan's War
McGowan's War was a bloodless war that took place in Yale, British Columbia in the fall of 1858. The conflict posed a threat to the newly established British authority on the British Columbia mainland (which had only just been declared a colony th ...
. The Governor came to Yale during the first crisis, and government officials
Matthew Baillie Begbie,
Chartres Brew
Chartres Brew (31 December 1815 – 31 May 1870) was a Gold commissioner, Chief Constable and judge in the Colony of British Columbia, later a province of Canada.
Brew's name was conferred on two mountain summits in British Columbia, b ...
and
Richard Clement Moody
Richard Clement Moody Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Military Merit of France (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British governor, engineer, architect and soldier. He is best known for being the founder and the first Lieutenant ...
during the second, to address
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
miners and take control of matters. The unrest threatened the rule of
the Crown over the Mainland (or "
New Caledonia" as it was called before the creation of the
mainland colony. (New Caledonia was usually applied to the fur district northwest from present-day
Prince George, British Columbia).
As Yale was the head of river navigation, it was the best location to be designated for the start of the
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 ...
, as there were no usable roads between Yale and the settlements nearer the Fraser's mouth. The Cariboo Road, built in the early 1860s, ran from Yale to
Barkerville
Barkerville was the main town of the Cariboo Gold Rush in British Columbia, Canada, and is preserved as a historic town. It is located on the north slope of the Cariboo Plateau near the Cariboo Mountains east of Quesnel. BC Highway 26, whic ...
via
Lytton,
Ashcroft and
Quesnel Quesnel or Quesnell means "little oak" in the Picard language, Picard dialect of French language, French. It is used as a proper name and may refer to:
Places
* Le Quesnel, a commune the Somme department in France
* Quesnel, British Columbia, a c ...
.
By the start of the 1870s, an overland route from
New Westminster was finally built - the Yale Road along the south side of the river. It was formerly known as the Grand Trunk Road and in the 21st century as
Old Yale Road
The Old Yale Road is a historic early wagon road between New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada and Yale, British Columbia, and servicing the Fraser Valley of the British Columbia Lower Mainland in the late 19th century and into the early 2 ...
; it survives in sections from
Surrey through
Abbotsford and
Chilliwack
Chilliwack ( )( hur, Ts'elxwéyeqw) is a city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Chilliwack is surrounded by mountains and home to recreational areas such as Cultus Lake, British Columbia, Cultus Lake and Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park ...
(though no longer entirely a continuous "highway"). Its counterpart on the north side of the river was the
Dewdney Trunk Road
The Dewdney Trunk Road was one of the earliest major roads in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada, originally running from Port Moody to Dewdney, just east of Mission. It exists in three sections today:
*an arterial route running roug ...
, built in the same period in advance of railway construction in the 1880s. That road ran only to
Dewdney, just east of
Mission City.
Because of its unique role as a transshipment point for the Cariboo Road, Yale prospered for another twenty years after the gold rush. Although it declined in population, it retained some prestige and such sophistication as had grown up within the rough gold town. It was as familiar to early provincial high society as were New Westminster and distant Barkerville. During the construction 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 ...
, construction ran directly through the village, built on flatland by the river. It destroyed the town's old commercial core and the connection of the town life to the waterfront.
As Yale was handy for travel to and from
New Westminster and
the railway's destination on
Burrard Inlet
french: Baie Burrard
, image = Burrard Inlet 201807.jpg
, image_size = 250px
, alt =
, caption = Aerial view of Burrard Inlet
, image_bathymetry = Burrard-Inlet-map-en.svg
, alt_bathymetry ...
(soon after named
Vancouver), it became the headquarters and residence of the American
railway contractor
Andrew Onderdonk, who supervised its construction. The town boomed with population and new businesses because of railway spending and employment. Yale and nearby
Emory City, in the vicinity of
Hill's Bar, where the gold rush had begun, as well as all the major Canyon towns to
Ashcroft, thronged with temporary residents and business of various kinds and legitimacies.
Three-times daily rail service to Vancouver - begun in the early 1880s before construction in the Canyon was finished in 1885 - made Yale a popular excursion run. With construction ended, however, the population dropped dramatically in Yale by 1890, and continued to decline afterward. Daily return service remained in effect until World War I. When Onderdonk moved on in 1886, he donated his estate for a girls' school, All Hallows. This was ranked as one of the main society schools in the colony and continued to operate for decades, into the 1920s.
Construction of the railway destroyed parts of the
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 ...
, which was severed between Yale and
Boston Bar
Boston Bar is an unincorporated community in the Fraser Canyon of the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Name
The name dates from the time of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (1858–1861). A "bar" is a gold-bearing sandbar or sandy riverbank, and ...
and between
Lytton and
Spences Bridge
Spences Bridge is a community in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of British Columbia, situated north east of Lytton, British Columbia, Lytton and south of Ashcroft, British Columbia, Ashcroft. At Spences Bridge the T ...
. A new highway north from Yale was not built until the
Cariboo Highway in 1922, partly built using surviving roadgrades of the original wagon road and since upgraded to the
Trans-Canada Highway. For a long time, this was the main route between the
Interior and the
Coast
The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in ...
. After major reconstruction of the Cariboo Highway in the 1950s, involving the construction of several major tunnels, the difficult old canyon stretch of the route achieved highway quality (instead of in name only), and towns such as Yale boomed once again. With the opening of the faster
Coquihalla Highway in the 1980s, Yale's economy and population fell off as traffic bypassed it.
Television
Yale has been featured on the historical television series ''
Gold Trails and Ghost Towns
''Gold Trails and Ghost Towns'' is a Canadian historical documentary show, created and produced by television station CHBC-TV in Kelowna, British Columbia for Canadian syndication and hosted by Mike Roberts with historian/storyteller Bill Barlee ...
,'' season 1, episode 7.
Climate
See also
*
Douglas Road
*
Dewdney Trail The Dewdney Trail is a trail in British Columbia, Canada that served as a major thoroughfare in mid-19th century British Columbia. The trail was a critical factor in the development and strengthening of the newly established British colony of Bri ...
*
Okanagan Trail
The Okanagan Trail was an inland route to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush from the Lower Columbia region of the Washington and Oregon Territories in 1858–1859. The route was essentially the same as that used by the Hudson's Bay Company fur briga ...
*
Jacko hoax
*
Yaletown
Yaletown is an area of Downtown Vancouver, Canada, bordered by False Creek and Robson and Homer Streets. Formerly a heavy industrial area dominated by warehouses and rail yards, since the 1986 World's Fair it has been transformed into one of the ...
References
*''Short Portage to Lillooet'', Irene Edwards, self-published, Lillooet, various editions, out of print.
*''British Columbia Chronicle: Gold and Colonists'', Helen B. Akrigg and G.P.V. Akrigg, Discovery Press, Vancouver 1977.
*
External links
"Chinatown" page, from BC Heritage website on Yale
{{authority control
Unincorporated settlements in British Columbia
Fraser Canyon
Populated places on the Fraser River
Hudson's Bay Company forts
Populated places in the Fraser Valley Regional District
Designated places in British Columbia
History of British Columbia
Hudson's Bay Company trading posts