Bibliography

Introduction

When the news of the golden gravel reached those seeking to find their riches in gold, miners learned that most problems encountered in 1858 were the difficulties in reaching the "new-found" gold-fields.

BC ARCHIVES A-03876 Boston Bar, Showing Freight Wagons c.1870

The new gold-fields were 400 miles north and east of Yale, in what is known today as British Columbia.

The route over the province was extremely mountainous, covered by mile after mile of thick entwined underbrush, and protected by mountain passes which in April had snow five feet deep!

In parts of the journey north to the gold-fields of the Cariboo, the roads and trails were dangerous. Bad and fatal accidents often occured,

BC ARCHIVES A-03880 Wagon Road over Jackass Mountain, 1876

where horses and their owners would fall to their deaths over mountains, or would drown in the deep-flowing waters of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers.

Several methods of transportation were improved with the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road, noted by some as the, "Eighth Wonder of the World!"

The gold-fields were then more accessible for the miners to travel with their supplies to the gold-fields by mule, freight wagon, horse, and even camels, using the Cariboo Wagon Road!

The Royal Engineers