At a pullout on the southwest side of the highway,
this sign is along Highway 97, known as the Cariboo Highway. In 1860, when the rush to the Cariboo Goldfields was beginning, this would soon be the Cariboo Wagon Road, built from Lillooet to Quesnel, at which point the Barkerville Road headed east into the goldfields, the most prominent being at Williams Creek, on which the town of Barkerville was quickly built following the discovery of gold there.
TO THE GOLDFIELDS!
In the 1860s the fabulous Cariboo goldfields were a lure to thousands. Miners, traders, and adventurers, many afoot with wheelbarrows, shared the pioneer route with mule trains, plodding oxen, freight wagons, and swaying stagecoaches. Havens for man and beast were the road-houses and stables every 12-14 miles along the way.
DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION & RECREATION
CARIBOO WAGON ROAD
The search for gold was a major force in opening British Columbia for settlement and in shaping our landscape, our government and laws.
The success of the Cariboo gold-fields made it necessary to improve the roads to the Cariboo. To improve the transportation of supplies to the mines, Governor James Douglas decided to have a road built to the Cariboo. When the Cariboo Wagon Road was finished, large wagons were able to load freight from the steamers at Yale and carry it all the way to the mines.
As the start of October 1861 Colonel Richard Clement Moody advised Governor Douglas that the Yale to Cariboo route through the Fraser Canyon would be beneficial to the development of the country, and that construction should start at once. The Royal Engineers were ordered to map out the best route for the Cariboo Wagon Road. They recommended that the road should be built in sections. They noted some of the problems road builders would face in each section.
When the news of the golden gravel reached those seeking to find their riches in gold, miners learned that most problems encountered in 1858 were the difficulties in reaching the "new-found" gold-fields. The new gold-fields were 400 miles north and east of Yale, in what is known today as British Columbia.
The route over the province was extremely mountainous, covered by mile after mile of thick entwined underbrush, and protected by mountain passes which in April had snow five feet deep! In parts of the journey north to the gold-fields of the Cariboo, the roads and trails were dangerous. Bad and fatal accidents often occured, where horses and their owners would fall to their deaths over mountains, or would drown in the deep-flowing waters of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers.
Several methods of transportation were improved with the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road, noted by some as the, "Eighth Wonder of the World!" The gold-fields were then more accessible for the miners to travel with their supplies to the gold-fields by mule, freight wagon, horse, and even camels, using the Cariboo Wagon Road!
From the Cariboo Goldrush