Cariboo Road

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Route of the Cariboo Road in red. Steamboat travel in blue; dotted lines are alternate routes or routes to other goldfields

The Cariboo Road (also called the Cariboo Wagon Road, the Great North Road or the Queen's Highway) was a project initiated in 1862 by the colonial Governor of British Columbia, James Douglas. It was a feat of engineering stretching from Fort Yale to Barkerville through extremely hazardous canyon territory in the Interior of B.C.

A portion of the Cariboo Road, circa 1867–1868
Credit: Frederick Dally / Library and Archives Canada / C-037864

The road was a reaction to the high concentration of gold in the Cariboo region and the dangerous "mule trail", which was a rough-hewn cliff-side trail wide enough only for one mule that ran along the approximate route of the Cariboo Road. In order to lower supply costs to the settlers in the Cariboo region, Douglas ordered the construction of a more viable and safe form of transportation to the gold mining settlements.

Building the road cost nearly one and a quarter million dollars, but only created a debt of £112,780. It saw the transportation of over six and a half million dollars worth of gold. Originally Douglas wanted to stretch the Road to Edmonton, an early vision of the Trans-Canada Highway, but this plan was abandoned when Douglas retired.

Along the Cariboo Gold Rush trail, the cost of food was astronomical. Gold rushers who ran out of money quickly found themselves on the verge of starvation. The jobs created by the building of the Cariboo Road provided money and food for the desperate, and saved many lives.

[edit] The "Old" Cariboo Road

The name Cariboo Road is also informally applied to a toll-road built by contractor Gustavus Blin-Wright from Lillooet to Alexandria, known also as the Old Cariboo Road, when the Lakes Route from Port Douglas to Lillooet had not yet been superseded by the Fraser Canyon route of the Cariboo Wagon Road proper. The mile-house names (e.g. 100 Mile House), in the Cariboo are derived from measurements taken from the Mile '0' of this road, which is in the bend in the Main Street of Lillooet and commemorated there by a cairn erected in the 1958 Centennial Year. It was along this route that an attempt was made to use Bactrian camels purchased from the U.S. Camel Corps for freight, and also a tractor-style Thomson Road Steamer known as a "road train", one of the earliest motorized vehicles.

Most foot traffic from Lillooet to the Cariboo, however, went by the "River Trail", far below the wagon road, which departed the Fraser Canyon at Pavilion for the steep climb over Pavilion Mountain to Clinton, where it merged with the newer Cariboo Road via Yale and Ashcroft (once the latter route was completed, that is). The River Trail continued along the Fraser Canyon as far as Big Bar and various routes spread towards Quesnel and Barkerville from there.