Barker Ville

B A R K E R V I L L E H I S T O R I C T O W N

Box 19 | Barkerville, BC | V0K 1B0250-994-3302 | 888-994-3332 toll free | 250-994-3435 faxwww.barkerville.ca

2 — Barkerville 150

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Anniversary — June 2012

B

ARKERVILLE

His-toric Town is the largest his-toric site in Western North America, and is a designated National Historic Site of Can-ada. Barkerville is provincial-ly, nationally and internation-ally recognized for its historic signiﬁcance associated with its place in western Canada’s gold rush era and the role the gold rush played in BC joining Canada. Barkerville is widely known as a “must see” for travel itineraries in western Canada. The his-toric town is also a signiﬁcant contributor to the Cariboo re-gional economy and is widely regarded as a unique compo-nent of the regional identity. The Barkerville Heritage Trust, as Barkerville’s oper-ating and managing partner, works in conjunction with the Province of British Co-lumbia, the owner and statu-tory guardian of Barkerville’s heritage resources, to ensure that Barkerville is efﬁciently managed, entertaining and educational to visitors, and ﬁ-nancially stable as the premier heritage resource and tourism attraction for the Cariboo. The ultimate aim is to main-tain and enhance Barkerville’s position as a nationally sig-niﬁcant heritage resource and tourism attraction for British Columbia and Canada. Barkerville is situated 81 km east of Quesnel, British Columbia in the foothills of the Cariboo Mountains, close to Troll Mountain Ski Resort and Bowron Lake Provin-cial Park. The nearby com-munity of Wells (8 km from Barkerville) is the service and housing centre for the area (www.wellsbc.com) and is itself a dynamic cultural community, home of Island Mountain Arts, the acclaimed Toni Onley Artists’ Project, the International Celtic Harp School (www.imarts.com), the dynamic indie music fes-tival ArtsWells (www.arts-wells.com), and the Sunset Theatre (www.sunset-theatre.com). Wells is also situated close to a wide variety of winter and summer outdoor activities.

Barkerville, 150 years of pure gold

is a product of the

Available on-line at www.pgcitizen.caGeneral Inquiries 250-562-2441

COLLEEN SPARROW,

P

UBLISHER

NEIL GODBOUT

, E

DITOR

ALAN RAMSAY,

R

EADER

S

ALES

LU VERTICCHIO,

A

DVERTISING

COLLEEN MCCOMB,

C

REATIVE

THE CITIZEN

PRINCEGEORGE

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A R K E R V I L L

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Miss Wendle and Church by Thomas Drasdauskis.

— Barkerville 150

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Anniversary — 3June 2012

I

MAGINE

…

hand-dig-ging through layers of soggy, worthless, frustrating gravel, hoping and praying the next shovel-stroke will expose a fortune in gold. Twenty feet, thirty feet, forty feet: every-one says it’s crazy, but there’s too much at stake. Then, just when the outcome seems impossibly bleak, at a depth of ﬁfty-two feet, the ground begins to pay. The lead is struck, and the greatest creek-side placer gold deposit the world has ever seen is sud-denly yours for the taking.This is Barkerville’s story.The Cariboo region of British Columbia’s central interior has been profoundly shaped by gold, thanks to a simple, working-class Eng-lish prospector named Billy Barker who, in 1862, spear-headed a twenty-year, multi- billion dollar industrial revo-lution that literally helped build a Province. The extraordinary historic town of Barkerville, named in Billy’s honour, now stands as a living testament to these golden beginnings. Declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 1923, and later a Provincial Heritage Site in 1958, Barkerville is now the largest living-history museum in western North America.Barkerville celebrates its 150

th

anniversary in 2012, and the year is full of exciting adventures for the more than 65,000 international visitors who ﬂock to “BC’s Gold Rush Town” annually.The signature event for Barkerville’s year-long ses-quicentennial celebrations will take place August 11

th

& 12

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, 2012. The event will ofﬁcially commemor-ate the 150

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anniversary of Billy Barker’s astonishing gold discovery in August 1862, and the subsequent birth of Barkerville Historic Town. During the weekend-long gala visitors to Barker-ville will also be treated to the triumphant return of the Canadian National Gold Pan-ning Championships, hosted by 5-time World Invitational Gold Panning Champion and lifetime Barkerville resident, Scott Rea.

BC’s Gold Rush Town to Host

PARTY

OF THE

CENTURY

(AND A HALF!)

Kibbee House Ceremony by Kent Kahlberg.

4 — Barkerville 150

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Anniversary — June 2012

By JAMES DOUGLAS

B

ARKERVILLE

H

ISTORIC

T

OWN

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t is commonly said that gold was ﬁrst discovered in British Columbia some-where on the Fraser River in spring of 1858. News quickly spread to San Francisco later that summer, as if by accident, and the ensuing gold rush saw nearly thirty thousand international treasure-seekers ﬂood into the Hudson’s Bay Company-held lands north of Oregon, laying the founda-tion for what would eventually become the sixth Province of Canada. It is the story of Brit-ish Columbia… but it isn’t en-tirely true. Admittedly, 1858 was a very good year for the territo-ry-formally-known-as-New-Caledonia. In 1858 British Columbia was ofﬁcially de-clared a crown colony of Eng-land, given a fancy new moni-ker, and appointed its ﬁrst governor. The news of gold on Fraser’s River, however, was “old hat” to many by then. James Houston had already prospected Tranquille Creek on the Thompson River by 1856, and as early as 1852 Ferdinand Boulanger was swapping samples of “yellow sand” with members of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) First Nations near Fort Kamloops. The Shuswap in turn showed their ﬁndings to Donald McLean, the Hudson’s Bay Company “factor” (or, mer-cantile agent) at Fort Kam-loops, who kept news of these discoveries close to his chest while quietly sending word about Thompson River gold to Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island. The Chief Factor at Fort Victoria was a man named James Douglas. Douglas knew there would be a lot of gold found on the Thompson, a major tributary of the Fra-ser River, if McLean’s early reports of the ﬁndings were true. Douglas also realized that a gold rush to the main-land was inevitable, and his HBC territories would need to have some semblance of proper colonial infrastructure ready to greet the encroaching Argonauts in order to survive the onslaught. A proper in-frastructure… and about six years head start. So, from 1852 to 1858, Douglas and McLean conspired to keep news of any gold discoveries on the Thompson and Fraser Rivers as conﬁdential as pos-sible, while the Hudson’s Bay Company negotiated with the Britain over the fate of New Caledonia.

Cont’d on page 5 James Douglas by Kent Kahlberg.Gold Diggers by Kent Kahlberg.

— Barkerville 150

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Anniversary — 5June 2012

Cont’d from page 4

When word eventually did reach California about rich northern sand bars in plac-es like Hope and Yale, they would be ready. Or so they thought… until the ﬁrst load of San Francisco miners ar-rived in Fort Victoria aboard the steamship Commodore on April 25, 1858. Four hun-dred men disembarked at Esquimalt harbour that day, instantly doubling the popula-tion of Fort Victoria and test-ing Douglas’s colonial plan to its limits. As boat-load after boat-load of miners followed, the true signiﬁcance of the un-folding events was revealed. By the end of that summer, nearly 23,000 passengers has alighted on Vancouver Island before heading across Georgia Strait to the mainland, and a further seven thousand min-ers had scrambled overland through Fort Kamloops in hopes of striking it rich. Al-most overnight Victoria went from tiny fur-trading settle-

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