By the summer of 1858 British Columbia was officially born and the banks
of the Fraser River were teeming with people. Prospectors, fur-traders,
packers, merchants…an astonishing population of nearly 30,000 flocked to
the sand bars of Hope and Yale. Some found as much as an ounce of
“flour” gold per day. Others drove onward, attempting to reach the
Fraser’s headwaters by means of improvised routes through the
treacherous Fraser Canyon.
Cries of “humbug”
could be heard throughout the diggings that fall. The seemingly
impassible nature of the canyon coupled with rather inconvenient
Hudson’s Bay Company supply issues had rendered the colony inhospitable
to a large portion of its early Argonauts. Two-thirds of them went
home.
Those who remained
rededicated their efforts. The freshly appointed Governor James Douglas
helped resolve the Colony’s provisional concerns and the HBC opened two
pack trails that brought miners into BC’s central interior for the first
time. By spring of 1859 the Fraser River rush had spread as far
north as Fort Alexandria, where the Quesnel River was quickly determined
to rival the Fraser in value.
Gold seekers followed
the Quesnel to the Cariboo River, and the Cariboo River to Cariboo Lake.
Doc Keithly was among the first to find nugget gold beyond Quesnel Forks
and the shantytown of Keithly Creek was established by the summer of
1860. Antler Creek was discovered later that year, and produced some of
British Columbia’s first multi-millionaires.
In February of 1861,
“Dutch Bill” Dietz and his partner Ned Stout were exploring a series of
small canyons about three day’s walk from Keithly Creek. Carving through
twelve feet of icy snow in order to move a few meager pans of frozen
gravel to an equally frozen nearby water source wasn’t particularly
profitable at first, but by spring Williams Creek (named for Dutch Bill)
was showing good signs of success.
Then, little more
than a year later, the Englishman Billy Barker staked a claim on lower
Williams Creek that would change the working face of British
Columbia…forever. Next Issue: Barkerville.
James Douglas is Manager of Visitor Experiences and Public Relations at
Barkerville Historic Town. For info visit
www.barkerville.ca.
