The British Columbia Gold Rush

We thought we were through with gold rushes at this point in our trip!   Our plan was to head south on BC Hwy 97 from Prince George to Williams Lake, then west on BC Hwy 20 to Bella Coola, where we’d catch a ferry boat to Vancouver Island.   But it was not to be...   They told us the ferry service was cut way back on Sept 1 such that there was no space on a boat until the end of October.   Could it be that fate intervened  so that we would have yet one more gold rush experience here in British Columbia (BC)??  

We had been told about Barkerville, BC.   We were told it was an historic gold rush town with interpreters in costume and character, something we enjoy very, very much—but we felt we’d had enough of that already.    We were told we’d learn there about a gold rush which occurred decades before the one in the Klondike about which I have written much—but did we really want to spend yet another day immersed in gold history?   In short, we were told again and again, "you gotta go to Barkerville!”—but despite that would not have, except that our plans for Bella Coola fell through and we had a day to “kill”.   But our visit to Barkerville turned out, as these things tend to do, to be among the most enjoyable and fascinating things we did in this province.   What we learned there made us altar the route we took afterward so that we could learn the role British Columbia GOLD played in the history of Canada!   The route we chose was BC Hwy 97 south from Prince George to Barkerville, then on to Cache Creek; and then BC Hwy 1 west to Vancouver following, albeit backwards, the route of the BC Gold Rushers.   It was not only an historic, but a beautiful drive.

Descending into the long canyon south, here along the Thompson River

Descending now into the Fraser River Canyon

The mighty Fraser River

  

We approach Hope, BC....through the canyon and getting closer to Vancouver

First things first, I want to say the The Barkerville National Historic Site is so much FUN!   They go to great lengths to help you feel you are living in 1858.  The town is 1130 acres in size and consists of over 160 restored buildings including saloons, a dentist, brewery, barber shop, Chinese herbalist, theatre, opium den, and many others, filled with museum quality displays.   Mixed among them are a few resident businesses such as a bakery, two churches, various shops, restaurants, and two bed-and-breakfasts—again, all as "1858 authentic" as you could hope for!  The large number of staff are not only in period costumes, but totally in character!

Barkerville National Historic Site

Barkerville's Anglican Church, still functioning since the 1860s

Historic business, but there were a few "real" businesses in Barkerville, too!

Our extremely proper Victoria era guide through the "white" part of Barkerville.
Her name was something like "Miss Manners"...

Our guide through Chinatown--this fellow was so brilliant
and passionate about sharing Chinese history in the new world.

Besides those designated to give informative walking tours of both the “white” part of town and “Chinatown”, there are countless others, also in costume and character, just milling around town, walking down the street, hanging out on the corners, blacksmithing in their shop, driving a stagecoach, nodding in greeting as you pass, chatting with each other—you know, doing “street theatre”, all very seriously!

Miss Manners' skirts sorta "floated" over the mud puddles everywhere

Chinese schoolteacher carries a load to classroom

Chatting with the blacksmith, totally in character

Stagecoach rolls through town just as in did back in 1860s.

Bernie helped Miss Manners down the icy boardwalks.   He got yelled at to remove his hat just prior
to this photo, I might add!

And if that’s not enough, there are scheduled “events" going on simultaneously all over the town from morning till night, designed to deeply immerse one in the times.  For example, one can attend performances of ancient Chinese music and dance, witness frontier court with Judge Begbie passing sentence on horse-thievery and other crimes; attend classes in a Victorian schoolhouse, in which certain behavior standards are expected, no, demanded; or be cast in the role of potential investor in a shady gold mine with the characters explaining how their mine and mining equipment was the latest and the greatest!   We learned so much while being entertained to the max!   The modest price of admission to Barkerville covers all attractions for two full days, and one needs all of that and more to take full advantage!   In short, we would add our voices to the chorus:   "you gotta go to Barkerville!"

Performance of multiple different and very unique Chinese instruments

Performance for us of several traditional Chinese dances by graduate student
from University of BC

Impersonating frontier Judge Begbie, called in BC history, "The hanging judge"... 

Immersion experience of attending a Victorian classroom in the 1860s

Scary!   Much like our childhood memories of Catholic school!!

Hilarious performance by two shady characters trying to get us to invest in their gold mine.
Was actually very informative as they demonstrated how period mining equipment worked. 

This fella had us in stitches!

Showing us the gold!

Bernie and his "lady friend"

And now the “scoop” on the British Columbia gold rush to which we were introduced by a costumed historian at Barkerville and which we fleshed out in later travels southward to Vancouver and Victoria.  

Big canvas map on the ground descibed the historical route of the BC gold rush--who,
what, where and why!

The story begins in 1856 at the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) fur trading post of Fort Kamloops in the southern part of New Caledonia (now British Columbia).  Into that establishment walks a First Nations man with a small bag of gold dust he’d collected from the Fraser River area.   The HBC employee is surprised, as no one knew there was any gold up here in “fur country”.   He contacts James Douglas, the territorial commissioner for the HBC at Fort St. James and says, “So, uh, I’m just wondering what the company policy is on acquiring gold from the Indians.”, to which the commissioner replies, “The company policy will be to acquire as much gold from them as you possibly can, and oh, by the way, this is our little secret.”—or words to that effect.

