Bridge River-Lillooet Country Web Archive

A major impetus for me to get the site going again, and growing, is a comment from a history prof at SFU when I went by the department to inquire about doing a degree focussed on the history of the Liloooet Country, to which he cut me off and sniped "Lllooet's just somewhere people went through to get somewhere else".....

His comment has grated on me for ten years, then recently a book review in the BC Review on BC Hydro Power Pioneers "Voices from Bridge River" (in which I'm quoted and for which I donated a lot of my father's photos) indicating that the only thing worth menting about Lillooet was Ma Murray. I tried to write a rebuttal but the history establishment here in BC doesn't like criticism, they only want applause.

Then recently in The Tyee, there was an article on Vernon Pick that had a lot wrong or incomplete to which I responded with a long critique and more history than its author could know or had taken one particular source, apparently his only local source, who claimed to have been the first succesful jade miner in the area..... so who were those Chinese noted for exporting it in gold rush times, and who was Ron Purvis, who invented the rotary diamond saw that enabled jade mining, and who was it that sold the jade boulder sitting in the SFU reflecting pool in the Academic Quadrangle, visible from that prof's window?

I was too stunned to reply and it brought back to me why I left SFU in the first place - I knew so much in various fields that I generally knew more than most of my professors.... so I picked up my bag and stumbled away to find out that any paper proposal I was supposed to submit for History 100 was a graduate-level topic and to get a Minor I had to start there..... "You don't hear about our academia being colonized because our media has been colonized".

So let's see .... what sets Llllooet apart in BC and Canadian history?

Four premiers, two Order of Canada winners, famous mines and eleven gold rushes including the richest and deepest gold mine in the British Empire, historic ranches and notable guide-outitters and distinguished settlers and entrepreneurs, the first major non-indigenous town in the Interior, 15,000 years of continuous occupation, spectacular scenery including ten major canyons and hundreds of smaller ones, half-dozen of which much deeper than the Grand Canyon of the Colorado or the Canon de Cubre in Mexico, sturgeon in Seton Lake the size of freight engines, a major transportation nexus despite major physical obstacles, the end of the Douglas Road and the start of the FIRST Cariboo Road as well as the Lillooet Cattle Trail and a major division point on the Pacific Great Eastern Ralroad (BC Rail), the most expensive infrastructure projects in 19th Century BC, the largest power project to date in BC's history, one of the seats of the first seven Land Districts on the Mainland and of a court county, and a TripAdvisor rating of the 14th most beautiful inhabited place in the world, its montane character compared to the Himalayas......

I'd often promised the bookstores in Whistler and Squamish and McLeod's Books in Vancouver that I'd finally come up with a book but life kept me busy - but I don't exactly have time to do a book, and have poetry and others writings to publish, and around 100 songs that need transcribing so other singers who've wanted to cover them.

So this website and my Facebook group focussed on the area and its history and people and Substack and YouTube and eventually Bluesky accounts will keep me busy for at least ten years; getting this site updated has taken up a lot of my energy these last few weeks and parts will take a bit to polish up but it's almost "finished" .....
The origins of this site very long ago were as a response to someone in Asia who asserted that I was lying when I said the BC had deserts, so I put up my first pics of Fountain Canyon and the view up the Fraser from 12 miles - and the site grew iike topsy from there; then I found BC Archives and Randall & Kat's Flying Photos and approached them both for permissions which hey gladly game, so long as they were credited and for non-coommercial use - and in BC Archives' case, each image has to be linked through directly to its page at BC Archives; which given the number of pics in both cases has come to mean a few hundred pages each, all done in old-fashionied HTML, meaning that this new revised and improved version has taken way more time to reboot - as links to source sites had to be re-researched and it's taken WEEKS.

And I haven't had time to launch a parallel new site with various new content inluding an annotated and expanded version of Mrs. Edwards' book, whch she asked me to undertake at her place in Mission a few months before she passed away, and a 3D Googlearth fly-through of the routes of the Douglas Road and Van Blin's Old Cariboo Road - which I intend to bring them, and Lilloeet - to the forefront of gold rush history and BC and Canadian and Pacific Nortthwest history where they belong, that role having been presented in popular history as all about Yale and Barkerville and nowhere else.
Photo and story contributions are more than welcome, as the eventual intent of this site is an open community heritage/memorabilia archive; if you have stories or other input (including corrections) for this site please contact me.

The site is a constant work-in-progress and contributions of historic or scenic photos are always welcome, as are family and individual stories connected with the history of the Bridge River-Lllooet Country, which spans the area from Bfrandywine Falls and Harrison Lake via Pemberton to Lillooet and up the Fraser as far as the Gang Ranch and Big Bar, with some spillover for reasons of historical contiguitiy towards Cache Creek and Lytton.

