Cariboo Gold Rush

The Colony's creation had been prompted by an influx of American prospectors to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush three years earlier in 1858, which had its locus in the area from Lillooet to Yale.

The electorate of the Cariboo riding were among the most pro-Confederation in the colony, and this was in no small part because of the strong Canadian element in the local populace.

During the rush, the largest and most important town lay at the road's end at Barkerville, which had grown up around the most profitable and famous of the many Cariboo mining camps.

The wagon road's most important freight was the Gold Escort, which brought government bullion to Yale for shipment to the colonial treasury.

Cariboo Road by Alan Sullivan (published 1946), is a fictional historical novel about a family that travels from San Francisco to seek gold near Williams Creek.

Barkerville (1865), shown rebuilt after the Great Fire, with its new, straightened and wider, Main Street. The creek in the foreground is Williams Creek, which is paralleled by Main Street throughout.
Share of the Great Cariboo Gold Company, issued 1. May 1917
The Cariboo Gold Region can be seen towards the northwest corner of the map (1870).
Route of the Cariboo Road in red. Steamboat travel in blue; dotted lines are alternate routes or routes to other goldfields. Trails, Roads and Water Routes in Colonial British Columbia. The Dewdney Trail was the dotted line across the south of the colony.
The Cariboo Road in the Fraser Canyon , 1867