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One of Canada's earliest roads: the Cariboo

Broadcast Date: July 31, 1980

With spots like Hell's Gate Gorge and the Jaws of Death, Canada's early roads could be a life-ending experience. British Columbia's Cariboo Wagon Road literally hung from the Fraser Valley walls, supported by a framework of logs. This road, from Yale to Barkerville, was built between 1862 and 1865 and was considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the 1800s. On CBC Radio, veteran travellers like Leah Shaw remember driving the harrowing old road.

Gold was the impetus for building the Cariboo Wagon Road. Gold rush fever hit the Fraser River area in 1858. Upwards of 20,000 prospectors, mostly Americans, poured north from the exhausted gold fields of California in search of richer bonanzas. But the route inland involved 10-mile long portages and narrow cliff's-edge trails, making it almost impossible for supplies to reach the miners. Many a horse, mule and person fell to their deaths en route.

Finally, in 1862, James Douglas, governor of the new Crown Colony of British Columbia, agreed to have a road built. A detachment of Royal Engineers was brought in to blast out a supply route and keep the area under British rule. The Cariboo Wagon Road was born, opening up the interior of British Columbia for development. One hundred years later, this same route would be incorporated into the Trans-Canada Highway.

One of Canada's earliest roads: the Cariboo

• Author Richard Thomas Wright quotes this description of the Cariboo Wagon Road: "The road was supported by pilings, there built upon immense masonry fills, sometimes on gigantic crib work, sometimes cut through a sheer rock bluff, now almost at the water level and anon rising to giddy elevations when the river seemed but a silver ribbon." 

• For a map of the Cariboo Road route, visit: http://collections.ic.gc.ca/cariboo/map.htm

• Before there was a Cariboo Road, merchants and miners travelled up and down the Fraser River canyon on old Native American trails hung on the canyon walls, and by long portages around sections like Hell's Gate.

• Hell's Gate can now be crossed by aerial tram.

• The Royal Engineers laid British Columbia's foundations. Between 1858 and 1863, they planned towns, surveyed land, settled disputes, diverted rivers, created maps, built roads and established the boundary between the United States and the British colony.

• Worried that American miners were going to annex the Fraser River Valley area for the United States, the British government created the Crown Colony of British Columbia in 1858.

• Joseph Trutch was contracted to build part of the Cariboo road between Spuzzum and Lytton. His Alexandria Bridge was the first suspension bridge in British Columbia. It measured 90 metres. 

• The second Alexandria bridge is now a historic site.

• Thomas Spence, who was also contracted to build part of the Cariboo Road, worked on the Dawson Trail in 1868. This trail went from Fort Garry in what is now Manitoba to Lake of the Woods. But Spence aspired to more than road-building. On May 31, 1868, in Portage la Prairie, Spence declared himself the president of the Republic of Manitoba. Neither his rule nor his republic lasted long — Manitoba became a Canadian province in 1870.

• In 1862, 21 camels were brought to the Cariboo area to work as pack animals. Within four months, the government banned the beasts from the trail. According to reports from the time, the camels bit, kicked, and smelled so foul that horses and mules would bolt and fall to their deaths.

• The camels were brought to the Cariboo in the belief that they could go six to ten days without water, travel 50 to 70 kilometres a day, and carry a 500-kilogram load. None of these expectations were met.

One of Canada's earliest roads: the Cariboo

Medium: Radio

Program: Focus Canada

Broadcast Date: July 31, 1980

Guest(s): Leah Shaw

Narrator: Imbert Orchard

Duration: 10:07

Photo: Frederick Dally / National Archives of Canada / C-037864

Last updated:
April 4, 2008