In the park are large historic artefacts and a cairn with a Collins Overland International Telegraph CNHS plaque. The artefacts include the boiler of ‘The Enterprise’, the first steamship to arrive in Quesnel in 1863 from Alexandria, a centrifugal pump and boiler used around 1900 in a hydraulic mine, a steam shovel used by the Cariboo Hydraulic Mining Company for their Bullion Mine in the early 1900s and this rebuilt Cornish water wheel that was originally located at Peters Creek. With the water wheel is a water pump used on Williams Creek in Barkerville in the early 1860s.
Williams Creek became the most important and richest digging in the Cariboo goldfields.
With the water wheel is the first water pump of its type to be installed in the Cariboo District. It was installed at Williams Creek in Barkerville.
THIS PUMP, the first of its kind to be installed in the Cariboo District, was in use on Williams Creek in the early sixties [1860s]. Its erection on the present site has been sponsored by the BC Division of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy to serve as a memorial to the pioneer miners of our province.
26th June A.D. 1930
The Cornish Water Wheel
After the surface gold became depleted, miners banded together, joining claims to finance deeper placer workings. They needed pumps to keep water from flooding the works. Although this technology had been in use since the Roman period, Cornish tin miners brought it to the goldfields of California and the Cariboo.
Water was diverted from creeks or lakes, through ditches and wooden flumes, to turn the wheel which powered the pump and a winch to raise buckets of ore to the surface. The water then splashed into sluices where the ore was dumped. The heavier gold sank and was caught in the riffles or ridges at the bottom of the sluice and the dirt was washed away.
Wheels similar to this were constructed in Barkerville during the 1860s. In 1930, a wheel from Peters Creek that was in use during the 1890s was relocated to Quesnel by the B.C. Branch of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, to serve as a memorial to the pioneer miners of B.C. It was dedicated by Lieutenant —Governor Bruce and Premier Tolmie on June 26th 1930. They were traveling in an automobile caravan of dignitaries to promote the construction of a continuous highway from the US-BC border to Alaska.
The water wheel was rebuilt in 2016, reusing the original metal crankshaft, with the financial support of:
Heritage BC through the Heritage Legacy Fund, The City of Quesnel, The Quesnel Community Foundation, Integris Credit Union and the Friends of the Quesnel Museum.