Carpenter Lake, officially Carpenter Lake Reservoir, is the largest of the three

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

s 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 Frase ...

, which is located in the mountains west of

Lillooet, British Columbia Lillooet () is a district municipality in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. The town is on the west shore of the Fraser River immediately north of the Seton River mouth. On British ...

. The

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

is about 185 kilometres north of the province's major city of

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 is formed by the 1951 diversion of the

Bridge River The Bridge River is an approximately long river in southern British Columbia. It flows south-east from the Coast Mountains. Until 1961, it was a major tributary of the Fraser River, entering that stream about six miles upstream from the town of ...

Terzaghi Dam Terzaghi Dam is the key diversion dam in BC Hydro's Bridge River Power Project. It forms the project's largest reservoir, Carpenter Lake west of Lillooet. Originally known as the Mission Dam, it was renamed Terzaghi Dam in 1965 to honor Karl von ...

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 ...

via a tunnel through Mission Mountain, which separates the Seton and Bridge drainages. Several ranches and homesteads in the broad serpentine of the upper Bridge River basin were flooded out by the hydro project, which changed the character of the upper valley forever. Carpenter Lake is about 50 kilometres in length, although its upper reaches beyond the flooded gold mining town of

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 ...

are usually mudflat due to fluctuations in the level of the reservoir. Its total area approaches 50 square kilometres.

Name

The lake is named after a Mr. Carpenter, an engineer who first moved to Canada in 1909 and performed much of the early design work on the power project for the firm of Sanderson and Porter, and supervised construction of the first tunnels through Mission Ridge from 1927 to 1931. He retired in 1944.

References

External links

Bridge River Recreation Area, BC Hydro website
Lakes of British Columbia Reservoirs in British Columbia Bridge River Country {{cariboo-geo-stub

Name

See also

References

External links