Within the first month, First Nations people brought 100 pounds of gold into HBC trading posts (!), and this flow continued for two years, the HBC quietly amassing a fortune!  They kept it quiet because finding gold in this area was not altogether good news.   A huge influx of prospectors would cause havoc in fur trade routes and activity, and the HBC knew that!   Prior to this, there had been gold rushes in California (1849) and Australia (1852), both of which resulted in mass slaughter of aboriginal peoples, social chaos, and vigilante justice.   Fearing this, the HBC leaned on the crown (British government) for help, and within two years, in 1858, the territory of New Caledonia was made the colony of British Columbia, with none other than that same HBC commissioner, James Douglas, appointed as its first governor!   

The HBC was so proud of these accomplishments that they decided to send their amassed pile of gold to San Francisco to have commemorative coins minted with it.   Do you think the gold-crazy Californians, their own gold rush petering out, are going to keep this a secret?   No way!   So the news broke right then, in 1858, that there was gold to be found at the mouth of the Fraser River, and the British Columbia gold rush was on!!  The first ship from California brought 800 gold miners to Victoria, doubling its population, and that summer 25,000 more arrived. 

Miners are not dummies.   They looked at that gold dust found at the mouth of the Fraser River and knew the bigger stuff, the nuggets, the big payloads, must be upstream from there, in the tributary rivers and streams.   So to the headwaters they go—beyond the Fraser, up the Thompson, and up other waterways even into the interior of British Columbia called the Cariboo region.

Map of Cariboo Gold Rush

Much like the crazy history I reported in earlier blog postings of the journeys of gold prospectors in Alaska up and down mountain ranges, up and down glaciers, and up other wild rivers, so too these British Columbia gold rush participants seemed to fear nothing in their quest for gold.  Navigating the raging Fraser River itself was essentially impossible but they diverted around that until they reached the overland route through the river gorge following ancient trade routes.   The prospectors walked this with packhorses, mules and get this—camels—clinging to narrow cliff edges and dangling from rope bridges, all with a raging river far below!  Use of camels was thankfully short lived!  Their relatively soft hooves were easily injured by the rocky trail surface and traditional pack animals often bolted when confronted by them.  After just one year, their use was banned and they were set loose.  Now this is interesting:  some argue that camel-sightings in the early 20th century fueled the myth of the Sasquatch!   Camels, viewed head-on, have humanoid faces, and they are large, hairy, and smell like nothing else!   Who you gonna call--Myth Busters!

Confluence of the Thompson (blue) and Fraser (muddy) Rivers at Lytton, BC

Early mode of travel along the cliffs of the Fraser River!

Pack camels joined horse and mules on the Fraser River trail.   

Cliffs along the Fraser River, famous for deadly whirlpools which "eat" canoes!

Three years later, in 1861, one prospector by the name of Billy Barker struck gold on Webster Creek some 300 miles upstream from the Fraser, and a year later, by digging some 60, count ‘em sixty, feet below the surface, he broke into an ancient creek bed that yielded 60 ounces gold per bucketful of clay, bucket after bucket!    He was instantly wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, and famous!   A town, Barkerville, sprung up around him, with 5000 residents, all involved in mining the ancient creekbed as well.   Some called it the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco, and it became the economic, social, and government hub of the Cariboo Region of British Columbia.

Here's da man!   Billy Barker himself.
Made a fortune!   Lost a fortune!

Early Barkerville

Many, many mines were established further down the ancient creek bed on which Barker
hit his "El Dorado" sixty feet below the surface.   They all had to dig
40 to100 feet to reach pay gravel!

Operating Cornish waterwheel at Barkerville.  Cornish wheels such as this were modeled after wheels and pumps
used in the tin mines of Cornwall.   In BC, they were used to pump water from the deep workings of the mines
and lift gravel to the surface for sluicing.   This waterwheel is 16 feet in diameter.    

Now even more miners migrated north to seek riches in the area around Barkerville, and within two years, in 1863, a crude wagon road was pieced together by Royal Engineers to improve miners' safety and facilitate transport of supplies to the north, and gold to the south.   A pony express line was started and expanded to include winter sleds and larger stagecoaches to carry mail, supplies and passengers all the way from Victoria to Barkerville, fully one third the length of this very large colony.

Royal engineers design and construct Cariboo Road through the Fraser Gorge and Canyon back in
1863.   It was the largest public works project in history up until then.

The Cariboo Road ca 1863

Stagecoaches such as this connected Barkerville with the outside world for over 50 years.  
It took 4 days to get from Ashcroft to Barkerville, a distance of 280 miles.  

The road required several “upgrades” as the decades went by to the point where we could drive it in 2015!   We enjoyed taking Lily through seven different tunnels and over numerous bridges to get through the Fraser River Canyon.  

