Hidden for PGCAR 2022.
This cache is a camo'd lock'n'lock container with room for trade items. No need to touch the fence - it is sometimes electrified.
John Robert Giscome was born in St. Mary, Jamaica around 1832. He worked on the Panama Railway, then headed to California as a gold-seeker. Frustrated with oppression and exclusionary laws, Giscome travelled to Victoria, B.C. around 1858 along with over 600 free Blacks. Still determined to find his fortune, Giscome travelled to Quesnelle where he connected with Bahamian Henry McDame. The two men intended to prospect in the Peace River, taking a popular route upriver via Fort St. James. Unfortunately, the winter weather caught up with them, and ice on the river forced Giscome and McDame to overwinter in Fort George.
While there, they learned of an alternate route to the Peace via the Salmon River from local Indigenous people. The following spring, a guide whose name has been lost to history escorted them to the Salmon, which they found to be too high to navigate. The guide suggested another route up the Fraser, "from when they made a Portage of about 9 miles to a lake". From there, they travelled upriver to the trading post at McLeod's Lake, where they were greeted with a 30 shot salute in honour of their arrival by a seldom used route.
The portage route travelled by Giscome and McDame was Lhdesti (see Lhdesti: PGCAR 2022), and the two men are generally regarded as the first non-Indigenous people to cross the route, thus when Giscome wrote about his travels in The British Colonist on his return to Victoria, the settler population dubbed the trail "Giscome's Portage".
Along the way, the party stopped to investigate the fate of the doomed Rennie Party; an account of what they found was also published in the newspaper (see The Rennie Party: PGCAR 2022).
Giscome and McDame successfully prospected on Germanson Creek and eventually struck it big. Today, there are many geographic features in the area that bear the names of the two men, including McDame Creek, Giscome Portage, Giscome Rapids, Giscome Canyon, and the community of Giscome. John Giscome retired to Victoria where he died a wealthy man in 1907, leaving his fortune to his landlady.
For more information:
https://bcblackhistory.ca/john-robert-giscome/
https://www.hublehomestead.ca/johngiscome
Giscome's newspaper article - https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist18631214uvic/page/n1/mode/2up?view=theater