The Bridge River is an approximately long river in southern

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, for ...

. It flows south-east from the

Coast Mountains The Coast Mountains (french: La chaîne Côtière) are a major mountain range in the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbi ...

. Until 1961, it was a major tributary of 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 ...

, entering that stream about six miles upstream from the town of Lillooet; its flow, however, was near-completely diverted 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 o ...

with the completion of the

Bridge River Power Project The Bridge River Power Project is a hydroelectric power development in the Canadian province of British Columbia, located in the Lillooet Country between Whistler and Lillooet. It harnesses the power of the Bridge River, a tributary of the ...

, with the water now entering the Fraser just south of Lillooet as a result. The Bridge River hydroelectric complex, operated by BC Hydro, consists of three successive dams, providing water for four

hydro power plant Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

s with the total rated power of total 492 megawatts.

Name

Its name in the

Lillooet language Lillooet , known in the language itself as / (), is the language of the St’át’imc, a Salishan language of the Interior branch spoken in southern British Columbia, Canada, around the middle Fraser and Lillooet Rivers. The language of ...

is Xwisten (pronounced Hwist'n), sometimes spelled Nxwisten or Nxo-isten). Dubbed ''Riviere du Font'' by Simon Fraser's exploring party in 1808, it was for a while known by the English version of that name, ''Fountain River'', and some old maps show it as Shaw's River, after the name of one of Fraser's men. The Bridge River Ocean, an ancient ocean, takes its name from the Bridge River.

Course

The Big Canyon

Upstream from Moha the now-dry riverbed runs through the immense gorge of the Bridge River Canyon, which lies immediately downstream from Terzaghi Dam, the principal dam of the

. Terzaghi Dam forms Carpenter Lake, the longest and largest of the power project's reservoirs at about 40 kilometres. Just upstream from Gold Bridge, which is at the upper end of Carpenter Lake, is

Lajoie Dam Lajoie Dam is the uppermost of the storage dams of BC Hydro's Bridge River Power Project, which is located in the southwestern Interior of British Columbia. It is located just west of the small semi-ghost town of Gold Bridge. An earthfill stru ...

, which forms

Downton Lake Downton Lake, originally Downton Reservoir, and also known as Downton Lake Reservoir, is a reservoir in the Bridge River Country of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada, formed by Lajoie Dam, the uppermost of the series of dams and diversions ...

. Its confluence with the Fraser occurs at a double gorge formed by the two rivers, which are forced through narrow banks at this point and so reminiscent of a fountain (in another version of the name, the surname of one of Fraser's men was supposedly ''du Font'', giving the location its name of the Lower Fountains (the Upper Fountains being another few miles upstream on the Fraser, today's community of Fountain The river came to be called the Bridge River due to the location of a bridge across the Fraser at this point, originally a pole-structure built by the native St'at'imc people but replaced at the time of the

Fraser Canyon 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 ...

in 1858 by a white-run tollbridge.

Tributaries

Because of the diversion of the river to

by Terzaghi Dam and tunnels through Mission Mountain, which is in that area the south flank of the Bridge, what Bridge River water enters the Fraser now is largely the flow of one of the Bridge's tributaries, the Yalakom River. The Yalakom, whose name means 'the ewe of the mountain sheep' in the Chilcotin language, was in old times known as the North Fork of the Bridge. The South Fork of the Bridge River is many miles upstream, at the community of Gold Bridge, and is today known as the

Hurley River The Hurley River is a major tributary of the Bridge River of west-central British Columbia that was earlier known as the South Fork of that larger river. It was for a while known as "Hamilton's River" after Danny Hamilton, an American who was amo ...

(originally Hamilton's River). Several other large feeder streams contribute to the diverted flow of the Bridge, including Gun Creek,

Tyaughton Creek Tyaughton Creek, formerly gazetted as the Tyaughton River, also historically known as Tyoax Creek, is a 50 kilometre tributary of British Columbia's Bridge River, flowing generally southeast to enter the main flow of that river about mid-way along t ...

