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Pollard's Cornish Ranch and Roadhouse 100 Mile House Ranch and Roadhouse 111 Mile House |
Built during the summer of 1861, the 111 Mile House sat along the brigade trail between the 100 milepost and Williams Lake, en route to the goldfields of the Cariboo. The first proprietors, the Cochrane's, are mentioned in few travellers' diaries. However, by the spring of 1863 it was the Blair Brothers, David and John, who were mentioned in a list of accommodations in Victoria's Colonist as the owners of 111 Mile House
(p11 and 12, B.Patenaude:1996).
Convinced that the 111 milepost would be a strategic location upon the building of a trail to Quesnel lake, the brothers built a hotel on the site and advertised the outfit in the Cariboo Sentinel (p58,B.Patenaude:1996).
Blair's hotel was an impressively large, frame-built, two-storey facility, situated on the north side of the 111 Mile Creek facing the wagon road. By 1864 the site was a stopping place of four-horse stagecoaches.
The Blair brothers sold out, in the spring of 1866, to retired Hudson's Bay Company trader William Manson, who chose to settle at the 111 milepost so his wife, Adelaide Ogden, could be near her relatives, the McKinlays.
Later, a local schoolteacher, William Abel, of Ontario, bought the 111 Mile Ranch in order to farm. Abel operated the roadhouse and Barnard's horse-change station, as the 111 Mile was a regular stop on the Cariboo Road at the time. A Crown grant for land at 111 milepost was issued to Abel in March 1892 and became lots 190 and 191 G.1,Lillooet, including 320 acres.
Abel sold shortly after to the McLure family, who ran the ranch and roadhouse until 1909. For a while the house fell into disrepair and the fields lay dormant as the properties went through a few changes of hand. Eventually the ranch became a part of Captian Geoffrey L. Watson's 3000 acre Highland Ranch.
When Watson was killed in action during the First World War, most of his property in the Cariboo was sold to Lord Edgerton. Today only one small ancient log building remains, situated on the upper side of the creek, within sight of Highway 97
(p59 and 60, B.Patenaude:1996).
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