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The Fraser Canyon is a stretch of the Fraser River where it
descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains
enroute from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser
Valley. Colloquially, the term "Fraser Canyon" is often used to
include the Thompson Canyon from Lytton to Ashcroft, as they form
the same highway route which most people are familiar with.
Geology
The Canyon was formed during the Miocene period (23.7-5.3 million
years ago) by the river cutting into the uplifting Interior
Plateau. From the northern Cariboo to Fountain, the river follows
the line of the huge Fraser Fault, which runs on a north-south axis
and meets the Yalakom Fault a few miles downstream from
Lillooet.
Extending 270 km north of Yale to the confluence of the Chilcotin
River, its southern stretch is a major transportation corridor to
the Interior from "the Coast", with the Canadian National and
Canadian Pacific Railways and the Trans Canada Highway carved out
of its rock faces and in spots hanging above the river or many of
the canyon's side-crevasses by dozens of bridges and trestles.
Prior to the double-tracking of those railways, and major upgrades
to Highway 1 (the Trans Canada Highway), travel through "the
Canyon" was even more hair-raising than it is now. During the
frontier era it was a major obstacle between the Lower Mainland and
the Interior Plateau and the slender trails along its rocky walls -
many of them little better than notches cut into granite, with a
few handholds - were compared to goat-tracks and worse.
North of Lytton, it is followed by BC Highway 12, then from
Lillooet to Pavilion by BC Hwy 99 (the farther end of the
Sea-to-Sky Highway, though not carrying that name in this area).
The BCR line follows the same stretch of canyon from Lillooet to
just beyond Pavilion. Between there and the mouth of the Chilcotin
River there are only rough ranching roads and the terrain is a mix
of canyon depths flanked by arid benchland and high plateau.
Between Pavilion and Lillooet, the river's gorge is at its maximum
depth, with the river throttled through a series of narrow gorges
flanked by high cliffs, though still flanked above those cliffs by
wide benchlands which stand on the foreshoulder of the mountain
ranges flanking the gorge.
Hell's Gate
At Hell's Gate, near Boston Bar, the canyon walls rise about 1000
m above the rapids. Fish ladders along the river's side permit
migrating salmon to bypass a rockslide that diverted the river
during the blasting of the CNR line in 1905. The area around Hell's
Gate carries the name Black Canyon, which may either be a reference
to the colour of the rocks when they're in the rain, or the name of
a community built on the cliffsides here during the Fraser Canyon
Gold Rush. Today there is a specially-built air-tram, like the kind
used in ski resorts, which takes tourists down to Hell's Gate,
where visitors may view the fish ladders as well as the boiling
rush of the Fraser's waters. A set of tourist pavilions with shops
and cafe now occupies the site of the workmen's housing seen in the
accompanying image.
At Siska, a few minutes south of Lytton, there is a spectacular
double rail bridge, with the continental mainlines switching sides
of the river at the throat of a rocky gorge.
Upper Fraser Canyon
Just north of Lillooet, narrow rock ledges choke the river just at
the confluence of the lower canyon of the Bridge River, forming an
obstacle to migrating fish that has made this spot the busiest
aboriginal fishing site on the river, from ancient times to the
present. Concentrations of First Nations people here, from all
tribes of the Interior, were believed to have been in excess of
10,000.
Archaeology and
History
At the mouth of the Canyon, an archeological site documents the
presence of the Stó:lo people in the area from the early Holocene
period, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the Fraser
Glacier. An archaeological dig farther upriver at Keatley Creek,
near Pavilion, is dated to 8000 BP and dates from a time when a
huge lake filled what is now the canyon above Lillooet, created by
a slide a few miles south of the present-day town.
The history of the canyon is very rich, especially from Pavilion
south to Yale. Geographer Cole Harris comments that the lower
Canyon was home to the densest population on the continent up to
the time of the Fraser Gold Rush, thanks to the fecundity of its
fishery.
During the Gold Rush, 10,500 miners and an untold number of
hangers-on populated its banks and towns during the Fraser Canyon
Gold Rush of 1858-60, during which it was the setting for the
bloody but largely-unknown Fraser Canyon War and the opera buffa
farce of a series of events known as McGowan's War. Details of
these events can be found under their respective titles and other
historical material in the pages on the towns named in this
article. Other important histories connected with the Canyon
include the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road and the construction
of the CPR.
The river is navigable between Boston Bar and Lillooet and also
between Big Bar Ferry and Prince George and beyond, although rapids
at Soda Canyon and elsewhere were still difficult waters for the
many steamboats which piloted its "foamy brine" in the 1800s and
early 1900s. One vessel in particular is worthy of note, the MV
Scuzzy, which was built with multiple-compartment hulls to preserve
it from sinking due to rock damage. It was used to haul equipment
and supplies during the construction of the CPR.
With the construction of the CPR in the 1880s came the destruction
of key portions of the Cariboo Wagon Road, as there was no room for
both railway and road on the narrow, steep mountainsides above the
river. As a result, the towns of Lytton and Boston Bar were cut off
from road access with the rest of the province, other than by the
difficult wagon road to Lillooet via Fountain. During the
automotive age and following the construction of the CNR, a newer
version of the road was built through the Canyon. This was named
the Cariboo Highway until the construction and designation of the
Trans Canada Highway in the late 1950s-early 1960s.
Upper Canyons of the
Fraser
There are other canyons on the Fraser that are not considered part
of the Canyon, notably at Soda Creek, between Williams Lake and
Prince George. The official but comparatively diminutive Grand
Canyon of the Fraser is in the river's upper stretch through the
Rocky Mountain Trench, between Prince George, but despite its name
it has neither the roughness of water nor the depth and severity of
canyon as is found in the area of Lillooet or between Boston Bar
and Yale.
Almost all of the rivers and creeks feeding the Fraser from
Williams Lake south have their own canyons which open onto the
Fraser, or are just up side-valleys a few miles. These include
Marble Canyon, Churn Creek, the Chilcotin River, the Bridge River,
Seton Lake and Cayoosh Creek, the Stein River, the Nahatlatch
River, the Coquihalla River and the innumerable smaller creeks
flanking the river between Kanaka Bar and Yale.
To get
credit for this earth cache, you must email me the answer to the
following questions and you must post a picture of yourself
or group with your GPSr with the Fraser Canyon in the background,
anywhere along the canyon you wish, try and pick someplace not
already depicted by other cachers. The questions are: "How
many tunnels do you travel through as you work your way along the
canyon? and How many types of rock formations (eg. sedimentary)
have you seen? " Drop me an email via my profile with the
answer!
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