, Marshall Creek, and Cadwallader Creek; the last-named is a tributary of the Hurley, about 15 kilometres upstream from its confluence with the Bridge.

Economy

Hydroelectricity

harnesses the power of the Bridge River, by diverting it through a mountainside to the separate drainage basin of

, utilizing a system of three dams, four powerhouses and a canal. The powerhouses have a maximum generating capacity of 480 MW and an average annual production of 2670 GWh. Development of the system began in 1927 and was completed in 1960. The waters initially pass through the Lajoie Dam and powerhouse and are then diverted through tunnels and penstocks from Carpenter Reservoir to the two powerhouses on Seton Lake Reservoir.

Fishery

Due to the force of the rivers at the Bridge's original confluence into the Fraser, the area has been for millennia the most important inland salmon-fishing site on the Fraser. The flow of the Bridge River, however, was near-completely diverted into

with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project in 1961, with the water now entering the Fraser River just south of Lillooet as a result. The salmon fishery of the Bridge River was near-entirely destroyed by this diversion.

Gold mining

It is along Cadwallader Creek that the major mines of the Bridge River goldfields are located at

Bralorne Bralorne ( ) is a historic Canadian gold mining community in the Bridge River District of British Columbia, some 130 km on dirt roads west of the town of Lillooet. Background Gold has been the central element in the area's history going ba ...

and Pioneer Mine. Other mining towns and camps built around mines in the Bridge River goldfields were

Minto City Minto City, often called just Minto, sometimes Minto Mines, Minto Mine, Skumakum, or "land of plenty", was a gold mining town in the Bridge River Valley of British Columbia from 1930 to 1936, located at the confluence of that river with Gun Cree ...

, Wayside, Congress, Lajoie, Haylmore and Brexton (aka Fish Lake). Around Bralorne other localities such as Ogden grew up along road right-of-ways and slips of land between the mineral claims which dominate the northwestern flank of the

Bendor Range The Bendor Range is a small but once-famous subrange of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains, about It is approximately 7,000 square kilometres (2,700 mi2) in area and about 40 km long (NW to SE) and about 18 km at its widest. ...

in this area, providing services not approved of by company towns, including "sporting houses", some of which were also in Gold Bridge until forced to move to Minto as Gold Bridge became larger. Other gold-mining activity is found throughout the river's basin. During the 19th Century, large hydraulic mining operations lined the banks of the river for the thirty kilometres between the community of Moha, at the confluence of the Yalakom and the Bridge.

Environment

Spruce Lake Protected Area

Gun Creek and

jointly drain the south flank of the protected wilderness area known as the Spruce Lake Protected Area, popularly known as the South Chilcotin although the area is not actually in the Chilcotin, which lies north of it, but in the

Chilcotin Ranges The Chilcotin Ranges are a subdivision of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains (in some classifications they are a separate subdivision). They lie on the inland lea of the Pacific Ranges, abutting the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. T ...

. The official designation for the area has changed since it was first proposed for a park in the 1930s, due to the efforts of the prospecting and mining community in the goldfield towns. The protectionist vs. resource extraction battle over that area has raged since that time, and names used in debates for the area have included the Charlie Cunningham Wilderness, the Spruce Lake-Eldorado Study Area , the Spruce Lake-Eldorado Management Planning Unit (SLRMP), Southern Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park, and South Chilcotin Provincial Park. In 2007 the name was changed again to the Spruce Lake Protected Area, reflective of the government's downgrading of the area from park to mixed-use in certain areas.

References

External links

Bridge River-Lillooet Country ArchiveCanadian Mountain Encyclopedia
{{Authority control History of British Columbia Tributaries of the Fraser River Canyons and gorges of British Columbia Bridge River Country Lillooet Country Rivers of the Pacific Ranges