Lily prepares to enter one of seven tunnels along the Fraser River Canyon Road

One of these is the second longest tunnel in north America--the longest being
the Whittier Tunnel (see previous blog entry)!

Alexandria bridge on "old" Cariboo Hwy--a beautiful thing to see!!!

New bridge none too shabby either!!

The mighty Fraser River flows below us...

Source of fear and trembling to explorer Simon Fraser in 1808, for whom the river was named.

The rugged terrain of the Fraser River Canyon proved every bit as formidable an obstacle for railroad engineers as it did highway engineers.   The Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) required four years to put its track together, but when completed in 1884, formed Canada’s first transcontinental railroad.    Besides the CPR, the Canadian National Railway established a route through the canyon in 1914.  We who are such train-lovers thoroughly enjoyed watching trains, trains, and more trains winding their way through the canyon going in and out of tunnels, and over numerous bridges directly over our heads.

Almost too-many-to-count railroad tunnels along the river seen from the highway.

Eye candy for train-lovers like us!

Trains, trains, trains!
Coming and going on multiple tracks both sides of the river.

And so, you might ask, what was the “human” cost of the BC gold rush?   As already mentioned, the two major gold rushes prior to this, in California and Australia, gained infamy for horrendous maltreatment of aboriginal peoples by miners.  British Columbia wasn’t totally immune to discriminatory treatment of its First Nations peoples, but from the start of this gold rush, it aspired to be different, to treat the First Nations peoples better, and the reason is rooted in its fur trading history.   Well before the gold rush, there were long-standing partnerships between HBC fur traders and First Nations peoples.   The two civilizations met on intimate terms as fur traders married First Nations women.   The men were glad to have wives, and from them learned language, travel routes, and customs, all of which smoothed the way to peaceful co-existence.  The HBC encouraged these blended marriages, and children born to these unions were not only employed by the HBC, but able to rise up through the ranks to prominent company positions.  In addition, all sorts of friendships and partnerships developed and were strengthened at trading posts, where markets for salmon, furs, arms and other goods benefited all concerned.  The first governor of the colony, James Douglas, a former HBC employee, was married to a Me’tis woman, Amelia Connolly Douglas, daughter of a Irish-Canadian fur trader and a Cree woman.  We had been told when we toured Fort St James a week or so ago, that the couple allowed for no class distinctions, and that all persons visiting the fort, regardless of ethnicity, were welcomed into their home for social events and business.

Governor and Mrs. James Douglas

Douglas stated his intention that British Columbia be an “inclusive commonwealth” with “equality before the law” and that he and the Crown were committed to minimizing the worst of the effects of the gold rush on the First Nations people of BC.  The colony was vast, however, the laws imperfectly realized, and despite Douglas’ far-sighted vision, nasty incidents such as the Fraser River War between miners and the First Nations tribes of that area did occur.   In the museum in which we learned of this, however, there were at least, plastered on the walls, government documents officially apologizing for the maltreatment given the First Nations in this incident.   That impressed us.  

In a related vein, the Cariboo Gold Rush drew many black Americans to British Columbia.   Faced with discrimination in California, it appeared the lands north of the 49th parallel, with a colonial governor making social justice statements as described above, might offer more economic opportunity and freedom than they knew at home. Some 2000 Chinese persons lived in Barkerville, migrating from Guangdong, China,  in part to escape political repression, and they were an active, welcomed part of the community.   Yes, there was a Chinatown, but this was much by the Chinese peoples' choice, and all persons of Barkerville moved freely back and forth through the "gate" for both commerce and social interactions.

Gate into Baskerville's Chinatown

 One of many restored Chinese buildings in Barkerville 

In contrast, some very “unhappy campers” concerning British Columbia government policy were the white gold prospectors who came here from America.   There were, no surprise, many of them, and they took issue with having to buy mining permits, pay taxes, and follow various mining regulations that the colony imposed.   One of them was a rather shady, former-lawyer (!) character from California named Ned McGowen, and he along with some questionable friends, actually plotted to seize Hudson’s Bay Company forts on the Fraser and build support for a US territorial expansion to include all of the Fraser River Valley and Vancouver Island!  The uprising which ensued, called “McGowan’s War”, was quickly put down.  Soon after that American and British military surveyors worked cooperatively to establish the border at the 49th parallel from the prairies to the Pacific.  Gold, at least in part, forced resolution of this international issue.  It is also worth noting that British Columbia went from being a colony to a province in the confederation of Canada just 13 years after gold was discovered within its borders—in record time!   

So, hey, if you've made it this far in reading the blog, maybe you are coming to see, as we did, that GOLD is pretty darned interesting stuff, and one of those things that turns out to be pivotal in the history of not just the US, but Canada as well.   Next we will be traveling to and visiting the areas around Victoria, the capitol of British Columbia, as well as the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island.   We’ve learned in our journey that no matter what we may think lies ahead, we are in for some surprises!   That's just the way it seems to go!!

Vancouver or bust!