 The New Eldorado: "A Complete View of the Newly Discovered Goldfields" | |
| Duration | 1858 – c. 1927 |
|---|---|
| Location | Fraser Canyon, British Columbia |
| Type | Gold rush |
TheFraser Canyon Gold Rush (alsoFraser Gold Rush andFraser River Gold Rush) began in 1858 aftergold was discovered on theThompson River inBritish Columbia at its confluence with theNicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with theFraser River at present-dayLytton. The rush overtook the region around the discovery and was centred on theFraser Canyon from aroundHope andYale toPavilion andFountain, just north ofLillooet.[1]
Though the rush was largely over by 1927, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout theBritish Columbia Interior and North, most famously that in theCariboo. The rush is credited with instigatingEuropean-Canadian settlement on the mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of theColony of British Columbia, the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns.
Although the area had been mined for a few years, news of the strike spread toSan Francisco when the governor of theColony of Vancouver Island,James Douglas, sent a shipment of ore to that city's mint. People in San Francisco and theCalifornia gold fields greeted the news with excitement. Within a month 30,000 men had descended uponVictoria. 4,000 of theseGold Rush pioneers settlers were Chinese.[2][3] Until that time, the village had had a population of only about 500. This was a record for mass movement of mining populations on the North American frontier, even though more men in total were involved in the gold rushes of California and Colorado.
By the fall, however, tens of thousands of men who had failed to stake claims or were unable to because of the summer's high water on the river, pronounced the Fraser to be "humbug." Many returned to San Francisco, but a continuing influx of newcomers replaced the disenchanted, with even more men storming the route of theDouglas Road to the upper part ofFraser Canyon aroundLillooet; others got to the upper canyon via theOkanagan Trail andSimilkameen Trail, and to the lower Canyon via theWhatcom Trail and the Skagit Trail. All these routes were technically illegal since the Governor required that entry to the colony to be made via Victoria, but thousands came overland anyway. Accurate numbers of miners, especially on the upper Fraser, are therefore difficult to reckon.
During the gold rush tens of thousands of prospectors fromCalifornia flooded into the newly declaredColony of British Columbia and disrupted the established balance between theHudson's Bay Company'sfur traders andindigenous peoples. The influx of prospectors included numerousEuropean Americans and African Americans,Britons,Germans,English Canadians,Maritimers,French Canadians,Scandinavians,Italians,Belgians andFrench, and otherEuropean ethnicities,Hawaiians,Chinese,Mexicans,West Indians, and others. Many of those first-arrived ofEuropean andBritish origin wereCalifornian by culture, and this includedMaritimers such asAmor De Cosmos and others. The numbers of "Americans" associated with the gold rush must be understood to be inherently European-ethnic to start with. Anglo-American Southerners (from states such as Missouri and Kentucky), Midwesterners, and New Englanders were well represented. Alfred Waddington, an entrepreneur and pamphleteer of the gold rush later infamous for the disastrous road-building expedition which led to theChilcotin War of 1864, estimated there were 10,500 miners on the Fraser at the peak of the gold rush. This estimate was based on theYale area and did not include the non-mining "hangers-on" population.(The Fraser River Gold Rush started in 1858)
When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London,Richard Clement Moody was hand-picked by theColonial Office, underSir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, to establish British order and to transform British Columbia into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west"[4] and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific."[5] Moody arrived inBritish Columbia in December 1858, commanding theRoyal Engineers, Columbia Detachment. Moody had hoped to begin immediately the foundation of a capital city, but upon his arrival atFort Langley he learned of an outbreak of violence at the settlement of Hill's Bar. This led to an incident popularly known as "Ned McGowan's War", where Moody successfully quashed a group of rebellious American miners.
Governor Douglas placed restrictions on immigration to the newBritish colony, including the proviso that entry to the territory must be made via Victoria and not overland, but thousands of men still arrived via theOkanagan andWhatcom Trails. Douglas also sought to limit the importation of weapons, one of the reasons for the Victoria-disembarkation requirement, but his lack of resources for oversight meant that overland routes to the goldfields could not be controlled.
During the fall of 1858, tensions increased between miners and theNlaka'pamux, theFirst Nations people of the Canyon. This led to theFraser Canyon War. Miners wary of venturing upriver beyond Yale began to use theLakes Route to Lillooet instead, prompting Douglas to contract for the building of theDouglas Road, the Mainland Colony's first public works project. The governor arrived in Yale to accept the apologies of the Americans who had waged war on the natives. Wanting to make the British military and governmental presence more visible, Douglas appointed justices of the peace and also revised the slapdash mining rules which had emerged along the river. Troops to maintain order, however, were still in short supply.
Competition and interracial tensions between European Americans and non-white miners erupted onChristmas Eve 1858, with the beating ofIsaac Dixon, a freed American black. He was the town barber and in later years was a popular journalist in theCariboo. Dixon was beaten by two men fromHill's Bar, the other main town in the southern part of the goldfields. The complicated series of events that ensued is known asMcGowan's War. Its potential to provoke United States annexation ambitions within the goldfields, prompted the governor to send newly appointedChief Justice Begbie, the colony's chief of policeChartres Brew and a contingent ofRoyal Engineers andRoyal Marines to intervene. They did not need to use force and were able to resolve the matter peacefully. The team also dealt with the corruption of British appointees in the area, which had contributed to the crisis.
TheFraser Canyon War did not affect the upper reaches of the goldfields, in the area of Lillooet, and the short-lived popularity of the Douglas Road caused the town to be designated "the largest town north of San Francisco and west ofChicago", with an estimated population of 16,000. This title was also briefly held byPort Douglas, Yale, and later on byBarkerville.
By 1860, however, the gold-bearing sandbars of the Fraser were depleted. Many of the miners had either drifted back to the U.S. or dispersed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of unstaked riches. Other gold rushes proliferated around the colony, with notable gold rushes atRock Creek,the Similkameen,Wild Horse Creek and theBig Bend of the Columbia River spinning immediately off the Fraser rush, and gold exploration soon after led to theOmineca Gold Rush and theStikine Gold Rush, which led to the creation of theStikine Territory to the colony's north. TheFort ColvilleGold Rush inWashington Territory was also a spin-off of the Fraser Gold Rush, as many miners from the Fraser headed there once news of the strike in US territory reached the mining camps. Many others moved on to a gold rush in Colorado.
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