[citation needed] The canyon was formed during the Miocene period (23.7–5.3 million years ago) by the river cutting into the uplifting Interior Plateau.

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.

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.

At the site that once housed railway workers, a tourist attraction built in 1971 takes visitors across Hell's Gate via an aerial tramway.

At Siska, a few minutes south of Lytton, there are the Cisco bridges—a pair of railway bridges at the throat of a rocky gorge.

The official but comparatively diminutive Grand Canyon of the Fraser is in the river's upper stretch through the Rocky Mountain Trench, about 115 km (71 mi) upstream from Prince George and about 20 km (12 mi) upstream from the Fraser's confluence with the Bowron River.

[citation needed] At the mouth of the Canyon, an archeological site documents the presence of the Stó:lō people in the area from the early Holocene period, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the Fraser Glacier.

Research farther upriver at the Keatley Creek Archaeological Site, near Pavilion, is dated to 8000 BP, 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.

During the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858–1860, 10,500 miners and an untold number of hangers-on populated its banks and towns.

Other important histories connected with the canyon include the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The first sternwheeler to pass the rapids was Skuzzy, which was built with a multiple-compartment hull to preserve her from sinking from rock damage.

During the automotive age and following the construction of the Canadian Northern Railway in 1904–05, a newer version of the road was built through the canyon.