Helmcken, a pioneer Hudson's Bay Company doctor, played a leading role from 1856-71 in the colonial politics of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. A spokesman for those who thought Canada was...
Down river lay the perilous and unnavigable canyon. Up-river the Fraser was swift and strong, but sternwheelers could travel for 400 miles from Soda Creek. Men and supplies embarked here in...
By 1868, the gold rushes that had founded British Columbia were over, the public debt was soaring and many were dissatisfied with the colonial government. On September 14, 1868, 26 delegates from...
In this wilderness of rugged mountains, ore was first found in the late 1880's. Further prospects led to the building of a large smelter by the B.C. Copper Co. From 1901, copper, gold and...
Irrigation has been the key to development of the Okanagan. So often taken for granted elsewhere, water has magically unlocked the wealth in this dry valley, giving life and industry to...
From the heart of this mountain, men took over $45,000,000 in gold. It started in 1904 when Hedley boomed with the opening of the mill in town and the Nickel Plate Mine on the mountain-top....
Fairview Gold: The 1890's held high hopes for the lode gold of miles such as Stemwinder, Morning Star and Rattler. By 1902, when the Fairview Hotel or 'Big Teepee' burned, the golden years...
Once called 'The Beaver Plains', this townsite was named in honour of Dr. G.M. Dawson, outstanding Canadian geologist and scientist, whose expeditions in B.C. covered almost every field of natural...
When John M. Robinson, a former Manitoba legislator and newspaper editor, came to the South Okanagan in 1898, he found only dry grazing land. Seeing its potential, he introduced irrigation and led...
The Ponderosa Pine occurs in Canada only in British Columbia where it has adapted to a zone of low summer rainfall through the southern interior of the province. The mature tree can be...
From BC's Stops of Interest
In 1793 Alexander Mackenzie and North West Company adventurers discovered this route through the Rocky Mountains. During 1805-08 Simon Fraser built forts and trading posts west of the...
In 1898 a North West Mounted Police party laboured northward past here blazing an overland route from Edmonton to Dawson City and the goldfields of the Klondike. Its plan was to prove the...
The famed Bralorne and Pioneer mines constitute British Columbia's leading gold camp. In the 1860's prospectors from the Fraser River and Cariboo region found gold in the gravel of Bridge River....
Seeking a route to the Pacific Ocean, this resolute fur trader and explorer, with his party of 9 men and a frail bark canoe, portaged nearby in May 1793 to avoid the awesome Peace River Canyon. On...
Israel W. Powell, M.D., 1836-1915, whose name is honoured here, was a consistent supporter of the movement which led B.C. into Confederation with Canada in 1871. The plant, Western...
Back in the 1870's the bunchgrass hereabours came up to a horse's belly. Some of the transient miners saw wealth in these broad rolling grasslands and swapped gold pan for saddle. In time several...
The Yukon Trail, which crossed British Columbia, was the shortest route to the Klondike. Thousands of gold-crazed stampeders in '97 and'98 fought their way over the Chilkoot Pass to Lake...
Canada's largest cattle 'empire', the Douglas Lake Cattle Co., uses this simple 'Three Bar' brand. Homesteaded by John Douglas in 1872, the 'spread' grew while supplying meat in the 1880's to...
Here was the gateway to gold! Yellow gold lined bars of the Fraser and beyond was the lure of the Cariboo. Like a magnet it drew thousands of miners on the long Harrison trail through the...