 Barkerville Historic Town, LT Rhead photo The tribes travelled trading routes that became known as "grease trails" for the fish oil which leaked from wooden containers on the journey. The Great Road, or Nuxalk-Carrier Grease Trail, was a major corridor from the Fraser River, across plateaus, and to the sea.
European arrival In 1793 North West Company explorer Alexander Mackenzie traveled the Nuxalk-Carrier Grease Trail, becoming the first European north of Mexico to complete an overland journey across North America. The Nuxalk and Carrier people helped to guide him through the region on his way toward the Pacific Ocean. That same year, legendary voyager Captain George Vancouver visited the region's coastal villages. Fur traders operated in this region for the next 50 years until gold fever struck. With the discovery of gold on the Fraser River, the Cariboo Gold Rush was on in 1859. Three years later Billy Barker struck one of the area's greatest gold claims. Tens of thousands of people followed the dream, making their way to the goldlfields and often converging on the bustling boomtown of Barkerville. By 1864, Barkerville boasted that it was the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago. Today visitors can capture the gold rush spirit at Barkerville Historic Town. Continual waves of prospectors signalled the need for construction of a road that would allow mule trains, freight wagons and stages coaches to reach the Cariboo interior. A detachment of the Royal Engineers supervised construction of the historic Cariboo Waggon Road. Built entirely by hand, pick and shovel, workers blasted through the rock barrier of the Fraser Canyon between 1862 and 1864 to forge the road. Dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World," the Cariboo Waggon Road stretched 642 km (400 mi) from Yale to Barkerville. Today's Highway 1 between Yale and Lytton, and Highway 97 to Quesnel, approximate the route. By the 1880s, the Cariboo Gold Rush was in decline. Gold was still mined by hydraulic or deep-pit methods, but was beyond the reach of individual miners, and the yield was low. Many prospectors left the region but some saw, in the bunchgrass hills of the Cariboo region, ideal ranch country. They settled in to raise cattle. The southern Cariboo region is still considered cattle country and many of the original ranches remain.
Trail Blazers In the years that followed, a group of Norwegian settlers arrived in the Bella Coola Valley to lay their own stake. In an area reminiscent of the fjords of Norway, they established the community of Hagensborg in 1894. Another trail was blazed when, in 1953, Bella Coola Valley residents frustrated for years by the provincial authorities' refusal to build a road over the Coast Mountains, decided to take on the task themselves. In the fall of 1952 they began building the Freedom Road, which would stretch from Anahim Lake to the coastal town of Bella Coola.
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