A (Very) Short History of Lillooet	The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush 1858-59
A Short History of the Bridge River Country	A History of the Native People of the Bridge River-Lillooet Country
A Short History of the Lower Lillooet (Port Douglas-Pemberton-Birken-D'Arcy)	Tourism & Recreation in the Bridge River-Lillooet Country (planned)
Index of Maps (planned)	Cast of Characters - Who's Who in Lillooet's History (a gallery) (planned)
Chronology (planned)

Comprehensive Site Index

Index By Area/Theme

INTRODUCTION

This site is my personal tribute to a very special part of British Columbia in which I was fortunate to have spent my early childhood, and (now and then) a few years of my adult life, and would be spending my last/latter years there if I could - but circumstance dictated oherwise. Still obscure nearly 150 years after it played an important part in the founding of the Crown Colony of British Columbia and the governane of the early provine, and despite its stunning and complex scenery, it has somehow escaped the intensity of settlement and development which have so drastically changed other better-known parts of the province.

Although most of its frontier-era buildings are long gone, and the goldfield towns are largely quiet it retains much of the atmosphere of the Wild West and, as almost everyone who visits the region comes to realize, "has something unique" that mere words cannot explain. Tourism aas finally come to Llllooet as it also had been earlier prominent about, and a new gold rush on the Fraser's bars and another in the re-opening of the Bralorne gold mine are now underway. The popularity of the Anderson High-Line and BC Hydro's statmement that it will keep the Hurley Main (Railroad Pass) open year-round, as necessitated by its current re-fit of Lajoie Dam near Gold Bridge, should all bring massive change in coming years.

Just under five hours from Vancouver, and a little over two hours from the Olympic site at Whistler, its torrid summer climate, sunny skies, rich history and spectacular gorges, lakes and mountain ranges seem likely to propel into the the forefront of provincial tourism, if not of urban development as it exists in the Okanagan, Kootenay or the Strait of Georgia regions. All this has been forecast before, however, and yet fortune never did catch up with the oft-cited boundless potential and stunning beauty of the place and its resources and agriculturally-favourable climate.

The ruggedness and variety of the scenery throughout the region have on important quality, however - they create a sense of remoteness, of apartness, of a unique place very separate and distinct from the regions around it, that no matter how developed or connected to the outside world it may (or may not) one day become, it will always remain what it is, and some vestige of its storied past will always be found in the character of the people who live in it.

The site is essentially a compilation of many, many photographs and related commentaries. Some photos are from the author's family collection or the author's own occasional photographic studies of the area, but many kindly relayed from the BC Archives online photographic database, or donated by readers of the site and residents of the region. The site will be in consant revision incorporating maps and newer photos and media and narratives on specific topics and locations which were lacking before.

The author is now prepared to invite potential sponsorship of individual pages, either for commercial advertising by local businesses (or even corporate sponsors) or by individuals interested in furthering and supporting the site. Please contact me if you have any questions or wish to make application for sponsorship or advertising space. The site will remain non-profit, part of the reason for which is the use of the BC Archives photos, but costs for any well-visited website that has a lot of content invariably start to rise at some point (and, frankly, the author spends a lot of time working on it in lieu of paid work and would appreciate help with the rent and groceries....), so I have started a donation acount witih Patreon (or???)

Index of pages/sections by Area/Theme - in no particular order
(scroll down)

Mile 'O' & The Golden Mile	Lillooet Sites & Stories	Fountain & Fountain Canyon	Seton Portage, Shalalth & The Lakes
Canyonlands	Pacific Great Eastern Railway (BCR)	Bridge River Country (Main Index)	Bridge River Canyon
Mountains & Mountain Ranges	Bridge River Power Project	Bridge River Goldfields	The Chinese in Lillooet
Nkoomptch (Seton-Cayoosh Gorge)	Marble Canyon	Moran Canyon & The Upper Fraser Canyons	Pavilion
Golden Cache Mine	D'arcy, Birken & Pemberton-Mt. Currie	goldencayoosh.ca/ The Thompson Canyon	Mountain Men & Guide-Outfitters
Resort & Recreation Info	Links and Stuff
The Pemberton Valley (the Lower Lillooet Country)	The Hanging Tree	Fountain Ridge	Horses of the Bridge River-Lillooet & Chilcotin
	Japanese Internment Camps 1941-45 (being researched)	Ranches & Ranching History (Under Construction)	Personalities & Just Plain Folks
Comprehensive Site Indexgoldencayoosh.ca/ The reason for this index is that many of the picture-links above lead to further subindex pages on certain topics and regions and many of these cross-linked. The comprehensive index lists all pages and topics directly, rather than via sub-indexes, so that finding a particular page or location is a lot easier.

Musical Improvisations		Acting
Chinook Jargon	Poetry & Other Writings	Family History	(links/pages added soon) Travel Photography

A (Very) Short History of Lillooet

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush 1858-59

A Short History of the Bridge River Country

A History of the Native People of the Bridge River-Lillooet Country

A Short History of the Lower Lillooet (Port Douglas-Pemberton-Birken-D'Arcy)

Tourism & Recreation in the Bridge River-Lillooet Country (planned)

Comprehensive Site Index

INTRODUCTION

Mike Cleven - Other Interests & Creations:

A Short History of the Lower Lillooet
(Port Douglas-Pemberton-Birken-D'Arcy)

Tourism & Recreation in the Bridge River-Lillooet Country
(planned)