Spences Bridge, British Columbia

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Spences Bridge is a community in the Canadian province of British Columbia, situated 23 miles north east of Lytton and 32 miles from Ashcroft. In 1892 the population included 32 people of European ancestry and 130 First Nations people. There were 5 general stores, 3 hotels, one Church of England and one school. Principal industries are fruit growing and farming.

The climate is very dry, with an average annual rainfall of 40-50 cm. Thompson and Nicola River peoples had lived in the region for thousands of years, hunting deer and fishing for Salmon. Prior to the Goldrush, Mortimer Cook, an American, and his partner Charles Kimball, had been freighters for the Hudson's Bay Company. With the sudden influx of prospectors on their way to the goldfields Cook and Kimball built a rope ferry across the Thompson River, and the area became known as Cook's Ferry. By 1864 the ferry had been replaced with a bridge, built by road contractor Thomas Spence during the construction of the Cariboo Road from Yale to Barkerville.

In 1905 a terrible tragedy occurred just below Spence's Bridge, when a large slide came down, buried a First Nations village, dammed the river for four hours, and washed the bridge out. Today the area is mostly a wasteland of sagebrush, with some cultivated fields where irrigation allows.

Today the permanent population of Spences Bridge is 138. Both the Trans-Canada Highway and the CPR railway pass through the community, and BC Highway 8 fromMerritt and the rest of the Nicola Country meets the Trans-Canada at town, meeting the Thompson River near the site of the old Cook's Ferry, which still today is the main rancherie of the Cook's Ferry First Nation, a Nlaka'pamux band of the Nicola Tribal Alliance. Agriculture is a major industry and produce of soft fruits and vegetables are sold in stalls beside the highway in town as well as at wayside stops, as well as at nearby roadside communities such as Bighorn and Shaw Springs.