Boston Bar, British Columbia

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Boston Bar is an unincorporated town in the Fraser Canyon of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was not named for an organization of Massachusetts lawyers but dates from the time of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (1858-1861). A "bar" is a gold-bearing sandbar or sandy riverbank, and the one below today's town was populated heavily by Americans, who were known in the parlance of the Chinook Jargon as "Boston men" or simply "Bostons". The original Nlaka'pamux (Thompson Indian) name of Boston Bar was rendered in English-style spelling as Quayome, which appears commonly on frontier-era maps and in diaries and newspapers of the day. The name originally referred to the other side of the river from today's town, but came into use for the present site after the original was re-named North Bend by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Across the Fraser River is the small town of North Bend, which could only be accessed by rail or by aerial ferry until recently when the two lane bridge was built. The Canadian Pacific Railway(CPR) has a small terminal here that is the half way point between Vancouver and Kamloops. The Building of the Railway played an important role in this region, first with the construction of the CPR line (1881-1885) then later the Canadian National Railway line on the Boston Bar side of the river. North Bend is also at the doorstep of the Nahatlatch Valley, a chain of 3 lakes and the Nahatlatch River.

Population: 890

Elevation: 163 metres (534.6 feet)

Access: On the Trans Canada Highway # 1, and by the Canadian National Railway, and by the Canadian Pacific Railway at North Bend.

Recreational facilities & activities:

Outdoor: river rafting, fishing, hiking, hunting, gold panning, and rock hounding. Winter activities include snowmobiling and snowshoeing.

Indoor: cinema, bowling, swimming (North Bend)

Local attractions: North of Boston Bar is Jackass Mountain, commemorating the mules that toiled carrying supplies up and down the steep canyon slopes. Southwest is Hell's Gate, Alexandra Lodge and the old Alexandra Suspension Bridge.

Accommodations: There are motels, a hotel, a resort and campgrounds.

[edit] Climate

Boston Bar sits in a pocket climate created by the confines of the canyon, and though on the edge of the coastal temperate zone just to the south, its climate is subject to the seasonal extremes of temperature common in the Interior. It is notably the first place inland up the Canyon where rainfall levels are markedly lower than the rainier stretches from Yale and Spuzzum north to Hell's Gate.

The climate is transitional between marine west coast and continental. The heaviest precipitation occurs in winter, which also has the strongest marine influence in most years. The continental influence is most pronounced in summer, which is hot. The vegetation has a mixture of rain forest and dry interior plant species with bigleaf maple and Western Red Cedar prominent among the rain forest species and ponderosa pine standing tall as one of the interior species. Douglas fir is the most common tree.

One consequence of the climate is that Boston Bar is in the range of the timber rattler, which are common in areas farther upstream along the Fraser and Thompson Rivers.