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Pollard's Cornish Ranch and Roadhouse |
After leaving his home in Cornwall in 1849, John Pollard first travelled to California, where he mined. Following the "rush", John and a couple of companions, fellow countrymen John Butson and John Churchill, moved to Lillooet and worked two more seasons with a company of miners.
Late in the fall of 1860, Pollard and his associates moved north to the Quesnel River where they made a rich discovery at Keithley Creek. But, soon after, they became skeptical of any further mining opportunities.
The three men left the goldfields. When they discovered a tract of land "about 50 miles from Lillooet and opposite Wasley's Farm" in 1862, they pre-empted 160 acres each
Lots 245 and 246 were pre-empted collectively by Butson and Churchill 20 August 1862. John Pollard pre-empted lot 247 a day earlier and Samuel Wasley pre-empted lot 258 16 September 1862. All four lots were gazetted 14 August 1892
John Pollard was a pioneer. He soon bought out Butson, Churchill, and Wasley, acquiring 640 acres. Many more acres were added later. By fall, several log cabins appeared on Pollard's pre-emption lot, through which the new wagon road passed. One became a popular roadhouse, called Pollard's Cornish Ranch and Roadhouse. Pollard, now a rancher and roadhouse keeper, married late in life to young Kezia Truan, also of Cornwall.
Kezia ran the roadhouse successfully, and carried on the enterprises after Pollard's death, in 1901, with the pre-arranged help of ranch foreman, Jack Arthur. By the time of the First World War, one of the Pollard sons had taken over the ranch and in 1923 Kezia passed away. John Pollard the Second and his sons ran the ranch as hunting guides in the nearby hills in a tradition that would last after the death of John Pollard the Second in 1961
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